@greencountryroots
Irish | American | Connecticut | Husband | Dad | Activist | Architect | Art | #LFC | #Kerry | #irishart |www.IGHMF.org | Views expressed are my own. IGHMF is a bipartisan organization dedicated to education and cultural preservation.
Thank you to Ann Nyberg and WTNH News 8 for the opportunity to talk about the mission of the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield.
We also discussed our upcoming exhibition at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in Norwalk (March 12 – May 17).
Watch the interview here:
www.wtnh.com/video/nyberg...
This work deepens our mission to preserve and interpret art of the Great Hunger. It reminds us that the catastrophe did not appear suddenly — it emerged from lives already marked by hardship, dignity, and resilience.
#MuseumMission #MemoryAndHistory #Ireland
Painted just two years before the Great Famine, this scene shows poverty and loss already shaping Irish life. The grave, the mourners, and the ruined setting reveal how fragile survival had become even before mass starvation began.
#GreatFamine #IrishHistory #ArtAndHistory
We are proud to announce that Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield has acquired The Irish Peasant’s Grave (1843) by John Joseph Tracey — a rare pre-Famine painting depicting an Irish burial in rural Ireland.
#IrishArt #MuseumAcquisition #GreatHungerMuseum
So what he said was “Give me a couple of days and I’ll give you a reason why he was there”
Grateful today for community, heritage, and the stories that endure.
From our small cottages to vast skies, Ireland’s spirit lives on here in Fairfield.
Happy Thanksgiving from the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield. #IGHMF #IrishArt #IrishHistory #GreatHunger #ConnecticutArts #FairfieldCT
A quiet carriage arrives at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion…
In early 2026, these historic rooms will open for a special exhibition exploring Irish memory, migration, and the stories that shaped a new America.
More details soon.
Irish Mendicants was recently acquired at auction in Dublin. The withered land, the cold sky and the family’s only possession, their crucifix, mark the thin line between poverty and death in 1845. To learn more or become a member visit www.IGHMF.org
A new addition to the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield. Alfred Downing Fripp’s Irish Mendicants shows an elderly blind man, a barefoot mother and a child in a bleak landscape. Painted just as the blight arrived, it captures life on the edge of disaster.
This will not be the only expansion in 2026. More pieces are on the way as we grow the collection for our future home. We also received encouraging news about our new location. If all goes well we hope to move in during Fall 2027.
Become a member at IGHMF.org
We are expanding the Great Hunger collection again in 2026. This 19th century painting by American artist Howard Helmick is one of the new works joining the museum. Helmick painted life in Cork, Kerry and Galway with honesty and care.
Learn more at www.IGHMF.org
One more detail that makes this work special. Caravaggio painted himself into The Taking of Christ. He is the man on the far right holding the lantern, leaning in to witness the arrest. He often inserted himself into scenes, but here it feels almost confessional.
Caravaggio painted people as they were: ordinary faces, real fear, real tension. It changed European art. Seeing this work in Dublin is a reminder that masterpieces do not just survive history. Sometimes they vanish, and sometimes they return by pure chance.
What makes this painting remarkable, even beyond its rediscovery, is Caravaggio’s signature style. The stark light, the compressed space, the raw emotion. He pulls you into the moment of betrayal as if you’re standing inside it. No ornament, no distance, just truth.
Standing in front of it, the whole story feels almost unreal. A work lost to history, found by chance, and now a piece of Ireland’s cultural life. One of Caravaggio’s greatest paintings, hiding in plain sight, finally home on a public wall.
The Jesuits, to their credit, did the extraordinary. Instead of selling it, they partnered with the National Gallery of Ireland so the public could see it. The painting is on long-term loan, and it has become one of the Gallery’s defining treasures.
Imagine that moment. A masterpiece missing for centuries rediscovered not in Rome or Paris but in a modest community house on Leeson Street in Dublin, where it had hung for decades without anyone realizing its true identity.
In the 1990s, a conservator from the National Gallery was restoring what the Jesuits believed was “just a copy.” As the layers were cleaned, the brushwork, the light, the unmistakable intensity revealed something impossible. It was the long-lost Caravaggio.
For years the painting was thought lost. Scholars believed it had vanished sometime in the 17th or 18th century. Copies existed, but the original was gone. No one imagined it would turn up in Ireland, hanging quietly in a Jesuit dining room.
This is Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, painted in 1602. What’s wild is that its journey to this wall to the National Gallery in Dublin is one of the greatest art-world stories of the last century.
Jesus Christ was a liberal. Trump would never pardon him.
🎶 Ireland in Poetry & Song with Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Muldoon and Irish folk legend John Doyle
📍 SHU Community Theatre, Fairfield CT
🗓️ Fri Nov 7 | 8 PM
🎟️ $50 General | $125 Pre-show with Chris Coogan
Tickets ➡️ www.ighmf.org/event-detail...
#IrishCulture #FairfieldCT #LiveMusic
I just had 10 days in Ireland and I feel like the frog who temporarily escaped the pot of boiling water.
I’m just going to let the art speak for itself. If you’d like to learn more, or join our mission visit www.ighmf.org Thank you to Carey Weber at Fairfield University for arranging this amazing exhibit and video.
youtu.be/Q1h1O1IuvM8?...
It rains every significant day on this journey to build a home for the collection. Almost as if the heavens know the weight of what we’re trying to carry forward.
Join us www.IGHMF.org
www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhib...
They sure did get those Tate boys out of Romania, though.
Still processing the emotion and energy of last night’s Gala. What a night for community, history, and hope. For now, here’s a moment that says it all — a stunning violin performance by Arav Amin. #IGHMF #IrishCulture #GreatHunger
us—the Irish in America who still believe in decency, democracy, and dignity. We have not abandoned the values that bind us to our heritage. Ireland must not abandon us either. We are working every day to restore the values that truly made America great.
As an exiled child of Ireland, I understand and support the need for Ireland to stand firmly with Europe in these uncertain times. The vision of Trump’s America is one many of us here are actively resisting, and not without cost. But I must implore Mr. O’Riordan and all in Ireland to also stand with
Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
