Kilmainham Gaol and Modern Art Museum

It's late, so London is going to have to wait for tomorrow. That's a promise, because I'm leaving for Galway on Thursday and I'd like to get London up tomorrow so that I can post the pictures while the trip is still fresh in my mind. And I know I make a lot of crap promises on here, but really. Tomorrow.

Anywho, last Friday (October 19) we went to Kilmainham Gaol and the Modern Art Museum. Kilmainham Gaol is where the Easter Rising organizers were taken, held, and eventually executed. It was also a major jail in the Dublin area for a long time, but the Easter Rising shenanigans are what it's best known for. If you dont know about Easter Rising, I suggest googling it or hopping on wikipedia. The cliffnotes version is that it was a rebellion in 1916 which marked the turning point in the Irish struggle for independence. But anyways, we went to Kilmainham Gaol, and then since the Modern Art Museum was nearby, we visited that too. It was free. Which is a good thing, because I hate modern art, and the modern art that was in there was stupid. Somehow painting a 6 foot x 6 foot piece of canvas flat black constitutes art. Maybe I'm just missing "the point", but that constitutes a spill as far as I'm concerned. I hope those artists are still starving. At any rate, they didn't let you take pictures in the museum. Which is just as well, because I wouldn't have taken a picture of anything anyways - except maybe to show everyone how lame it was. Onto the pictures. Captions below the pictures, as has become my standard practice.


There you see a hallway in Kilmainham Gaol. Most of the cell hallways looked like this. Nothing too fancy.. which I guess is what you wouldexpect with an early 20th century jail.



Okay, two shots of the same room - one from each end of it. This was the "main hall" of the jail and the Easter Rising organizers were held in various cells within this room. Looks pretty cool if you ask me. If it looks familiar, it's because it's been in a few movies. Michael Collins and the Boondock Saints are the only ones I know of, but I remember them saying on the tour that there were others as well...


This is one of the cells from the room above. You'll notice the door to the right of the photo, that's because I was standing in the doorway when I took this (to give you an idea of the size of the cells). Not very large at all. I guess when the jail was designed, these were meant to be single-occupant cells. The philosophy behind it was that a prisoner could be better rehabilitated when they were kept alone and had a chance to repent in solitude. They said that the windows were designed to be so high up so that the prisoners were constantly "looking up towards God." This was all new in the world of jailing, I guess they say this was one of the first jails built with the goal of rehabilitating prisoners as opposed to just confining and keeping them segregated from society. At any rate, the 1-person-per-cell ideology didn't go on for long, because there were a lot of poor people in early 1900s Ireland (not to mention for a long time before that) and so many were forced to steal just to keep from starving to death. As a result, there were usually 3-4 people per cell. But I suppose that's enough of a history lesson for this one photo. Learn something new everyday, right?





These pictures are all from a courtyard within the confines of the jail. That first picture is where all of the Easter Rising organizers, sans one, were executed by a firing squad. The second picture marks the spot where one Easter Rising organizer was executed in a separate spot from the rest. The story goes that he was shot in the thigh and horribly wounded - probably fatally if they didn't execute him anyways - during the rising. He couldn't stand to be shot by the firing range like the rest of the organizers, so they dragged him out on a chair and he was shot at the other end of the courtyard. The plaque is on the wall between the two crosses and commemorates those who were executed.

And thus concludes my pictures from Kilmainham Gaol. As usual, I have others of some less interesting stuff - just let me know if anyone wants to see them.

On to the Museum of Modern Art. Now like I said, I wasn't a fan, but the building itself and the grounds were picture-worthy, so I won't deprive you of the scenery:


That's the walk up towards the main entrance of the Museum. Pretty spiffy, if I do say so.


Glance to your left during the walk up the path towards the entrance and you see this. The obelisk is from Phoenix Park.



These are the gardens on one side of the Museum. The first picture is from the edge of the museum looking out into the gardens. The second picture is from the end of the gardens looking back towards the museum. I thought it was pretty nice...

So that concludes my museum of modern art pictures. Nothing too great for this one, but London will be up tomorrow night!