Quinnipiac University announces Ireland's Great Hunger Museum; Major International Art Collection to Focus on the Irish Famine

Quinnipiac University announces Ireland's Great Hunger Museum; Major International Art Collection to Focus on the Irish Famine PR Newswire HAMDEN, Connecticut, Sept. 10, 2012 HAMDEN, Connecticut, Sept. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Quinnipiac University President John L. Lahey today announced that Ireland's Great Hunger Museum, Museam An Ghorta Mor, home to the world's largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the Irish Famine, will open this fall at 3011 Whitney Avenue, near the university's Mount Carmel and York Hill campuses. The museum will open to the public on Oct. 11. "The museum will preserve, build and present its art collection in order to stimulate reflection, inspire imagination and advance awareness of Ireland's Great Hunger and its long aftermath on both sides of the Atlantic," said Lahey, who has been widely honored for his visionary leadership in assembling the collection, begun in 1997 when he was grand marshal of the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. The Consulate General of Ireland exhibited the collection in 2010. The collection focuses on the famine years from 1845-52, when blight destroyed virtually all of Ireland's potato crops for consecutive years. The crop destruction, coupled with British governmental indifference to the plight of the Irish, who at the time were part of the United Kingdom, resulted in the deaths of 1.