THE GAELIC GOTHAM REPORT   An Analysis of the Controversial 1996 Exhibition at The Museum of the City of New York

A 177-page report that presents assessments of the exhibition Gaelic Gotham: A History of the Irish in New York which was assembled by the Museum of the City of New York and opened for a seven-month showing at the Museum on March 13, 1996. The report is occasioned by reactions within the New York Irish-American community to actions and statements, relevant to Gaelic Gotham, by Museum administrators that began in 1995 and continued into 1996.   These community-based reactions occurred in a period when various controversies over historical and culturalexhibitions at other institutions, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, were subjects of national attention. The import of these controversies, their similarities and differences, as well as the meanings of community-based reactions and the appropriateness of responses by museum administrators, are central to questions of public participation and institutional responsibility for scholars, museum and civic leaders, and the peoples they serve. The Gaelic Gotham Report contributes to framing and answering these questions.   The immediate purpose of the report is to make considered assessments of Gaelic Gotham available to interested parties.

Its contents include the following: Descriptions of events leading to formation of the Council for Scholarly Evaluation of Gaelic Gotham and a special review forum on the exhibition at Columbia University; Chronology of events in the Gaelic Gotham controversy; Reviews of the Gaelic Gotham exhibition by scholars invited to undertake evaluations for the Columbia University forum; Reviews of the exhibition published within the three-month period after its opening. Analyses of the exhibition script and its audio-visual components; Appendices: excerpts from an exhibition plan submitted as part of a grant proposal application to the National Endowment for the Humanities; copies of correspondence between the Council and Museum of the City of New York; a list of scholars endorsing Council resolutions; and a descriptive statement on the Museum's "public session" held in September 1996.

AVAILABILITY: Copies of the full report are available for $19.50 (including postage) through the New York Irish History Roundtable, P.O. Box 2087 Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008 or e-mail: NYIHR [roundtable@irishnyhistory.org]

Letter to The Irish Times regarding "The Gaelic Gotham Report":   June 3 1997   The Irish Times:   I was a contributor to "The Gaelic Gotham Report", which was the subject of Joe Carroll's comments in his "Letter from America" (May 24, 1997). His statements while intended, I suppose, to amuse, lead only to puzzlement. For example, he suggests that the Report is vague or unclear about what was lacking in the distressing "Gaelic Gotham" exhibition on the Irish in New York assembled by the Museum of the City of New York last year. Vague? Unclear? Chapter V alone lists 111 factual errors in the exhibition and details specific areas of interpretive failure. Chapter IV gives all known press reviews of the exhibition published during the first three months of the exhibition,including observations from The Irish Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Were these reviews somehow ambiguous about gaps and failures in the exhibition? And Appendix D includes specific criticisms and resolutions regarding Museum actions articulated by the Council for Scholarly Evaluation of Gaelic Gotham, the academics who contributed to the development of the Report. Was Appendix D missing from Joe Carroll's copy of The Gaelic Gotham Report?   In addition, Joe Carroll's statements about Donal Hamill, the Irish Consul in New York City at the time of the pre-exhibition controversy, are puzzling. According to these statements, Mr. Hamill tried to mediate the controversy but was not successful. What is troubling here is that Joe Carroll does not say enough. Why doesn't he include the fact that Mr. Hamill was not a disinterested mediator but was, unfortunately, dragged into the dispute by Museum officials to patch together for the show the community support previously destroyed by their own Director?   Finally, Joe Carroll cites some of the secondary criticisms of the Gaelic Gotham exhibition made by Drs. Alan Feldman and John Tchen. What is bewildering here is why he fails to say anything about the major points they made about the exhibition in a public seminar at Columbia University and reproduced in the Report, namely that the Museum's show was characterized by a failure of imagination and interpretive accomplishment largely caused by administrative ineptitude, institutionalized elitism, and questionable morality.   Of course, what is most puzzling in all of this is that Joe Carroll finds the Museum's treatment of the Irish in New York, and their history, simply a laughing matter.   Yours truly,   Frank Naughton, Ph.D.   Council for Scholarly Evaluation of Gaelic Gotham