UtenteFrancoiseHenryRR

The Françoise Henry Reading Room is located in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. This reading room and reference library is open to use by our final year BA Art History majors and our postgraduate students. A part-time Reading Room assistant oversees supervised access for 2nd Year Art History majors.

The nucleus of the Reading Room holdings is founded on the collection of the first Head of the Department of the History of Art, the renowned scholar of early Irish art, Dr. Françoise Henry (1902-1982). This important collection has been supplemented over the years by gifts from former students and School acquisitions to supplement the teaching of our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

In addition, the teaching and research resources of the Reading Room have been enriched by significant bequests from former graduates and staff. These include the bequest in 1988 of books from the collection of Dr Donal Byrne. A graduate of the Department, Dr Byrne was a distinguished historian of medieval art and lecturer in the Department of History of Art at Aberdeen University. In 2010 the collection was enriched with the bequest of a large number of books from the estate of the late Michael J. McCarthy, Professor of Art History at UCD between 1994 and his retirement in 2004. The Michael McCarthy collection is concentrated in the areas of British and Irish architectural history of the 18th and early 19th centuries, architectural theory and taste, the Grand Tour and cultural tourism, and British cultural and social history.

In late 2012 the School’s library resources were further augmented by the generous donation of Professor Rosemarie Mulcahy’s significant library of Spanish art publications, as well as Spanish archival material and her research and teaching papers. A world-renowned scholar of 16th and 17th-century Spanish art, Professor Mulcahy had a longstanding relationship with UCD, as a student, an occasional lecturer, Honorary Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor. Generously gifted by her husband, sisters and mother this collection is now located in the Rosemarie Mulcahy Seminar Room and presents a major addition to the School’s existing reference library. In 2018 the Rosemarie Mulcahy Collection was augmented with a further large donation of books from the Mulcahy family. The core of this collection is deals with Spanish art and architecture, in addition to its history, culture and literature.