Françoise Henry Reading Room
The Françoise Henry Reading Room – a dedicated Art History library – is located in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy. It is named for the Department founder and first Head of the Department, the renowned scholar of early Irish art, Dr Françoise Henry (1902-82). The nucleus of the Reading Room collection was established with many of her own books. This important collection has been supplemented over the years by gifts from former students and School acquisitions.
Furthermore, the Reading Room has been signficantly enriched by 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.
The Reading Room holdings are in the process of being catalogued online. This is an ongoing project and the process and the catalogue can be viewed at - (opens in a new window)http://www.librarything.com/catalog/FrancoiseHenryRR
The (opens in a new window)Slide Curator, Carla Briggs, has care of the School Reading Room, and enquiries may be directed to her at - Tel: +353 1 716 8403