Library Exhibitions

The Library regularly organises exhibitions highlighting its rich collections of books, prints, drawings and manuscripts.

Latest exhibition

The Cathach of Colum Cille: The story of an ancient Irish manuscript

This exhibition begins by illustrating how the manuscript was made. It was written on calf skin, using quill and ink. The skill of the scribe who created this wonderful example of Irish majuscule script is illustrated. The exhibition also explains how the story of the Cathach of St Colum Cille was recorded in Irish manuscript sources from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. A map shows some of the best-known places associated with the Cathach manuscript through the many centuries since it was first written. The exhibition shows how and why this sixth-century manuscript survived as a relic from early Christian Ireland into modern times and how it has been conserved so that it can still be viewed by visitors to the exhibition, more than 1400 years after it was made.

Explore more of our online exhibitions

An investigation of the origins of the early medieval Irish manuscript known as the Stowe Missal

‘Made in Tallaght’ »

An online illustrated talk on one of Dublin's oldest suburbs and some myths that have emerged about the gate

Stories of St James's Gate - the gate, not the brewery »

Discover the nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Letters and drawings of Dublin

Surveying Dublin »

From little known artists to well-established writers, this exhibition turns the spotlight on creative women from the Academy’s archives

Creative women of Ireland: artists and writers from the archives »

An online exhibition exploring the themes of memory and narrative of Irish history, poetry, law, medicine and religion, as well as the stories of those who made these great books of Ireland

Aon amharc ar Éirinn: Gaelic families and their manuscripts »

An exhibition exploring the varied worlds of five women selected as Honorary Members of the Academy in the nineteenth century

'Prodigies of learning': Academy women in the nineteenth century »

A new exhibition at the Royal Irish Academy Library, in collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast

Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe »

The exhibition and lunchtime lecture series commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jonathan Swift's birth now available as an online exhibition

"To please and to reform mankind" a life of protest: Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745 »

An exhibition featuring a selection of Dublin manuscripts from the Haliday Collection

Dublin documents: highlights from Charles Haliday's manuscript collection »

A series of online exhibitions exploring the treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library, sketches and drawings from the Library's collections, and travelling with Mícheál Ó Cléirigh

Heritage Week 2020 »

To mark the bicentenary of the death of Gabriel Beranger on 18 February, 1817, this exhibition features a selection of original watercolours from the Royal Irish Academy collection

Beranger’s Ireland: eighteenth-century watercolours by Gabriel Beranger, c.1729-1817 »

An online exhibition looking at the Gaelic literary culture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century

Another View: Gaelic manuscript culture in Edmund Spenser’s Ireland »

An online exhibition 'Views of Dublin: original watercolours by George Petrie, MRIA, 1790-1866'

'Views of Dublin: original watercolours by George Petrie, MRIA, 1790-1866' »

An online exhibition looking at some of the scholarly works undertaken on the Book of Ballymote an iconic and hugely important 14th-century Irish manuscript