President Michael D. Higgins was the man with the most engrossing words on a night of many worthy words.
On Monday, the Irish Arts Center welcomed President Higgins into its new building on the west side of Manhattan.
Visiting New York in the week of the United Nations’ Summit of the Future 2024, at which he spoke, the president was honored at IAC with the Eugene O’Neill International Public Service Award from the Irish American Writers and Artists Association.
The president, described in an IAC release as a poet, steadfast proponent of art’s crucial role in everyday life as well as matters of social justice and human rights, and a staunch advocate for governments allocating significant resources to uplifting the arts and artists, accepted the award at the celebratory event organized with the Consulate General of Ireland and Consul General Helena Nolan.
The president, stated the release, gave an impassioned 30-minute speech in the flexible JL Greene Theatre in the Center’s state-of-the-art new 21,700-square-foot building.
"Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon’s monumental textile The Map - imagining and re-imagining the life, legacy, and mythology of Mary Magdalene and her impact on women’s lives, and on view in the theatre through September 29 - served as a powerful backdrop.
Continued the release: "It was the first time since 2019 that President Higgins visited the Irish Arts Center, when its new building was still under construction. His presence in the now-completed space, in front of such an ambitious work of art, was an affirmation of the bold and boundless result of government support for arts institutions.
"Higgins was accompanied by his wife, Sabina Higgins, and greeted an audience made up of acclaimed actors including Fiona Shaw and John Slattery, IAC’s community of artists (including Maher and Fallon, choreographers Jean Butler and Darrah Carr, poet and Muldoon’s Picnic organizer Paul Muldoon, and others, board members Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Gerry Boyle, and Bob McCann, and other key stakeholders.
"Beloved Orange Is the New Black" and "Star Trek: Voyager" Irish American actress Kate Mulgrew, a Eugene O’Neill International Public Service Award recipient currently who is starring in Nancy Harris’s "The Beacon" at the Irish Repertory Theatre, introduced Higgins."
But before that the Irish American actress and memoir author’s many achievements were highlighted by American Writers & Artists Board Treasurer Shelley Ann Quilty-Lake.
Addressing the president, Mulgrew said, “Throughout [your] career, you have demonstrated the power of the pen over the sword. President Higgins, you have always understood the power of the word, whether wielded in your native Irish or in English.
"You have used this power creatively and eloquently throughout your life in poetry, prose, language, and speeches. You have wielded that power to appeal to the better angels of our nature…Today new values of diversity, gender equality, openness, and inclusion are replacing older imperatives of institutional power, social hypocrisy, and silent shame, whose evil effects are still coming to light in Ireland.
"It is true to say that the Ireland in which you and many of us grew up has fundamentally changed, replaced by something better. Free, energized, and creative. The kind of Ireland you have long advocated and continue to challenge us to aspire to.”
President Higgins delivered a typically erudite and passionate speech extending from Eugene O’Neill’s legacy, to migration’s fundamental role in the formation of various facets of Irish and Irish American culture, to societies’ need for robust public arts funding.
“Irish America," he said, "evolved over several migrations and through its artistic community. In that, it has been essential to the preservation of our language, music and literature and to our grasp of our own history. A life without the contribution of artists, of public opportunities for sharing cultural experiences of the fullness of life, of being lifted to transcendence by performance in the many forms of the arts […] would be [a] so-much diminished existence… [The] experience of the arts is so important that it is a crucial part of formation, fulfillment, and citizenship. So therefore, it is to be public, accessible, and as free as possible.
“It is never appropriate that it be treated as something peripheral or even dispensable. Too often it has happened that many artists are allowed to sink into poverty and related ill health. Others have been forced to choose between having a family and giving expression to their gift, or have been forced to reflect on what it is to flourish without material security.
"And then, too, there is another thing we have to be very wary of: and that is the suggestion that the arts are about ‘eventing.’ There is so much more than eventing. Certainly they may constitute a valuable tool for tourism or commerce, but we must never forget that the arts have their own integrity and independence. And must be respected as such, recognizing this as a fundamental for policy makers… let us assert and reassert pure values and communicate to those in power and influence of the intrinsic value of culture and the arts.”
The president's address was greeted with thunderous applause.
Irish Arts Center Executive Director Aidan Connolly recalled the changes Higgins has witnessed across his recent visits: in 2018, when the current building was “still Cybert Tire, a neighborhood automotive facility awaiting transformation.”
In 2019, President Higgins had toured “a steel superstructure without walls just before the world changed.”
Connolly said: “Well, there are walls now. And finishes and furniture too. But still no boundaries. We envision and work to deliver every day a new Irish Arts Center that is grounded in modern Irishness, respectful of history and heritage, but not bounded by it. A place where artists from Ireland and New York and beyond can come together to innovate and display their craft as they share our ever-evolving story, bringing people of all backgrounds together in celebration of our common humanity. These are values you have brought to your great era of service to the global Irish family, and as our deeply admired poet President, you have inspired our work every step of the way.”
Irish Arts Center Vice Chair Pauline Turley thanked President Higgins for “graciously hosting [IAC] at Áras an Uachtaráin as [the organization] received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award last January.”
She added: “As a team we are all thrilled to have the opportunity to welcome you here today on behalf of the hundreds of artists and thousands of audiences who have already animated this new home.”
The speeches were followed by performances from acclaimed fiddler Martin Hayes (who in 2022 did a week-long residency at IAC with his Common Ground Ensemble), and emerging traditional singer Catherine O’Kelly.
This collaboration. concluded the IAC release, "reflected the organization’s support for both established and exciting new voices, joining musical forces in a performance that expressed traditional Irish music’s flexibility and timelessness. The celebration took place as IAC begins its Fall 2024 season, an eclectic slate of programs honoring exploration, innovation, and new approaches to and applications of tradition, in unique theatrical, literary, musical, dance, and visual arts experiences."
