Skip to main content
Collections Menu
Image Not Available for Joseph Beuys at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, 1974.
Joseph Beuys at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, 1974.
Image Not Available for Joseph Beuys at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, 1974.

Joseph Beuys at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, 1974.

Photographer
Artist (1921 - 1986)
Date2021
MediumArchival monoprint
Dimensions47 × 71 cm
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Photograph © Caroline Tisdall.
Object number2115
DescriptionIn April 1973, Beuys founded The Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (FIU) with the writer Heinrich Böll, fellow artists Klaus Staeck, Georg Meistermann and journalist Willi Bongard. Beuys spoke of his belief that “everyone is an artist” and the FIU advocated this position that everyone should be free to realise his or her creative potential. In Ireland, the art critic Dorothy Walker was an active advocate for the FIU, and worked with Tisdall, and others to secure a home in Dublin for this counter-university. The Royal Hospital Kilmainham was proposed as a base for the FIU, and while this did not happen, it later became home to the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Temporary presentations of the FIU took place at Documenta, in Kassel, Germany at the Edinburgh Festival and in London, New York and elsewhere. A number of artists from Northern Ireland participated in the FIU at Documenta in 1977. This led to the formation of Art and Research Exchange (ARE), founded by Belinda Loftus, Alastair MacLennan and Rainer Pagel. ARE in turn facilitated the establishment of the Artists’ Collective of Northern Ireland and Circa contemporary art magazine.

On View
Not on view