Image: Visitors in the Milltown Wing galleries, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Photo: Ste Murray, courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery of Ireland has four exhibitions on view at its Merrion Square West building in Dublin, all with free admission, and a further group of shows announced for the coming seasons.
‘Rembrandt to Matisse – A Celebration of European Works on Paper’ opened on 18 July 2026 and runs until 6 December in the Print Gallery. It brings together some fifty works on paper from the Gallery's own collection — drawings, prints, watercolours and photographs by European artists from the fifteenth century to the present — and is curated by Niamh MacNally, curator of the Gallery's Prints and Drawings Study Room. The Gallery presents it as a marker of Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and states that it is funded under the Culture Programme for the Presidency in 2026.
‘Highlights from Hugh Lane Gallery’ is on view in Rooms 47 and 48. The National Gallery is showing a selection from the collections of Hugh Lane Gallery, which is currently closed for refurbishment, and describes the group as a representation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and international art. Hugh Lane Gallery was founded in 1908 by Sir Hugh Lane, who also figured in the National Gallery's own history, and many of the works on display came from its original holdings. The Gallery singles out Lane's Impressionist paintings, shared in partnership with the National Gallery, London, and a group of paintings by Francis Bacon. No closing date is given.
‘Visual Poetry: The Photography of John Minihan’ runs from 14 March to 11 October 2026 in the Sir Hugh Lane Room, covering a career of more than sixty years — from press work for the Daily Mail, begun at sixteen, and the meeting with Samuel Beckett that followed, to the personal projects Minihan turned to after leaving media assignments. ‘Créatúir na Cartlainne | Tails from the Archive’ continues in Room 11 from June 2025 until spring 2027, drawing animals out of the archives of the Centre for the Study of Irish Art: sketchbooks, illustrated letters, watercolours and maquettes, framed alongside Irish words for animals such as bearrthóir, a tail-chewing animal, and cluasachán, a long-eared one.
Announced for later dates are ‘Hilma af Klint: Artist and Visionary’, 15 October 2026 to 7 February 2027; ‘Jan Steen: Sacred and Profane’, 21 November 2026 to 25 April 2027; and ‘German Expressionism’, 9 September 2027 to 9 January 2028. Shortlists have been announced for both the AIB Portrait Prize 2026 and the AIB Young Portrait Prize 2026.
The Gallery's own promotion for the programme, posted in Irish on 14 August 2026, invited the public to visit and see what was new, illustrated with Émile Bernard's ‘Café-cabaret, Paris’ of 1889. The post gave no further detail about the work.
The Gallery is at Merrion Square West, Dublin 2. It opens Monday from 11.00 to 17.30, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9.15 to 17.30, Thursday from 9.15 to 20.30, Friday and Saturday from 9.15 to 17.30, and Sunday from 11.00 to 17.30; the Gallery Café is open seven days a week. Visitors can use audio guides on their own devices, including an audio tour for children and families, and the Gallery also offers self-guided collection tours, a virtual tour and podcasts.
