Exhibitions

IMMA Collection: Art as Agency

Dublin, Ireland

Ireland’s modern and contemporary art collection as a living force — not just objects on display, but artworks that act, question, connect and reshape memory.

IMMA’s Permanent Collection

Image credit

IMMA’s Permanent Collection © IMMA

The Movement

Contemporary Art

ArtLovers Tip

A core Dublin stop — thoughtful, generous and essential if you want to understand Irish contemporary art as something alive, active and still shaping the present. For Artlovers, this is worth visiting because it gives Dublin’s contemporary art scene depth. It helps you understand Ireland’s modern and contemporary art history not through a single exhibition moment, but through the evolving life of a national collection.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

This is a major long-term display of IMMA’s Permanent Collection, celebrating it as a source of agency, knowledge and public imagination.

The exhibition features over 100 artists, with works from the 1960s to the present, including key pieces and recent acquisitions. It is designed as a durational experience: not a quick “best of” display, but a living collection that can be revisited over time.

You’ll encounter Irish and international modern and contemporary art through different lenses: thematic, chronological, geographical and media-based. The exhibition looks at how artworks connect across time and contexts, creating new interpretations rather than one fixed story.

Worth the trip

Art as Agency asks a powerful question: what can a collection do?

Instead of treating the museum collection as something static, IMMA presents it as active: a space of memory, knowledge, debate, resistance, identity and transformation. The works are not only preserved; they are asked to speak to the present.

How to experience it

Don’t try to see it as a linear art-history lesson.

Choose a thread: body, land, politics, abstraction, identity, material, memory, sound, or social change. Then follow how artworks from different decades begin to speak to each other.

Because it runs for several years, it is also perfect for return visits. Think of it as the IMMA collection in motion — something to revisit, not simply complete.

Visit time / Density: Dense and layered. Allow at least 75–90 minutes for a meaningful visit. If you want to follow the collection themes properly and combine it with other IMMA exhibitions, give yourself 2 hours or more.

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