Notes and Queries

NOTES AND QUERIES The Irish American Cultural Institute’s annual awards ceremony was hosted by Trinity College on September 23, 1996. Her Excellency Mary Robinson, President of Ireland and Patron of the Institute, presented the awards. Among this year’s honorees were Irish writers who have made significant contributions, both in English and in Irish; artists using the media of painting and sculpting; and craftworkers executing original designs. In addition, an award was presented to a visitors’ center that preserves the heritage of the past while contributing to contemporary cultural life. The Institute made its final presentation to a summer school dedicated to preserving traditional Irish music. Butler Literary Award. First given in 1966, the $5,000 Butler prize is the IACI’s senior award, alternately presented to Irish-language writers and to those writing in English. The Butler Award has honored more than thirty of Ireland’s most distinguished novelists, poets, essayists, and biographers. This year’s recipient is poet John Ennis, native of Co. Westmeath and graduate of UCC, UCD, and Maynooth. Cited by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney as deserving “more serious critical attention than he has received,” Ennis published four new books in the 1990s. While his work is deeply rooted in Irish life and history, Ennis is a widely read cosmopolitan writer. Butler Literary Award—Irish Language. Liam Ó Muirthile is the second recipient of the $5,000 Butler Literary Award for Irish-language writing. Born in Cork, Ó Muirthile attended UCC, where he received degrees in Irish and French and began writing in Irish. His first collection of poems, Tine Chnámh, was published in 1984 and produced by a new Irish-language professional theater company, Amharclann de hIde. The dramatized version of Tine Chnámh won the 1984 Television Drama Award, and the RTE Drama Department has commissioned a screenplay. Ó NOTES AND QUERIES 202 Muirthile left the staff of RTE in 1990 to devote himself to writing. His first novel, Ar Bhruach na Laoi, won the Oireachtas Literary Award; Ó Muirthile has also received a Literary Bursary from the Arts Council. He became editor of Poetry Ireland Review in 1996. O’Malley Art Award. Charles Brady, the recipient of the O’Malley Art Award for $5,000, is an oil painter as well as a talented lithographer and bronze sculptor. Brady’s themes are intimate—a book, an apple, an envelope, a roof, a small landscape. Born in New York, he studied at the Art Students League, and during the 1940s and 1950s participated in the circle of major art figures of the New York School. Moving to Ireland in 1956, Brady exhibited continually in Dublin and taught at the National College of Art and Design. In 1981 he was elected to membership of Aosdána. Heritage Award. The Foxford Woolen Mills Visitor Centre is awarded the 1996 Heritage Award of $2,500 for its efforts in promoting the historical contributions made by the Mills in the years following the Great Hunger of the late 1840s. Opened in 1992, the Foxford Woolen Mills Visitor Centre guides the visitor through a three-dimensional audio-visual display of skilled craftspeople producing the world-famous Foxford rugs. RDS Muriel Gahan Crafts Award. This award of one thousand pounds for a scholarship or development grant is open to all craftworkers and designers in Ireland, including students and apprentices. All work submitted must be of original design, executed by a craftworker in Ireland or by an Irish craftworker living abroad. The winner will be chosen by the Royal Dublin Society in autumn, 1996. Jerome Connor Centre—Annascaul, Co. Kerry. The Irish American Cultural Institute presented $12,500 to the Jerome Connor Centre Institute in honor of the contributions made by Jerome Connor to sculpture. Although born in Annascaul, Connor emigrated with his family to America . There, despite his lack of formal training, he created notable public statues such as the “Angels of the Battlefield” memorial in Washington, D.C. His likeness of Robert Emmet stands as a focal point in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and in Cork his sculpture immortalizes the Lusitania. This award will support the Jerome Connor Centre’s efforts to establish a permanent site for Connor’s work...