Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, Famine history museum in Hamden, US.

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum is located at Quinnipiac University and displays artworks and objects that document the Irish Famine through visual materials and personal items. The collection combines works by well-known Irish artists with 19th-century documents and shows how this period continues to live in memory and artistic engagement.

The institution was founded in 2012 to preserve artworks and documents about the famine between 1845 and 1852. It was created to honor this turning point in Irish history and its lasting impact on art and culture.

The museum's approach draws heavily on Irish artistic responses to the famine, with works that explore how the crisis shaped cultural memory and identity across generations. You'll see paintings and sculptures that carry the weight of this history, created by artists who viewed the event as central to understanding Irish life and resilience.

The Hamden museum closed in August 2021 after a board of trustees vote and has not reopened there. A selective exhibition of the collection was shown on Old Post Road in Fairfield in September and October 2022, and the collection is now coordinated as the Ireland's Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield with the Gaelic-American Club. Check the Fairfield site before travelling.

The museum published the Famine Folios, a series of illustrated booklets in which scholars from history, art history, literature and music present new research on the 1845–1852 famine. Devised to extend the museum visit, the pamphlets reproduce works from the collection and were written for students, researchers and general readers alike.