Crawford Art Gallery, National art museum in Cork, Ireland
Crawford Art Gallery is an art museum in Cork featuring works from ancient times to the present day in its rooms. The collection spans sculpture casts, paintings, and contemporary installations distributed across multiple floors of the building.
The building was erected in 1724 as Cork's Customs House. From the 1830s it housed the Royal Cork Institution, which opened the Cork School of Design on the site in 1850. Funds and patronage from the Crawford family, local landowners and brewers, paid for an early 1880s extension, and the school was renamed the Crawford School of Art in 1885. The art school moved out in 1979, leaving the building as a gallery and museum, and it was extended in 2000.
The gallery holds plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures that have been part of the collection since the early 1800s. These works based on classical originals continue to shape how visitors experience several exhibition spaces.
The museum occupies a brick building in central Cork and is easily reached on foot from the main areas. Visitors should note that opening hours vary depending on the day of the week.
The gallery occupies the Cork Customs House of 1724, not a commercial building. In 1818 the Royal Cork Institution acquired Antonio Canova's plaster casts of the Belvedere Torso, Apollo Belvedere and Laocoön and His Sons, sent from the Vatican via the Prince Regent and Pope Pius VII.
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