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Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum Opens October 11

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University is to open on October 11, 2012.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum Quinnipiac University

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum is home to the world’s largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration that occurred throughout Ireland from 1845 to 1850. Works by noted contemporary Irish artists are featured, as well as a number of important 19th and 20th-century paintings. Begun in 1997, this dynamic collection continues to grow.

Ireland’s Great Famine or The Great Hunger, as it is more commonly referred to today, ranks among the worst tragedies in the sweep of human history. Between 1845 and 1850, approximately 1.5 million Irish men, women and children died of starvation or related diseases.

By 1855, more than two million more fled Ireland to avoid a similar fate. This decimation of her population makes Ireland’s Great Hunger both the worst chapter in the country’s history, and arguably, the single worst catastrophe in 19th century Europe.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum
Quinnipiac University
275 Mount Carmel Ave
Hamden, CT 06518-1908
www.thegreathunger.org

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