The Ireland American Arts Exchange and the Williams College Museum of Art will present an exhibition demonstrating the recent upsurge of creativity in Ireland’s contemporary visual art. Titled Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind: Some New Irish Art, the exhibition was selected by the American art critic and author Lucy R. Lippard and consists of 112 works by 29 artists from throughout Ireland. It will run from Saturday, Nov. 9, through Dec. 29. The exhibition will be opened by Thomas Krens, Museum Director at 10 a.m. on Tuesday November 5 with brief talks and lectures throughout the day by Irish artists and critics. Paula McCarthy- Panczenko, director of the Ireland America Arts Exchange, will speak at 10.30 a.m. At noon Lucy R. Lippard will speak on “The influences of Politics on Irish Art.” There will be a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The artists selected are: Robert Ballagh, Anne Carlisle, John Carson, Vernon Carter, Helen Comerford, Barrie Cooke, Tony Corey, David Crone, Michael Cullen, Mickey Donnelly, Tom Grace, Maurice Henderson, Julie Kelleher, John Kindness, Donncha MacGabhann, Aileen MacKeogh, Brian Maguire, Danny McCarthy, Angela Lawless Morrissey, Noreen O’ Hare, Alanna O’Kelly, Michael O’Kelly, Anna O’Sullivan, Nigel Rolfe, Dermot Seymour, Victor Sloan, Julie Stephenson, Donald Teskey, Joe Walls. To inaugurate the exhibition, a daylong program of lectures and performances by four Irish artists and Lippard will take place Nov. 9 from 10 to 6. A public opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind: Some New Irish Art is the first major exhibition of contemporary Irish art to tour North America in the last 15 years. Lippard, who travelled to Ireland to meet with artists and to select works for the exhibition, writes that she expected to find an art that dealt more directly with the political upheaval and violence that have become associated with Ireland. Yet she says the Irish artists have internalised the ‘troubles,’ much as the rest of the world has done with the fear of nuclear war; the art produced there is “… ‘political’ simply because it is made in Ireland today. Lippard also writes, however, “There is a certain sense of excitement and possibility about current Irish art that is visible in the exhibition.” The show is sponsored by the Irish Arts Council, the Cultural Relations Committee of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Irish American Art Foundation and the board of directors of the Ireland America Arts Exchange. Aer Lingus is providing international transport of the exhibition, and “Some New Irish Art” lectures and performances are made possible, in part, by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. After its Williams debut, the exhibition will travel to York University Art Museum, Toronto, Canada, where it will open in February 1986. The Williams Museum is open, free to the public, Monday through Saturday from 10 to 5. 
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