This year, 2025, marks the 180-year anniversary of the beginning of Ireland’s Great Hunger, which claimed the lives of approximately one million people and forced over two million more to emigrate. In commemoration, the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS) is hosting a lecture series on the Gorta Mór.
Dr Elizabeth Stack will deliver the first lecture on, Tuesday, January 21, at 6 pm. Her talk will provide an overview of the Great Hunger, including the response from the British government as well as cover topics like immigration and charity. The talk is free and open to the public.
On February 5, Cian MacMahon will expand on what we know about the immigrant journey and the coffin ships, and Loretto O’Leary will examine the Staten Island quarantine station in March.
This series of lectures also launches a new exhibition at the AIHS, which is on loan to the Society until May 2025, of sculptures from the collections of the Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac. The exhibition includes pieces from sculptors Kieran Tuohy, Brendan Behan, John Behan, Robert Shure, Glenna Goodacre, Eamonn O’Doherty, John Coll and Margaret Lyster Chamberlain.
Daily tours of the exhibits will be provided, and people can book their tour here. The sculptures interpret the Famine visually, allowing artists — both those contemporaneous with the Great Hunger and those working today — to explore the impact of the loss of life, the leeching of the land, and the erosions of language and culture.
Through its display of outstanding historical and contemporary images, layers of history are peeled back, to uncover aspects of that time that may be indecipherable by other means. The pieces fulfill one of the obligations of memory — they honor the dead.
For more information and future announcements visit aihsny.org.
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