Mairead Dunlevy: MAIRÉAD DUNLEVY was keeper of the art and industrial division of the National Museum of Ireland.
The first director of the Hunt Museum in Limerick, she was also the author of a number of popular historical studies. She played a key role in the transfer of the Hunt Collection to a permanent home in Limerick and played a similar role in getting the National Museum at Collins Barracks up and running.
An innovator, she began to collect the work of the first wave of Irish dress designers, such as Sybil Connolly, Irene Gilbert and Ib Jorgensen, who established themselves in the 1950s. The collection of Irish-made textiles also greatly improved through her acquisitions, particularly the collections relating to Dublin poplin weaving, Donegal carpet weaving and hosiery production in Balbriggan.
The Irish jewellery collection expanded significantly under her curatorship - the National Museum now boasts a strong collection of the carved bog oak and Celtic-inspired jewellery produced during the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century.
She also acquired contemporary Irish jewellery, a practice that continues through the joint purchase scheme funded by the museum and the Crafts Council of Ireland.
She placed a high value on Ireland's material culture and believed that exclusivity had no place in its study. "Have we gained freedom at last when subjects that were previously included in the history of sword and state are now studied separately?" she wrote in 2004. "Has that 'freedom' given us confidence to accept that our ancestors were no less 'true Gaels' if they enjoyed the trappings of fashionable dress and commodities? If this is true, then we must welcome the change."
Her thinking was reflected in the partnership she devised between the National Museum and the ESB that resulted in the Georgian house museum which was opened to the public in 1991 at 29 Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin.
The house, owned by the ESB, is furnished from top to bottom with original artefacts as they would have been from 1790 to 1820, thus making more accessible the history of late Georgian Dublin.
Mairéad Dunlevy was born in 1941 in Mountcharles, Co Donegal, one of three children of James and Margaret Dunlevy. She was educated at Glencough national school and at Coláiste Bhríde, Falcarragh. She qualified aged 19 as a teacher from Carysfort College.
Teaching at Mount Anville NS, she studied at night at University College Dublin and secured a BA. She studied archaeology under Prof Ruaidhrí de Valera, and was awarded an MA for her thesis on Irish combs from the early Middle Ages to the late medieval period.
After working on the excavation of Bunratty Castle, she joined in 1970 the National Museum of Ireland as assistant keeper in the arts and industrial division. In 1975 she was given responsibility for the glass, textiles and ceramics section. In 1996 she was appointed keeper of the art and industrial division and oversaw the launch of decorative arts exhibitions in the museum's premises at Collins Barracks.
She curated the permanent exhibition, The Way We Wore, covering 250 years of Irish costumes, jewellery and accessories, which opened in 2000.
In the 1970s she was seconded for a time to An Foras Forbartha and in the 1990s, she spent five years at the Hunt Museum. There she was central in devising the curatorial specifications and the narrative for the redisplay of the Hunt Collection in its new home, the old Custom House in Limerick city.
She engaged directly with the local community through the establishment of the Friends of the Hunt Museum which she set up, and also the museum's award-winning Docent volunteer programme, which she also established.
Her publications include Dress in Ireland: A History, published in 1989 and reprinted in 1999.
She also wrote A History of the Irish Post Office (1983) and co-edited Donegal History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (1995). She was also a consultant contributor to The Encyclopaedia of Ireland (2003).
She scripted and presented David Shaw-Smith's television documentary for RTÉ, Irish Lace, and her book on the subject is with Yale University Press.
An Irish-language enthusiast, in the 1960s she worked part-time on a voluntary basis for the newspaper Inniu. In later years she served on Bord na Gaeilge. A former chair of Cumann Merriman, she directed three summer schools in the 1980s.
She lectured extensively to archaeological and historical societies and specialist groups. A member of the Donegal Historical Society, she served two terms as president, in 1996 and 1997. Also in 1997 she represented Ireland as a member of the 15-member jury that selected the final shortlist of designs for the single EU currency. She retired from the National Museum in 2002.
She is survived by her partner John P. Reihill and brothers Brian and Maurice.
Mairéad Dunlevy: born December 31st, 1941; died March 18th, 2008