Sir, - Am I missing the point? Your reporting on the current controversy within IMMA offers accounts of its difficulties which just don't seem to add up if one assumes that all involved have the best interests of IMMA at heart. More than that, a great injustice would appear to have been done to an exceptionally qualified candidate for a high-profile museum directorship who would, presumably, have applied in confidence and expected to have had his candidature treated in confidence.
Instead, not alone has he been named in the press by a resigning IMMA board member (Terry Prone, The Irish Times, November 28th), but now we have a highly experienced trade union leader divulging to the press alleged negative evaluations of the candidate during one or both of the reported interviews (Peter Cassells, The Irish Times, November 30th).
Am I wrong in believing that the very foundation of a selection process of this kind is candidate confidentiality? It seems to me that an injustice has been done to this candidate by people whom I would have expected to have been defenders of such confidentiality. We have not, thankfully for their sake, been made aware of the names of the other candidates. Since Dr Kennedy's candidature has been thrown into the public arena in what must be, for him, such a humiliating and unprofessional way, may I say that I for one would have welcomed his directorship of a museum so desperately in need of direction and so full of possibilities.
I had dealings with Dr Kennedy in the National Gallery when I was Chairman of the Arts Council and again in 1999 when I had the occasion to visit the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra as a tourist. Both sets of contacts with Dr Kennedy left me impressed with his work and abilities. I feel I must say, given the ordeal to which he has now been publicly subjected, that in my view he certainly had the experience and the qualities to lead IMMA in the directions it so desperately needs to go. A desperately needed opportunity has been missed for making IMMA what it can be. From the reports in the media one can only surmise why.
One thing is certain. For so long as the focus of key players is on the tips of their boots and not on the horizons of this potentially wonderful museum, then for that long will IMMA continue to tear itself asunder and stagnate. For that long also we will all be the losers. - Yours, etc.,
Ciaran Benson, Former Chairman of the Arts Council (1993-1998), Ormond Quay, Dublin 1.