Hunt Museum

On the 28th of October I went to he Hunt Museum,which is on Rutland Street. I found out about the museum from LimerickTourist.com and also from the additional link to the museums website huntmuseum.com . I had past the museum at anearlier stage in the year and had saw the cannon in the courtyard. On remembering this i presumed they would have an exhibition which included weaponry, and due to my intrest in weaponry i decided to go.

On arival i went into reception and was charged €6.25 at a student rate which was quite reasonable compared to the €8 fee for adults. I was also given a map of the building which had a floor plan of each level, and also showing what was in display in each room. Unfortunatly there were no guided tours at the time i arrived so i had to explore the museum alone. Although i would have liked to get a tour, the fact that i was a my own free will ment i could spend more time looking at the exhibits i prefered.

The first floor consisted of mainly all paintings, which didn't really interest me so i didn't spend to much time there. The main paintings listed to see on this floor do were: The Leonardo Horse, Apollo-Genius of the Arts, The Kirchner Pieta, The Midleton Mace and The Fagan Self-Portait.

The second floor was definatly my favorite floor of the museum. This consisted of exhibitions of Prehistoric/Early Historic Europe, a jewellery collection and Classical Archeology. Many of the items on display were of the Bronze Age. These were swords, shields, spear heads and arrow heads. Unfortunatly the museum prohibits the use of photography so i was unable to take a photo of the exhibit. It was interesting to see how crude these early weapons were. Clearly shaped from rocks and other hard materials as they had very rough edges and had distictave dents from the impact of the rocks. One other item that interested me on the second floor was The Cashel Bell as it comes from a town very close to my home town. Although the actual bell itself is the original the handle which is on it is a twentyeth century replica.

Then the ground floor contained religious arts and due to the fact that i am completely un religious i didnt really bother to pay much attention to this exhibit.

Over all I found the museum to be fairly good considering i wasn't very interested in a lot of the items on display.

Kevin Hayes, 10110194