Since its inception, Butler Gallery has been ambitious in all its endeavours. This is evident in its high-profile exhibition programming, its diverse and innovative learning and public engagement initiatives, and the preservation, growth and presentation of its fine Permanent Collection. Our move to the Evans’ Home in 2020 finally provided us with a home of our own and delivered on the aspiration of our founders back in 1943. This move provided additional space and enabled greater access and visibility of the Butler Gallery for its audiences.

Butler Gallery looks to the local and to the global with equal energy and excitement. We enrich the cultural landscape of Kilkenny by looking outward to the global contemporary visual arts scene, and the technologies incorporated in the art of our time, bringing new approaches to visual arts practice to both local and international audiences. Butler Gallery has been at the forefront in supporting emerging Irish-based artists, many of whom had their first solo exhibition at the gallery and have gone on to establish international careers in arts practice. We will continue our collaboration with Kilkenny’s renowned animation studio Cartoon Saloon. Through interpretative exhibitions of their films Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, Wolfwalkers and My Father’s Dragon we have created immersive arts experiences that celebrate animation and the art of drawing, connecting Kilkenny’s creative community as an integral element of our exhibition strategy.

Additionally, our audiences have had rich experiences of viewing the wide-ranging work of international artists such as Eve Sussman, Jeanne Silverthorne, Louise Bourgeois, Barry McGee, Hans Op de Beeck, Werner Herzog, Bob and Roberta Smith, Fischli & Weiss, Michael

Snow and Richard Mosse. The Gallery has also presented several exhibitions and produced books on different aspects of the work of the renowned Irish artist and Kilkenny native Tony O’Malley and that of his wife Jane O’Malley.

Heralding a new era, Butler Gallery embraces this next chapter in our development with vigour. We will continue to explore new possibilities and innovative presentations of contemporary arts practice reflecting the digital age, using our new space to engage with an ever-changing world.

Our past success presents a solid foundation for future growth and development, a standard to be built upon to extend our reach to diverse audiences and ensure the best possible future for Butler Gallery on the international, national and local stage.

Anna O’Sullivan

Director