Lady Sligo Exhibit Opens at Quinnipiac University

Ambassador Anne Anderson visited Quinnipiac University on April 29th for the grand opening of the exhibit, “The Lady Sligo Letters: Westport House and Ireland’s Great Hunger.” Anderson said the exhibit, as well as Quinnipiac’s Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute and Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, helps to “give a face or a voice through art, letters, diaries, or literature to some of those who died” during the Great Hunger. The collection of Lady Sligo (1800-1878) includes more than 200 letters covering the period of the Great Hunger. The year-long exhibit, presented by Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute and the Arnold Bernhard Library, is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 5 p.m. Professor Christine Kinealy, founding director of the Institute, said, “These letters add complexity to what we already know about the Great Hunger and in doing so they provide an important new dimension to our scholarly understanding of this unnecessary tragedy.”