With five-o-clock rapidly approaching on our last day in Ireland, we decided to check out the library at Dublin Castle. The Chester Beatty Library is also a museum and it has a range of classic texts including a lovely permanent collection from a range of religions.
We were a bit more excited by the Asian temporary exhibit though, and it was wonderful. There was a range of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean pieces, typically on scrolls with interesting illustrations. Among the interesting array of items was a scroll that included a landscape of a labyrinth, which I’m not used to seeing in Asian art. Also fascinating was a range of pages from the Tale of Genji. Given the length of that novel, they either were skipping over the just text bits or there were a whole lot of pictures in the scrolls. I’m not really doing it full justice here, and we weren’t allowed to take photos, but I did get a catalog so I do have pictures of some of what was there. Not included in the catalog was a Xu Bing piece which translated nonsense Kanji to nonsense alphabetical script.
The pictures themselves are focused on Dublin Castle as we wandered around it to visit the library and then the gift shop. There was a section that was surprisingly cheery from the back, I suspect that the bright colors were a more recent addition. We also got a picture of a wandering cat, no real legends there or the that we know of, just a cat on a bench.
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