Hunt Museum
Antiquities and art collected by John and Gertrude Hunt, shown in Limerick's Georgian Custom House.
The Hunt Museum holds the personal collection assembled by John Hunt and his wife Gertrude, dealers and antiquarians who advised collectors and worked on the restoration of Bunratty Castle. Their gift to the Irish state covers some two thousand objects, ranging from Neolithic flints and Bronze Age metalwork to medieval reliquaries, Renaissance bronzes and works by Renoir, Picasso and Jack B. Yeats. The arrangement deliberately mixes periods and materials in the manner of a private cabinet rather than a chronological survey.
Since 1997 the collection has occupied the Custom House on Rutland Street, a Palladian building of 1765-1769 designed by the Sardinian-born architect Davis Ducart and overlooking the River Shannon. The museum runs a programme of temporary exhibitions in a dedicated gallery, together with study rooms, family trails, a garden beside the river and a café. It is an independent charitable trust rather than a national institution.
Highlights
- Some 2,000 objects gathered by John and Gertrude Hunt
- Medieval reliquaries, ivories and the Antrim Cross
- Paintings and drawings by Renoir, Picasso and Jack B. Yeats
- Housed in Davis Ducart's Palladian Custom House of 1765-1769
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