Dr Kathryn Milligan

Assistant Professor in the History of Irish Art in Its Global Contexts 1800 to 2000

Research interests

As an art historian specializing in nineteenth and twentieth century Irish art, my main research focus is the depiction of Dublin in painting and print, and ideas and histories around the city as a site of exhibition, display, and artistic exchange, alongside the history of Irish and European art more generally. Recent publications include essays on nineteenth-century exhibition culture, the White Stag Group, C. P. Curran’s artistic friendships, and Walter Osborne’s domestic paintings. My first monograph, Painting Dublin, 1886–1949: Visualising a Changing City, was published by Manchester University Press in 2020. I was recently a co- curator of the exhibition Casimir Markievicz: A Polish Artist in Bohemian Dublin, 1903 - 1913 held at the State Apartment Galleries, Dublin Castle; I am a regular contributor to the Irish Arts Review, and to the educational programme at the National Gallery of Ireland. I also have extensive experience of working with library and archival collections, which have formed an important aspect of my research and professional activity.

Selected Recent Publications

‘Dublin, London, Paris: Exhibition Culture and the Shaping of an Irish School, 1842 – 1922’, Seeing Ireland: Art, Culture, and Power in Modern Ireland, edited by Ciaran O’Neill and Billy Shortall. University of Notre Dame Press, 2026.
‘At the Breakfast Table: Osborne, Family Life, and the Interior Scene’, Homecoming: Walter
Osborne’s Portraits of Dublin, edited by Cheryl K. Snay. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 2025.
‘The Visual Spectacle of War in Nineteenth Century Dublin’, Conflict: Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland, edited by Paul Huddie, Cathal Billings and Arlene Crampsie. Liverpool University Press, 2025.
‘The White Stag Group in Ireland, 1939 – 1945’, Routledge Companion to Irish Art, edited by Fionna Barber and Fintan Cullen. Routledge, 2025.
‘In the Archives: At Home in Dublin – The Curran-Laird Collection in the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin’, co-written with Niels Caul and Anne Fogarty, Irish University Review, 54:2 (2024): 379-392. https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2024.0690
‘Seeing New York’: Jack B Yeats and the American City’, Crossing the Atlantic: Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States, edited by Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy. Routledge, 2022.
Painting Dublin, 1886 – 1949: Visualising a Changing City. Manchester University Press, 2020.

Teaching

For undergraduate programmes, I contribute to a wide range of modules at Freshman level and offer the Junior Sophister option Ireland’s Painters: At Home and Abroad, 1750 - 1950. I also contribute to teaching on the MPhil programme, and offer the module Dublin’s Art World: Artists, Exhibitions, and Institutions.