DUBLIN.- IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, today (30 January 2025) announced highlights of its 2025 programme, opening with a major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection titled IMMA Collection: Art as Agency, that showcases over 100 artists from the 1960s to the present, highlighting key works including many recent acquisitions. Through thematic, chronological, geographical, and media-based approaches, Art as Agency examines how artworks connect across time and contexts, fostering new interpretations and relevance. By interweaving historical and contemporary narratives, the exhibition invites audiences to reflect on the evolving meanings and possibilities of art in shaping our understanding of and action in the world. Opening on 6 February this ambitious exhibition will invite engagement and research, allowing for a rich durational experience of Ireland’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection.

Commenting on the 2025 programme, Director of IMMA Annie Fletcher said: “In 2025, IMMA is proud to be placing the permanent Collection at the forefront of the museum. By investing in significant semi-permanent displays of the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, we hope to allow the public time to delve into the pivotal artworks that have shaped contemporary practice. This will complement an exceptional exhibition programme punctuated by unmissable experiential performances. Creative interventions as part of Dwell Here, Living Canvas at IMMA, Summer at IMMA, and EARTH RISING will animate the grounds to provide our visitors with remarkable experiences that we hope will bring them back to IMMA time and time again”.

Central to the 2025 exhibition programme is an exploration of artists working with textiles, two of which share connections to Ireland. IMMA is presenting solo exhibitions of their work in Ireland for the first time. The first exhibition, opening on 28 February, features the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, a group of African American women from a small Alabama community with a 150-year tradition of quilt-making. Their quilts are both artistically and politically significant, rising to prominence during the Civil Rights Movement as symbols of Black empowerment and cultural pride. These works are deeply rooted in family, heritage and the history of their community.

Opening on 13 June IMMA presents a solo exhibition by Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022), one of the great innovators in post-war American painting, co-organised with the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Emerging in the mid-1960s, his canonical ‘Drape’ paintings merged painting, sculpture, and performance in conversation with architecture in entirely new ways. Suspending unstretched lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. Following an influential artist residency in Ireland in Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo in the early 1990s, he continued his innovative exploration of sewn and collaged works, liberating canvases from traditional supports blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Gilliam's work in Ireland fostered an intuitive dialogue with the surrounding environment, celebrating the physicality of painting and the emotional resonance of place through abstraction and materiality.

In the Autumn IMMA presents a solo exhibition by internationally renowned artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña titled Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey, opening on 7 November. This groundbreaking presentation delves into themes of ancestry, ecological urgency, and the interconnectedness of humanity, inspired by Vicuña’s discovery of her ancient ties to Ireland and the poetic resonance of her return journey from the Andes to Ireland. The exhibition draws on her 2006 visit to Ireland, during which she and her partner, James O’Hern, honoured Ireland’s archaeological sites with rituals of gratitude. This connection becomes a narrative thread within the exhibition, intertwining personal memory, indigenous traditions, and a dialogue with Irish heritage. Vicuña, whose multidisciplinary practice bridges visual art, poetry, sound, and performance, will transform IMMA’s galleries with a dynamic suite of new works. Central to the exhibition is a site-specific quipu—an ancient Andean system of communication using knotted cords - created with local makers. The commission is a reference to the design of Aran sweater that is thought to be symbolic of nature, the sea and the lives of the fisherman and Islanders.

Other highlights in 2025 include Staying with the Trouble, an exhibition opening on 2 May of over 40 Irish and Ireland-based artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time. Staying with the Trouble is inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s germinal work of the same name. The exhibition challenges human-centric narratives, advocating for a multi-species/multi-kin perspective through sculpture, film, painting, installation and performance.

Alongside the exhibition programme live performances will be presented throughout the year in the newly reopened North Wing of IMMA. A new live performance by Isabel Nolan and Belinda Quirke, The Hum of Earth’s Uneven Breath, will take place in the Baroque Chapel on 13 March. Created in response to the current exhibition Take a Breath Nolan and Quirke explore embodied, cosmological and spiritual breath through deep time using sound improvisation, spoken word and voice. Other performances in 2025 include Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born in June, and as part of the Staying with the Trouble exhibition, a series of live performances on 26 July.

IMMA also announced the 2025 screening programme for Living Canvas at IMMA, a partnership between IMMA and IPUT Real Estate, Dublin’s leading property investment company and supporter of the arts, that brings Europe’s largest digital art screen to the grounds of IMMA. The programme opens with the screening of Derek Jarman’s The Angelic Conversation, 1985. This is followed by a partnership with the RDS Visual Art Awards presenting a specially curated programme by past Visual Art Awards artists. Later in the year screenings will feature work by artists Bruce Conner, Sweat Variant, Clare Langan and Aideen Barry, amongst others, together with partnerships with Dublin International Film Festival and Beta Festival.

This Summer IMMA’s popular programme, Summer at IMMA, will return with a vibrant programme of free events, exhibitions, artist performances, screenings, talks, workshops and tours, running from June to August.

EARTH RISING returns to IMMA in 2025 as a vibrant festival of art, ecology, and ideas. Running from 12 to 14 September, alongside the Staying with the Trouble exhibition, the festival will spark transformative climate conversations and actions through immersive cultural experiences. This year’s theme, “Making Kin,” invites audiences to explore meaningful connections — with each other, the natural world, and the urgent challenges of our time. Expect thought-provoking installations, interactive workshops, and inspiring voices that merge creativity with climate action, offering fresh perspectives and a space for collective imagination.