Irish Memorial Is Clever But Obscure

By Kelly Monaghan

Passing by the corner of Vesey Street and North End Avenue, the uninformed observer might be forgiven for thinking that there’s a vacant lot in Manhattan that has not been developed. Actually, it’s the Irish Hunger Memorial, a shaggy work of high-concept art in the form of a quarter-acre hill meant to resemble the Irish countryside. The monument is cantilevered on a marble plinth, as if to give the guests at the Embassy Suites across the street a better look.

A dirt path snakes past the remains of a cottage—which was brought here from Ireland but which most visitors barely glance at—to the top of the hill, where a view of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty draws everyone’s attention. The plot is striped with rows of fallow potato furrows and dotted with stones from each of Ireland’s 32 counties. The grasses and plants, native to the Connaught wetlands, have been chosen for their ability to survive in Lower Manhattan.

All this sits atop an irregularly-shaped concrete dish resting on a base of black Kilkenny marble dappled with fossils from Ireland’s ancient sea bed. I know much of this, by the way, not because I’m so horticulturally or geologically clever but because I availed myself of a crib sheet on the web site of the Battery Park City Authority.

Once you’ve been provided with the Cliff Notes, you realize that the concept is very clever, even affecting, if somewhat precious. The execution is something else. Mostly, the memorial looks odd and a bit shabby. Its concrete shell is already cracking and leaking, and the marble-and-glass base is reminiscent of a ’60s public high school that was considered daringly modern when built.

The $5-million memorial was created to…to… Well, to what?

When he signed the legislation creating the memorial, Governor Pataki reminded us that "the Great Irish Hunger was not the result of a massive failure of the Irish potato crop but rather was the result of a deliberate campaign by the British to deny the Irish people the food they needed to survive." But such blatant Brit-bashing is missing from the finished product, perhaps because respectable historians have decided it’s not that simple.

Indeed, the what and why of the piece seem purposely hidden. There is no obvious sign naming the memorial and nothing to explicate its deeper meanings, save for strips of translucent glass etched with hard-to-read text fragments that run around the black marble base. Patient reading (which entails walking back and forth to get to the beginning of each strip) will reveal that the focus of the memorial is An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger of 1846–1851, which killed hundreds of thousands of Irish and forced millions more to emigrate. Read a little more, and you might pick up on the fact that Ireland’s British overlords were somewhat callous toward Irish suffering and continued to export large quantities of grain during Ireland’s time of need. But other text fragments imply that the piece has something to do with yams in Ghana or obesity in America. Is it about all those things, too?

Still, I shouldn’t complain. Brian Tolle, the memorial’s conceptual artist and sculptor, is on record as hoping that his empty Irish plot will encourage contemplation. Here are a few things I contemplated while hanging out in this simulacrum of Connaught.

What is it about our culture that prompts demonstrably successful groups to memorialize themselves not for their triumphs but for their humiliations, their disasters, their darkest hours?

Why has Lower Manhattan become the locale of choice for so many reminders of hideous injustice and heroic sacrifice past?

How many potatoes can you buy for $5 million?

Isn’t it a bit much to expect New Yorkers, even Irish New Yorkers like myself, to try to be moved by this bucolic scene while another, much larger empty space looms a few blocks away, a monument to man’s inhumanity to man that no trendy artist could ever create?