Ben Lowry: Three fine art exhibitions are on display at the Ulster Museum

The wife and daughter of the late Seamus Heaney, the brilliant Ulster poet, were on Radio Four’s flagship Today programme yesterday, which was St Brigid’s Day.
Senior Curator of Art at National Museums NI, Anne Stewart,
at the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci drawings at the Ulster Museum to mark 500 years since the Renaissance master's death. The exhibition continues until early May. Picture PacemakerSenior Curator of Art at National Museums NI, Anne Stewart,
at the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci drawings at the Ulster Museum to mark 500 years since the Renaissance master's death. The exhibition continues until early May. Picture Pacemaker
Senior Curator of Art at National Museums NI, Anne Stewart, at the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci drawings at the Ulster Museum to mark 500 years since the Renaissance master's death. The exhibition continues until early May. Picture Pacemaker

Marie Heaney and Catherine spoke on the programme about the Nobel laureate’s love of women, and read a poem to listeners.

The day before, I saw a wonderful painting of Heaney by Edward McGuire at the Ulster Museum which is on display there.

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It is in a small exhibition of recent acquisitions or loans by the museum.

The gallery room, which also includes two LS Lowry paintings, and a 1600s Dutch landscape painting granted to the museum in lieu of estate tax, shows the excellent help that the arts is now getting from a range of public different sources, including lottery taxes and the Treasury and donations from affluent individuals.

The recent acquisitions display is across the museum atrium from the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, which is part of a number of UK-wide exhibitions from the extension royal collection of sketches by the renaissance genius.

As mentioned in this column several times recently, we are serialising our early News Letters from 1739. We are the only English language daily newspaper that has ever been able to do such a column from exactly 280 years before.

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As I toured the da Vinci exhibition, which continues until early May, I realised that the News Letter was launched almost halfway in time between da Vinci’s birth and now. The first paper appeared in 1737, which was 285 years after his birth (1452), and 282 years before now. The printing press was a new invention when da Vinci was born. By the 1700s, newspapers were one of its most important offspring.

There is another exhibition worth seeing in the museum. Gallery 7 on the top floor displays some of the institution’s best art work, including a fine Frank McKelvey painting of Ballycastle beach and a stunning John Lavery painting of a 1917 German air raid in London.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor