Curator's Choice

As part of National Heritage Week 2026, the Irish Museums Association (IMA) is sharing a new selection of Curator’s Choice videos, offering a glimpse into the stories behind collection items.

In each short film, museum professionals are invited to choose an object, artwork or story from their collection and explore why it matters – revealing personal, local and sometimes unexpected connections to issues of contemporary relevance.

The two new videos in the series have been developed by the National Museum of Ireland, and take this year’s Heritage Week theme, Heritage at Risk, as a starting point to explore environmental sustainability, language and colonial legacies.

Tiernan Gaffney, Assistant Keeper in the Irish Folklife Division, National Museum of Ireland (NMI), uses the sciath or sciathóg to explore resilience through the lens of basketmaking. In the second video, Geraldine Green, Assistant Education Officer, and Adriana Ballinger, Yale Postgraduate Research Fellow at the NMI's Natural History division, introduce the Our Natural History exhibition at the Dead Zoo Lab, focusing on the impact of intensive farming on the corncrake.

Explore the full series during National Heritage Week and discover how objects and collections can open up wider conversations about the past, the present and the challenges facing our shared heritage.