Since its foundation in 1972 the principal aim of the Association has been the advancement of the study of the history of art at every level in Ireland: in art galleries and museums, in universities, in art schools and departments, in the school system, and through independent scholarship and publication. Membership is open to professional art historians and also to all who share the aims of the IAAH, irrespective of professional or educational status.

The IAAH maintains a programme of lectures, events, seminars and tours to significant sites in Ireland and abroad. The range of lecture subjects has been broad and varied. Visits are also arranged to important collections and exhibitions at home and abroad.

An integral part of the Association’s programme is the annual IAAH Artefact Study Day which takes place in late spring. This study day highlights new and in-progress research from across the island. Calls for papers are advertised in early spring.

In December 2007 the IAAH launched the inaugural issue of Artefact, a new peer reviewed journal published by the Irish Association of Art Historians in consultation with academics from universities across Ireland, north and south. Artefact aims to provide an outlet for publication of new and emerging scholarship in Ireland and submissions are welcomed on all periods and aspects of art history and visual culture. For more information please email Artefact.

The IAAH is the representative association for art historians in Ireland and is responsible for the election of the Irish National Committee of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA).

The 2009 edition of Artefact is now available. Contributors include:

Kate Antosik Parsons: Bodily Remembrances: the performance of memory in recent works by Amanda Coogan

Anna Kadzik: Uniforms on earthly delight: Egyptian archaeological garments in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland

Paula Lynch: Stabilitas Loci: the experience of place in Jackie Nickerson’s Faith

Niamh NicGhabhann: Reconstructions of the Gothic Past; cultures on conservation

Audrey Nicholls: The Luxury of Adultery: the iconography of Christ and the Adulteress in sixteenth-century Venice

For details on how to obtain copies of the 2009 edition of Artefact, please email the editorial committee.

The 2008 edition of Artefact is now available. Contributors include:

Lucy Dawe-Lane: Staring into space: the performance of process in two portraits by Goya

Simon Knowles: Two-way traffic: James McNeill Whistler and the Sister Arts tradition

Fiona Loughnane: Materialism and idealism: the influence of Salvador Dalí on Colin Middleton

Reidin McSweeney: RE: Performance – the role of the audience in the documentation of Marina Abramovic’s performances

Una Walker: Ballrooms to barber shops: visual art venues in operation in Northern Ireland in the latter half of the twentieth-century

Fiona Woods: Ilya Kabakov and the shadows of modernism

For details on how to obtain copies of the Winter 2008 edition of Artefact, please email the editorial committee.

Contributors to the inaugural edition of the journal include:

JP McMahon – Structures of Signification: Vito Acconci & 1970s artistic production

Ruth Starr – Eileen Gray, a child of Japonisme?

Elmarie Nagle - Patron(s), Saints and the Politics of Display

Aidan O’Boyle – The Earls of Moira as Collectors

Ann Wilson – Seamus Murphy: a sculptor’s dilemma in mid-20th c. Cork

Eileen Kane - John Henry Newman’s Catholic University Church revisited

For details on how to obtain copies of the Autumn 2007 edition of Artefact, please email the editorial committee.