Feile na Bealtaine, which takes place over the first week in May in Dingle, scored a major coup with the opening of an exhibition of works selected by Maura and George McClelland from their personal collection and the McClelland Collection at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, IMMA.

George McClelland had an early start in collecting art - forking over the princely sum of ten shillings for a piece when he was a boy in Omagh in Co. Tyrone. From such an inauspicious beginning George and his Kerry-born wife, Maura, opened a gallery next to their antique shop in Belfast in the 1960's and went on to build up a collection that reads like a who's who of Irish art.

Over the years some of the collection has been sold while new works have been constantly added. In 1999 the McClellands offered over 400 paintings, sculptures and drawings to IMMA for a loan period of five years. The subsequent sale of the collection to Noel Smyth and the donation of almost half of the collection to the Museum allowed Maura and George to start a new collecting campaign and this exhibition draws from both the private collection and the works now in the IMMA collection.

The exhibition was opened by Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator and Head of Collections at IMMA until 2006 and now on secondment to the Arts Council, in Siopa na bhFiodoiri in Dingle, the combined studio and retail outlet of Lisbeth Mulcahy, one of Ireland's best known designer / weavers and tapestry artists.

While it's always remarkable to see a collection of work by such internationally renowned artists as Jack B. Yeats and Daniel O' Neill, this exhibition is particularly significant in the way it afforded people the opportunity to see the art in a non traditional setting. Being able to wander around Dingle on a gloriously sunny May Day and in the evening popping in to see a priceless collection of art before heading to the pub and watching the Champions League semi final might not strike everyone as fun but it pleased the bejabbers out of me!