The Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) is delighted to have received a bas-relief of George Bernard Shaw, a generous gift from the UK Shaw Society.
The sculpture was presented to MoLI by Dr Audrey McNamara, Vice President of the International Shaw Society and Bernard Shaw scholar at University College Dublin. It was accepted on the museum's behalf by Director and CEO David Cleary and Head of Exhibitions and Programming Aoife K. Walsh
The bas-relief is the work of sculptor Lawrence Holofcener. Holofcener, born in New York in 1926 and later based in London, is best known for Allies, his bronze of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt seated together on a bench on New Bond Street, London. He was also a writer and lyricist, and his work is found in public collections and spaces internationally.
Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and became one of the towering figures of modern drama. Author of Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Saint Joan and Pygmalion, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. He remains the only person to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, the latter for his screenplay adaptation of Pygmalion in 1938. A sharp-witted critic, political thinker and playwright, he shaped debate in Ireland and Britain for over half a century until his death in 1950.
