SERVICES
Monaghan County Museum reaffirmed its status as a national leader in the field of Irish museums recently when its staff attended a gala event in Dublin’s Irish Architectural Archive headquarters to become the first Local Authority Museum in the country to achieve the level of Maintenance of Full Accreditation under the Heritage Council’s Museum Standards Programme for Ireland. The programme, which currently has over fifty different museums all of the country vying for the award of full accreditation consists of thirty four exacting professional standards that must be attained before the award is given.
The award was made to Monaghan County Museum Curator, Liam Bradley by the Minister of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Mr. Jimmy Deenihan. The Curator accepted the award on behalf of the museum staff, which were present on the day, along with the Chairperson of the Museum Advisory Committee, Maeve Hackett, the County Manager, David Fallon and the Mayor of County Monaghan, Cllr. Hugh McElvaney. Minister Deenihan in congratulating the staff of Monaghan County Museum on this enormous achievement noted how significant it was that the Museum Advisory Committee Chairperson, the County Manager and the County Mayor all took time out of their busy schedules to attend the event. He said that it demonstrated the amount of support that the museum staff enjoys from their parent organisation, Monaghan County Council.
In 2008 Monaghan County Museum made history by becoming the first local authority museum in the Republic of Ireland to reach the milestone of full accreditation under the programme. The standards, which cover all aspects of museum work from museum management, to conservation, collections care, exhibitions, education and visitor access required over five years hard work by the museum staff to meet. This would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of Monaghan County Council and indeed the visiting public. In achieving maintenance of full accreditation, the Minister noted that the museum staff have not only displayed a continued commitment to professional excellence in their field, they have also built on those achievements. Most notably in attempting to make the collection as accessible as possible both in the museum building through interactives aimed at people with a disability to a wide and varied community outreach programme.