campus news
Julie Marden (black shawl), on stage with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and music director JoAnn Falletta (center), narrates Robert Merfeld’s “Bridget Anne Hart: An Irish Legacy” during the Irish Legacies Concert at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Photo: Jeff Mace, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
By BERT GAMBINI
Published August 5, 2025
Guests at the recent Irish Legacies Concert at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum heard about UB’s plans for its James Joyce Museum, a vibrant exhibition and engagement center being designed for Abbott Hall on the South Campus.
The facility will be a permanent exhibition space for the UB Libraries’ James Joyce Collection, the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of manuscripts and other materials by and about James Joyce that is currently housed within the UB Libraries’ Poetry Collection in Capen Hall on the North Campus.
Irish Legacies featured JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, leading a chamber ensemble of BPO musicians as part of a unique multimedia concert presented by the BPO, the AKG and the UB Libraries. Introduced by Jillian Jones, deputy director of the AKG, the program included a performance of Robert Merfeld’s “Bridget Anne Hart: An Irish Legacy,” a reading from Joyce’s novel “Finnegans Wake” by Keelie Sheridan, artistic director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company, and presentation on the Joyce Museum from James Maynard, curator of the UB Poetry Collection
“Everyone asks when the museum will be ready to open,” said Maynard. “But right now it’s too soon to say for sure.”
In fall 1950, nine years after Joyce’s death, the first wave of the collection arrived at UB, thanks in large part to Oscar Silverman and Charles Abbott, and by virtue of a gift from Margaretta F. Wickser, the widow of an avid book collector. That acquisition, comprised of a substantial body of manuscripts and Joyce’s personal effects, has grown to become one of the world’s great literary treasures, consisting of more than 10,000 pages of the author’s working papers, notebooks, manuscripts, photographs and correspondence, as well as a complete body of Joyce criticism.
“As the design phase progresses, we will continue our efforts at outreach in order to promote the project in Buffalo and elsewhere, and to build a sense of excitement for what’s to come,” Maynard told those attending the event.
The museum aims to attract a broad audience of scholars, students, Joyce enthusiasts, artists and writers from here at home and around the world.
“The communities of Western New York represent our primary targeted audience,” Maynard said. “But we want this to be a space for everyone, and our goal is nothing less than to invite the entire world to experience James Joyce at the University at Buffalo.”
In June 2021, the libraries launched a comprehensive campaign to secure the future preservation and growth of the Joyce Collection and expand its public access.
“We did so while unveiling a 36-foot-tall mural of Joyce in downtown Buffalo with the Irish Consulate in New York, which you can still see today as a sign of our commitment,” Maynard said.
The libraries has also been seeking endowment funding for a James Joyce curator position, acquisitions and preservation, programming and exhibitions, and building maintenance.
Two years after the campaign’s start, UB received $10 million in construction funding from New York State, secured through the advocacy of then New York State Sen., now U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy, and with the support of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Maynard said design work over the past 10 months has involved University Facilities and a team led by the architectural firm of Bostwick Design Partnership that includes Luci Creative as the exhibit designers. And last December, the libraries received an anonymous $500,000 gift to begin an endowment for programming and exhibitions.
“Once completed, this exhibition space will convey through manuscripts and other primary materials the compelling stories of Joyce’s literary life and work, his social and historical contexts, the enduring legacy of his influence, and the history of the UB James Joyce Collection,” Maynard said.
“I couldn’t be more excited.”