This year’s exhibition is different. As graduates, we have had to adapt to new and challenging circumstances. Moving to an online environment, we had to think of alternate ways to make our Graduate Exhibition come to life. In its translation into a digital space, the very real and tactile nature of the work we produce is obscured. In our daily lives, there is a sense of human and material touch which is equally obscured. Working from home, graduates are in a new environment. Their creative output extends into their domestic lives as their studies come to a close. It is the parallel between the materiality of our work and the absence of the sense touch that frames this year’s Graduate Exhibition.

This website presents the work of 102 graduating students from the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts, School of Mechanical and Design Engineering and School of Media. The exhibition represents the culmination of years of full-time study and gives our students the opportunity to showcase the results of their imagination, hard work, and creative skills.

Identity by Joana Ferreira, Hugh Kavanagh, Eva Martin, Ben Nagle.

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts
TU Dublin School of Mechanical and Design Engineering
TU Dublin School of Media

Creative & Cultural Industries

Kate Burke
Cultural Artefacts Taken from Their Motherland, Who Gets Custody?

kburke841@icloud.com LinkedIn

Cultural Artefacts Taken from Their Motherland, Who Gets Custody?

Ever since the 1950’s, an international legal regime has been developed to protect cultural heritage against military operation and against illicit traffic of cultural property. Along with that, an international campaign seeking for the return of cultural heritage to countries of origin has constantly drawn the public’s attention. Tied in with history, law, culture, and international politics, this issue regarding the allocation of cultural heritage is undoubtedly controversial and complicated.

My thesis represents a detailed study on the repatriation of cultural property, whether these objects should in fact be repatriated or whether they should stay where they are now. I examined the laws and policies governing this whole area. I identified specific cases where cultural relics have been lost to their native country and how cultural objects are being used as mediums of soft power by museums. I further examined the cultural and ethical issues underpinning the international conventions protecting cultural heritage, and the claims seeking for the return of cultural heritage. Related issues, including cultural identity, and one’s right to cultural heritage were discussed. In my final chapter, I discussed case studies and recent encouraging developments in this whole area. I attempted to answer the question raised as to where these artefacts rightfully belong, be it in their present museums or whether they should be returned to the country from which they came. Finally I put forward some suggested solutions.