ABSTRACT
In a time when right-wing ideologies have achieved renewed prominence in the West, Ireland, a divided island nation on the edge of Europe, has seen significant change in social attitudes, moving toward the left of the social spectrum. Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism and conservativism, legalized abortion by public referendum in March 2018 by a landslide margin of two to one.
This chapter examines the National Museum of Ireland’s rapid response collecting program, which began the day after the referendum and was conducted through networked collecting and a call to the public via social media. It describes the selection of artifacts to represent different aspects of the mainly female, grassroots campaign; the role of citizen curatorship; and the placement of the collected material culture into the continuum of Irish history. Explaining how the project has expanded to include material culture related to LGBTQ+ rights, I outline plans for continuing such collecting, assessing the opportunities it provides as well as the lessons learned from our initial attempt.
