New Publication: Tony Crowley's Painting History: The Murals of Northern Ireland 1908-2024

A new publication by Professor Tony Crowley offers the first book-length study of the murals of Northern Ireland

Professor Tony Crowley has recently published Painting History: The Murals of Northern Ireland, 1908–2024 with Amherst College Press. This is the first book-length study of the oldest and most enduring tradition of political wall art. Tony Crowley shows how muralism became an important medium for the unionist and loyalist community in its political domination of public space before and after Partition. The text also demonstrates that nationalists and republicans painted few murals before the start of the 1981 Hunger Strike, during which they painted wall art across republican areas of Northern Ireland as a way of publicizing their cause. In the context of a divided society, by the mid 1980s murals had become an established genre for the expression of political demands and aspirations.

In Painting History, Tony Crowley provides a detailed analysis of the complex tradition of muralism in the context of the history that produced it, with particular attention given to the cultural politics of this remarkable form. The book also raises and discusses a series of theoretical questions about murals and muralism that transcend Northern Ireland: issues of propriety and legality, form and content, authority and censorship. The work ends with a consideration of the future of the murals in a still polarized but changing region. 

Painting History is published in hardcover and paperback, and is available for open access download.