From intern to CEO: Emma Lucy leaves Visual after 16 years

EVEN after working at Visual in Carlow for 16 years, latterly as CEO, Emma Lucy O’Brien said that her mother has never fully understood exactly what she does for a living.

“Maybe the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had is about what I do and the value of these things with my mum,” Ms O’Brien said. “My family didn’t talk about art at the kitchen table, that wasn’t something that happened.” 

Over the past 15 years, Emma Lucy has struggled to get her mother to attend any of the art exhibitions that she has curated.

“If I brought my mum to an art exhibition here, it’s probably the biggest challenge ever,” she said.

Emma Lucy is originally from Cashel, Co Tipperary. Growing up, she said that she was labelled as artistic because she was creative. She studied art history, philosophy, English literature and economics at UCC before completing a master’s in art in the contemporary world at NCAD. Her master’s thesis was about art centres in Ireland.

“It was a ridiculous thing to do a thesis on … but not ridiculous, I suppose, in the long-term,” Ms O’Brien said.

Her first job out of university was a curatorial intern at Visual.

“I saw that advertised and I was, like, jeepers … Carlow. I wonder if I could apply for that,” she said.

What was supposed to be a six-month internship turned into a 16-year career trajectory, which saw Emma Lucy rise from intern to CEO. Before leaving that position on 3 December, she had spent her entire working life at Visual.

When she started at Visual, it had only been open a year and she was one of a few members of staff.

“Visual opened at the height of the recession in 2009. All the big ambitions they had for this place were curtailed a bit. If they thought there was national funding coming, it wasn’t coming. If they thought there was lots of money coming from other stakeholders, it didn’t come. It was exciting, but also really challenging, as there were not many staff and the weight of ambition and expectation of what was to happen here was immense.” 

Although her early years at Visual were lean in terms of funding, and difficult in many ways, Emma Lucy feels lucky to have started there when she did. She said that, at the time, there was room to experiment and to pilot different projects.

The project that she’s most proud of? Voice Box.

Voice Box invited people from all walks of life to come into Visual and speak for five minutes about whatever they were passionate about. Ms O’Brien, herself, is passionate about reaching out to the community and making it clear that Visual is there to serve the community.

“It was a kind of push on what an art centre could do, that it wasn’t just about the art in the space and this very austere understanding of art in a pristine gallery. That it is much more to do with the people in the place and how the place could be for the people,” Ms O’Brien explained.

Although not originally from Carlow, Emma Lucy talks of the place with the pride of a local. She spoke of the tour that she would give visitors to the town and extolled fact after fact about famous people and inventions from Carlow. How Elvis Presley’s family were from Carlow, how the calculation for the angle of the hangman’s drop was done in Carlow and so on.

“Carlow’s a really, really, good county. A really good town,” she said.

Her pride in Carlow extends to Visual – she is completely serious when she tells me that Visual is the best gallery in the country.

So why, then, has she decided to leave?

She was certainly not pushed to leave. At November’s Carlow Co Council meeting, councillors from across the political spectrum extolled Emma Lucy O’Brien’s virtues. A few councillors even asked her if she would stay on.

“I’m so upset, and I’ve cried loads. I don’t mind saying that either, because I have just loved it. I came in here and I took every opportunity that I got, as I was just so delighted. I feel so privileged,” Emma Lucy said.

In the end, her decision to leave was the culmination of a variety of factors. It was primarily because she has recently moved back to her hometown of Cashel and now commutes to Carlow each day, struggling to balance a job in the arts, which, she said, often means working seven days a week, with motherhood, as she has a three-year-old son. It definitely was not a decision she took lightly, however.

Ms O’Brien does not have another job lined up, though she said that she has been receiving job offers since announcing her departure. In terms of the future, she is very interested in returning to research on arts centres but wouldn’t rule anything out.

When asked about Visual’s future, she admitted that future-proofing such an organisation was very challenging.

“It goes between local and national politics and how arts and culture fits within politics at any given time. In Ireland, we’re relatively lucky that we live within a liberal democracy. Places like Visual were built in recent times by recent governments, so there’s a sense of responsibility towards them,” Emma Lucy said.

Looking across the pond or towards other democracies that have taken a more right-ward shift politically fills Ms O’Brien with trepidation. She called what’s happening in certain places around the world “terrifying”.

“When you look around the world at what’s happening in different places, you have to evaluate those situations and consider your own circumstances and how near or far you are to that kind of situation,” Emma Lucy said.

And the key to ensuring Visual’s future? Explaining to people the important ways in which Visual serves the local community and for the organisation to be open to new ideas.