Declan McGonagle is an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 and professor of art at University of Ulster

University of Ulster

The University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...

.

In 1987, McGonagle became the only curator to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

 thanks to his work at the Orchard Gallery in Derry

Derry

Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland and the fourth-biggest city on the island of Ireland. The name Derry is an anglicisation of the Irish name Doire or Doire Cholmcille meaning "oak-wood of Colmcille"...

. The gallery was known for bringing the work of significant international artists to Derry, notably an installation of sculptures by Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley

Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...

 on the city walls, one of the artist's first Public Art

Public art

The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...

 projects, as well as promoting Irish artists, such as Willie Doherty

Willie Doherty

Willie Doherty is an artist, who has mainly worked in photography and video. He has twice been a Turner Prize nominee.-Life and work:...

, abroad. Prior to this he had been an exhibitions officer at the Institute of Contemporary Arts

Institute of Contemporary Arts

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...

 in London. He was also the curator of the First Tyne International exhibition in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1990 - artists participating included Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...

, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko, born April 16th 1943, is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments...

, Richard Deacon, Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.- Lebanon :...

, Chris Burden

Chris Burden

Christopher "Chris" Burden is an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.-Education:Burden studied for his B.A...

 and Jana Sterbak

Jana Sterbak

Jana Sterbak is a Canadian artist best known for her works constructed from meat. Two sculptures, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic and Chair Apollinaire , were both works whose primary medium was cured flank steak also known as skirt steak in the UK butcher trade.Born in Prague,...

.

McGonagle became the first director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art

Irish Museum of Modern Art

The Irish Museum of Modern Art also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. The museum opened in May 1991 and is located in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building near Heuston Station to the west of Dublin's city...

 when it opened in 1991, but after reported arguments with the chairwoman of the board, Marie Donnelly, he stepped down in 2001. He subsequently took over as director of the City Arts Centre in Dublin, spearheading the Civil Arts Inquiry.

McGonagle is also internationally regarded as a writer and commentator on art being a regular contributor to Artforum

Artforum

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...

. One of his major themes is for contemporary art to respond to social issues. He was chairman of the 2006 panel of judges for the Irish American Arts Awards

The Irish American Arts Awards

The Irish American Arts Awards is a not for profit organization headquartered in New York City that seeks to recognize, encourage and celebrate contemporary visual art by those of Irish ancestry across the world, in particular by the annual award of a cash prize.Founded in 2005 it was launched at a...

.

McGonagle will take over as director of the NCAD (National College of Art & Design) in the autumn of 2008.