EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum back in full swing on 27 December

EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum is normally open seven days a week. However, even here, Christmas calls for a short break, with the museum closing its doors for three days – including St. Stephen’s Day. However, it is back to its familiar always-on mode for the rest of the Christmas break, starting on Saturday 27th December.

One of the current highlights is the temporary exhibition, Frontlines: Irish Journalists Abroad. A temporary multi-media exhibition on Irish journalists who shaped opinion across the world, it is scheduled to run till March 2026.

Among the journalists featured in the exhibition is Caitríona Perry, the former RTÉ presenter and reporter, who became the Irish national broadcaster’s Washington Correspondent in 2013, during the Obama administration, and remained in situ for the first year of the first Trump presidency, before returning to Ireland in 2017. She is the author of In America: Tales from Trump Country

She is back in the States now, working as Chief Presenter for the BBC in Washington.

"Being Irish in America is the best calling card you can have,” Caitríona Perry reflects. "As soon as I meet people and they hear that I'm Irish, it’s amazing how often you hear people say, “I’m Irish too!” I always get a kick out of it. It never gets old, the pride that people have in talking about their Irish heritage.”

Perry is very conscious of the differences between the Irish experience and that of Irish-Americans. But there is a layer beneath that – which dfor example, explains the genuine affinity who someone like Joe Biden clearly felt for the country of his ancestors.

“Yes, Irish America is often a very different place to Ireland,” Perry says in a video, "but there’s still that cellular connection, that same pride – the same shared heritage, shared values, shared culture. And it’s just fantastic to hear that."

Featured stories on Frontlines: Irish Journalists Abroad include: Diaspora Press; Des Mullan's work for the Independent group during the famine in Biafra; Irish journalist Declan Walsh writing fir the New York Times on the civil war in Sudan – and lots more besides.

Walsh and his team, including Irish photojournalist Ivor Prickett, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage in 2025.

"Across the world, Irish journalists have worked to reveal human rights abuses and hold the powerful to account,” we are told. "Their reporting on conflict and hardship has shaped public opinion and provided an impetus for change. In the major centres of Irish settlement, they have challenged negative stereotypes and helped immigrants adapt to their adopted homelands. And they have, in some cases, entirely refashioned what it means to be Irish, crafting new identities in London, Paris and Buenos Aires.”

Frontlines: Irish Journalists Abroad, a temporary exhibition exploring two centuries of Irish journalistic achievement, is currently available to see free, as part of the normal ticket price, at EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

Visitors can also purchase a combined ticket to EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum and The Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship, which is located on the Liffey, just across the road from the museum.

Other upcoming attractions include An Evening with Gethan Dick (20 January at 5.30pm) and An Evening with Wendy Erskine (26 February at 5.30pm) – both part of the Éire To Everywhere series.

Gethan Dick's debut novel, Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night, was published by Tramp Press in 2025.

Wendy Erskine's debut novel The Benefactors was widely acclaimed as one of the books of 2025.

EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum reopens after its short Christmas break on Saturday 27 December, from 10am to 6.45pm, with last entries at 5pm.