A new exhibition, "Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts," at the McMullen Museum of Art, spotlights the revolutionary contributions of sisters Susan Mary (Lily) and Elizabeth Corbet (Lolly) Yeats. Long overshadowed by their famous brothers, the sisters co-founded the Dun Emer Industries cooperative, which included a press and a textile guild, and produced embroidered banners of Irish saints for St. Brendan's Cathedral, playing a pivotal role in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.
The exhibition matters because it re-centers these women as key architects of Irish visual and cultural identity during the Irish Revival. Through Dun Emer, they provided employment for Irish women, championed Irish materials and authors, and created iconic religious imagery that fused nationalist politics with medieval design, helping to shape a distinct national aesthetic that resonated globally and endures today.