Leading architect and gifted man of the arts

Arthur Gibney

The announcement by the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) that the gallery would be closed owing to the death of the "late great" Arthur Gibney said a lot. That an institution of the standing of the academy would phrase their regret in that personal way reflected the standing in which Arthur Gibney was held, not only by them but by everyone who had met him. From the time he graduated from the School of Architecture in Bolton Street in the late 1950s, he seems to have been permanently to the forefront in the world of arts and architecture. In the 1960s he won, along with Sam Stephenson, the ESB competition for Lower Merrion Street in Dublin. In the 1970s he won the Triennial Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI). In the 1980s he was elected president of the RIAI and served as a member of the Arts Council. In the 1990s he was elected president of the RHA. By the time of the new century, with his newly acquired doctorate from Trinity College Dublin, he had settled into an accepted position as a youngish grand old man of the arts.

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