Irish Arts Center honored the Emmy-winning comedian Conan O’Brien and Chairman and CEO of Amgen Robert Bradway on last Friday night at their 26th Annual Spirit of Ireland Gala and in the process broke their own gala record by raising $3.7 million.
The IAC-hosted gala coincided with the organization’s recent launch of the public phase of its $50 million Phase Two Campaign to redevelop the Center’s 51st Street building “as a second, flexible venue for intimate performances and residencies; and expand programming, maintenance, and endowment funds.” They report that $36 million has been raised thus far.
Terence Mulligan and Peter Quinn were in fine form at the IAC-hosted gala at Pier 60. [Photo by Peter McDermott]
Irish Arts Center Executive Director Aidan Connolly said at the event, “Together we have raised over $100 million over the last decade to make both phases of this new Irish Arts Center a reality. But that’s not what’s important, because the scale and scope of what we are achieving together is actually incalculable. Because in building a platform for our shared vision—a multidisciplinary cultural bridge between Ireland and New York—and by creating a permanent infrastructure for that vision, we are setting the stage for an infinity of moments of artistry and inspiration and connection over generations to come.”
O’Brien was honored with the Spirit of Ireland Award alongside Bradway, who heads up Amgen, a worldwide pioneer in biotechnology. The event also featured a special tribute to longtime honorary chair Loretta Brennan Glucksman, a leading light of Irish and Irish American philanthropy.
“Thanks to so many friends in the room tonight we finally have a home that is worthy of the talent coming out of Ireland and Irish America today,” said Irish Arts Center Vice Chair Pauline Turley,
In recent years, O’Brien has been building bridges back to the country his ancestors hailed from. In 2024, in his HBO MAX series “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” the comedian toured Ireland—visiting County Tipperary, Galway, Dublin, Wicklow and Galbally with a genealogist, to the farm where his great-grandfather lived. O’Brien described that trip at the gala: “ People have told me they get emotional and they go back to the plot of land [where their family lived]. I didn't believe them, and I did…In this last visit to Ireland, I saw incredible joy, beautiful music...and at the same time, running right alongside it, intertwined loss, despair, and a sadness.
“And it occurred to me that every culture inhabits these contradictions. With the Irish, we're different. We wear them like a fine coat. We manage to wear these contradictions on our sleeve and show them to the world, and it is part of what makes our art so enduring and so unique…This is the secret weapon of our people, that we are plugged into something that [the Irish Arts] Center, this lovely, wonderful Center, has somehow tapped into, and it is essential.”
O’Brien accepted the award on behalf of various family members who have passed, including his parents, Thomas O'Brien and his mother Ruth Reardon O’Brien, who both died days apart last December. “If they had been here tonight it would have killed them all over again, they would absolutely love it,” he said, concluding, “I want to dedicate this to all of us Irish people…I share this gift with all of us who carry this lovely, exhilarating gift and burden of being Irish in this world today.”
