Issued by John and Trudy Hunt

John and Trudy Hunt step aside from board of Hunt Museum

14th February 2004

Recent unsubstantiated allegations about John and Gertrude Hunt and the Hunt Collection have been distressing and hurtful to the family. We welcome and support the initiative by the board of the Museum to establish an independent review group to look into these matters. We hope that this process will include in its terms of reference an examination of how these allegations came to be made in the first place and the basis for these allegations.

The Hunt family has nothing to hide or fear from any investigative process that is fair. We call on all those who have made these unsubstantiated allegations to co-operate fully with this review and to bring forward any specific charges so that they can be properly and independently scrutinised. We honour the memory of our parents who we loved, admired and respected. We never knew them to be anything other than scrupulously honest and fair. We have been privileged to play our part in realising their vision of making the Collection available to the people of Ireland. We take this opportunity to repeat that the Collection was assembled and given to the people of Ireland in good faith.

It is with a degree of sadness therefore that we have decided to step aside from the board of The Hunt Museum for the duration of the review process. We do so for two reasons. Firstly to ensure that there can be no possible perception that we have undue influence on the process. Secondly, we feel that this will allow us greater freedom to pursue our own priority which is to defend and safeguard the good reputation of our family.

We remain committed to assisting the Museum and its review group in any way possible.

We thank the board, staff, friends and docents for all they have done for the Museum.

In the meantime we remain absolutely confident that these allegations will prove to be totally without foundation.

ENDS