For the best part of a century, the Crawford School of Art, as the building was then named, served both as an art school and as the city’s public gallery. However, today the Crawford College of Art and Design is housed in a separate building near St. Finbarr’s Cathedral. The public galleries have been extended to include the former School of Art studios. Among the important Irish artists in the collection are James Barry, Nathaniel Grogan, Walter Osborne, Paul Henry, Jack B. Yeats, Harry Clarke and Sean Keating. The magnificent Sculpture Galleries are part of the 1884 extension. They were built to house an important collection of classical casts presented to the future King George IV by Pope Pius in 1818, marking the real foundation of other city’s municipal art collection.