Museums Australia Magazine 24 (2)

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Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 7

Contents

In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2015—2017

President's Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 From the National Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2016 ICOM Australia Awards — Call for nominations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

president

Frank Howarth PSM (Former Director, Australian Museum, Sydney) vice-president

Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) treasurer

Margaret Lovell

Andrew Sayers AM (1957–2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

(Company Secretary and HR Director, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra)

secretary

Reflections on the Museum Leadership Program, sponsored by the Gordon Darling Foundation, Melbourne. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 New technologies, traditional art: Two perspectives on Myth + Magic . . . . . . . . . . 17 NSW Regional Museums Networking Project 2014: Waterways Mid North Coast in review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Wendy Hucker: museum leader, thinker and innovator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Ultrasound of a museum’s collections: MAAS Recollect: Health and Medicine Exhibition reviewed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Dr Mat Trinca (Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) members

Carol Cartwright ((retired) Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra)

Suzanne Davies (Director, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne) Timothy Hart (Director, Public Engagement, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) Dr Lynda Kelly (Head of Learning, Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney) Suesann Vos (Sponsorship and Marketing Manager, Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Caboolture) ex officio member

Dr Robin Hirst (Chair, ICOM Australia), Museum Victoria public officer

Louise Douglas, Canberra

COVER IMAGE: Iatmul people East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea Orator's stool mid-20th century prior to 1953 wood, shell, ochres, boar tusks, fibre 122 x 51 x 45 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Museums Australia Magazine PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608 Editorial: (02) 6230 0346 Advertising: 02) 6230 0346 Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346 Fax: (02) 6230 0360 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice Murphy Template design: Brendan O’Donnell Cover design: Selena Kearney Content layout: Stephanie Hamilton Printer: Paragon Print, Canberra

© Museums Australia and individual authors.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Museums Australia Magazine is published quarterly and on-line on the MA Website, and is a major link with members and the museums sector. Museums Australia Magazine is a forum for news, opinion and debate on museum issues.

Contributions from those involved or interested in museums and galleries are welcome. Museums Australia Magazine reserves the right to edit, abridge, alter or reject any material. Views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher or editor. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by Museums Australia, its affiliates or employees.

Museums Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation: Australian Government Ministry for the Arts; National Museum of Australia; Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum); Western Australian Museum; and Link Digital (Canberra).

Print Post Publication No: 332582/00001 ISSN 1038-1694

state/territory branch presidents/ representatives (subject to change throughout year)

ACT Rebecca Coronel (Manager – Exhibitions and Gallery Development, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) NSW Dr Andrew Simpson (Macquarie University, Sydney) NT Janie Mason (Charles Darwin University Nursing Museum, Darwin) QLD John Waldron (Museum consultant, Sunshine Coast, Queensland) SA Mirna Heruc (Manager, Art & Heritage Collections, University of Adelaide, Adelaide)

TAS Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) VIC Lauren Ellis (Programs Manager, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Manager, Western Australian Museum, Perth)

8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

President's Message

I above:

Frank Howarth

had an animated discussion with a friend from the big end of the finance sector recently about the value to society of art and culture. In short, he argued that ‘value’ only existed (and therefore should only be supported) if the value can be put into economic or dollar terms, and the value outweighed the cost.

This is an issue economists have been arguing over for years, with little agreement. I argued back to my friend that the value was intrinsic and not easily able to be quantified; that this is best seen in the correlations drawn by Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class (2003), which show that cities with a strong creative and cultural life have a strong economy. We agreed to differ, but my friend did concede that one of the things he most values about living in Sydney and indeed in Australia is its cultural scene, even though he could afford to live anywhere.

My friend’s focus on a dollar justification worries me, and I think it’s symptomatic of change in Australia, and most of the western world, driven by increasing government budget deficits and the consequent squeeze on culture funding. And simply asserting that the arts deserve more money — while true — cuts little ice with governments. Our need to get more creative about how we are funded, how we make the case for funding, and making the funding we achieve go further, shaped much of 2015, and will increasingly shape our future. Both of these issues got much of Museums Australia’s attention, and my attention in particular, over the last year.

One positive thing to come out of the controversy surrounding the move of money from the Australia Council to the NPEA — now Catalyst — was that galleries and museums can now apply for project funding, whereas we are largely barred from Australia Council funding. The compromise outcome created

by Minister Mitch Fifield is on average better than the previous situation. Museums Australia is in the process of seeking funding from Catalyst for two projects to benefit our sector. One is digital and one is Indigenous. More of these below.

I’ve argued in various places that the more the world goes digital, the more people will want to see real things. In 2015 we saw the consolidation of a peak group of the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums sector (the wonderfully acronymed GLAM group) with Museums Australia taking a leading role, and focused on increasing the digital engagement of

the broader community with our collections. The GLAM peak group is bidding for Catalyst funding to enable our sector to better engage with the digital world, and in particular to enable small-to-medium museums and galleries make an informed and affordable choice about how they create digital access to their collections. We will know about how this goes in the first half of 2016.

Availability of digital images of, and information about, our collections is one way we are getting more creative, but this increased access has another, more fundamental impact.

I firmly believe that the impact will be demands for greater access to stored collections so that people can indeed engage with the ‘real’. This can be achieved several ways. The obvious one is making collection stores accessible to the community, ‘open storage’ if you like; and I also believe that new storage must be designed with this in mind. A less obvious but lowercost approach is one recently advocated by some regional gallery directors in the UK, who argued that the large art museums should put much more of their stored collections on tour to regional galleries, rather than locking them away in expensive, inaccessible storage. I tend to agree.

Still on the attraction of the ‘real’, 2015 also saw vigorous discussion around just what it is that certain cultural institutions should exhibit. There is a certain group in our cultural sector that supports what I consider to be a conservative cultural stereotyping.

Galleries should only do art; museums only stuff that isn’t art; and design centres should stick to craft. The NGV has been doing a great job of blowing those stereotypes out of the water, featuring not only ‘art’ but fashion, design, and cars! Many of our regional art museums have also been doing a fine job of blurring the boundaries, and some of our major state libraries are seriously into the exhibition business. This is all for the good. I think it’s about time we in the cultural sector got over this pigeon-holing, and really focused on what our visitors and communities, in both the real and virtual realms, really want. It seems to me that the digital world is really driving a demand for innovation and diversity of expression from our sector, which we should embrace.

A little over a year ago, Museums Australia members asked the National Council to look at whether we should have a Reconciliation Action Plan (a RAP)

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 9

for our organisation, or indeed for the whole sector.

This is a complex question, to say the least! During 2015 we have created an Indigenous working party facilitated by National Council Secretary, Mat Trinca, and Executive Director Alex Marsden, and including a widely representative group of Indigenous Australians, to explore how Museums Australia and the gallery and museum sector can better engage with past and present Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. This is a very significant process for us, and we will report further as it goes on through 2016.

Finally, I, the National Council, and Museums Australia staff are continually looking at better ways of working for you and the sector. In 2015 we began a process of exploring how to better represent the diverse and vibrant public gallery sector; this will continue through 2016. It’s also timely that we take a step back and look at the overall structure of Museums Australia. Our current structure is complex, and in my view that complexity makes it harder for us to really focus on sector issues and priorities quickly enough. And issues can move fast, as the saga over Australia Council funding demonstrated. We will examine potentially better options to enable Museums Australia to do a better job during 2016, and talk more about them at our joint national conference with Museums Aotearoa in Auckland in May. See you there! [ ] Frank Howarth PSM National President, Museums Australia

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

From the National Director

above:

Alex Marsden

What a year! – for museums and galleries, Museums Australia and for me. Frank has written about what we did over the last 12 months, the influences on our thinking and some of our plans for next year. I’d like to just highlight a couple of achievements and, more importantly, what’s on the horizon for your MA in 2016.

This was a year of listening and understanding the need for change; a year of seeking other people’s views, needs and perceptions; a year of reaching out and looking at ourselves; finally a year of setting big ideas in train. We got all the peak bodies in the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector in the same room to develop a strong pitch to government that will enable massive online discoverability of collections nation-wide. We held a successful national conference in Sydney that, amongst many other highlights, gave MA the ideas and the energy to explore better ways to support Indigenous representation and participation in museums and galleries. We made submissions on important national policies, programs and reviews, such as the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act and the national arts funding changes.

We’ll continue listening and talking, as every organisation must, but we’re also shifting now into some concrete planning and doing. Some big projects are dependent on external funding, but others just need our focus and your engagement.

There’s the new website in the first quarter of the year, a core membership service. We’re kicking off a pilot program of professional development for early and mid-career professionals that will be rolled out nationally, a Galleries Taskforce to tell us what our public gallery members require from their MA, masterclasses in design, a more regular quarterly Magazine and an amazing joint national conference with Museums Aotearoa in Auckland in May. That’s just for starters.

From everyone in the national office and in the state offices, branches and networks, we wish you a very happy festive season.

On the Horizon: 2016 New Museums Australia and ICOM website and database, featuring new content and member tools Our first joint conference with New Zealand counterparts Museums Aotearoa (May) Quarterly MA Magazine in April, July, October and December Careers in Museums: an online directory and travelling workshop series on starting or developing your career in museums Museums Australia Galleries Taskforce: discussing ways in which the association can better serve the galleries sector Year 1 of joint digital access to collections project (March) Stage 1 of Collaborative Research Project into Indigenous participation and representation in museums & galleries (May) Conference and RR&C Day in Victoria (October)

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 11

ICOM Australia Awards

2016 ICOM Australia Awards — Call for nominations

right: Christine Clark receiving the

ICOM Australia Award 2015 from ICOM Australia Chair, Dr Robin Hirst, on behalf of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. far right: Robin Hirst 'virtually' presenting the 2015 ICOM Australia Award to Dr Don McMichael.

N

ominations are now being sought for the 2016 ICOM Australia Awards.

This program provides two awards, one to an individual and one to an institution, for outstanding projects that strengthen international exchange between museums. The program has become a widely recognised way of showing what Australian museums can achieve in collaboration with our overseas partners. The 2016 award will be announced at the Museums Australia Annual Conference Dinner. The forthcoming Conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand, 15–19 May 2016, as a joint conference (badged under the aegis of ‘Museums Australasia 2016’), with the title: Facing the Future: Local, Global and Pacific Possibilities. As in previous years, the ICOM Award is recognised with an inscribed glass globe commissioned through the Canberra Glassworks and created by Australian glass artist, Ben Edols.

Eligible projects and candidates for the awards can be from any field of museum practice, including collection management, exhibitions, museum management, audience development, marketing, research, sponsorship, education, training or professional development. The scope is only limited by our museums’ creativity and initiative in realising well-designed opportunities for international exchange. The award is open to individuals who are members of ICOM Australia or employed by institutions that are ICOM Australia members, or museums or partner organisations who have institutional ICOM Australia membership.

Nominations can come from industry peers, and selfnominations will also be accepted. The application process is not onerous: the focus is on a two-page

summary of the vision and achievements of the project or individual nominated.

Interest in the ICOM awards has grown steadily since its inception, and the program has been able to recognise the very healthy level of both individual commitment within the Australian museum sector and cooperation between Australia and our international partners. The 2015 Individual Award to Dr Don McMichael CBE recognised his sustained personal contribution to international cooperation over many years, in addition to his outstanding professional career that included a Fulbright Travelling Scholarship to Harvard University, appointments as Deputy Director of the Australian Museum and First Secretary of the Department of the Environment, and later, founding Director of the National Museum of Australia.

The 2015 Institutional Award went to the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery of Indonesia for their collaborative exhibition, Masters of Modern Indonesian Portraiture. This project was the product of joint work over a number of years that culminated in the exhibition, as well as a series of capacitybuilding workshops. The exhibition was presented at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, in September 2014, and was the first time an exhibition from the National Gallery of Indonesia’s collection had travelled to Australia.

The ICOM Australia committee looks forward to welcoming nominations for the 2016 awards. Full details of the award guidelines, including eligibility and process for nominations as well as contact details for further information, can be found on the ICOM Australia website at <http://icom.org.au> []

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

Andrew Sayers AM (1957–2015)

right:

Andrew Sayers 2012

by Mark Mohell (b.1975) gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

Purchased with funds provided

by Marilyn Darling AC 2013.

Bernice Murphy

T

he museums and art galleries community pays warm respect to Andrew Sayers, who has held key positions in the sector including as Assistant Director, National Gallery of Australia, inaugural Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Director of the National Museum of Australia, and President of Museums Australia.

Born in England, Andrew came to Australia with his parents at the age of six and grew up in the bush setting of Mt Kuringai in northern Sydney. A keen observer of nature from boyhood, he formed a precocious determination early on to become an art historian and graduated in art history from the University of Sydney in 1979.

Known later for his keen curatorship and extensive publishing on art, Andrew actually commenced his working life in the Registration department of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1981 he became Assistant Director at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, beginning a period which gave him a permanent appreciation for regional Australian museums and galleries, which he championed for the rest of his career. In 1985, while still in his 20s,

Andrew moved to Canberra to join the recently opened National Gallery of Australia, becoming the NGA’s first Curator of Australian Drawings and steering significant purchases for this area of the collection.

Andrew’s study of drawings resulted in the publication in 1989 of a new overview of this medium, Drawing in Australia, followed by the ground-breaking scholarship of his Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century in 1994. The latter publication received the HE Stanner Award of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. When finally serving as Assistant Director (Collections), Andrew curated exhibitions on the work of Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, and James Gleeson; in addition, he steered realisation of the large bi-national exhibition, New Worlds from Old (1998), setting early works of Australian art alongside the great figures of America’s Hudson River School and others who were their contemporaries.

Despite being well ensconced at the National Gallery of Australia, Andrew ventured in a new direction when he was appointed as first Director of the newly formed National Portrait Gallery in April 1998. This was the latest of the national collecting institutions to be established in its own right, thanks in good measure to the resolute championing by philanthropic patrons Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC for many years. Marilyn Darling herself became inaugural Board Chair during the critical years of steering the new institution into a reality and campaigning for its own dedicated building.

On becoming the young institution’s director, Andrew was determined that the National Portrait Gallery should not become a place of ‘dead white men (or women)’ but a place to celebrate Australians’ achieving, history, and creativity through art and portraiture. He always conceived of the NPG as being about ideas and debates as well as portraits, and very attuned to contemporary audiences.

His exciting vision for the new institution was realised with the exhibition, The Possibilities of Portraiture (1999), comprising a mixture of historical and contemporary works in various media, which was quickly followed by the tantalisingly-named photographic show, GLOSSY: Faces Magazines Now. Starting with wide-open horizons, Andrew developed a program of acquisitions and enlivening commissions (Howard Aarkley’s spray-painted portrait of friend Nick Cave soon became a hero image); and he continued to conceive or collaborate in the creation of many exhibitions, publications and an array of engaging programs.

While the NPG was still based in rooms in Old Parliament House, and with its national reputation

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 13

now established, a dedicated building for the Portrait Gallery was finally secured as a promise of the Howard Government in 2004; then commenced in 2006; and Richard Johnson’s elegant and humanscaled building, adjacent to the High Court and the National Gallery of Australia, opened at the end of 2008.

In 2010, Andrew was admitted as a Member of the Order of Australia, “for services to arts administration, particularly as the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and to the promotion of Australian portraiture”. This was followed in 2013 by his election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FHA).

In addition to visual art, music and poetry were Andrew’s great pastimes and passions. Writing was central too, and whilst fully employed at the NPG, in the early mornings he steadily prepared the manuscript for an overview of the country’s art, simply titled Australian Art, for the Oxford History of Art series. Further Portrait Gallery magazine articles and exhibition catalogues continued as part of his working life.

It is rare for any museum person who has reached the position of director in Australia to cross to another type of institution and become a director in a different museum field — as occurred when Andrew moved to a second national museum, for which the central orientation is the social history of the nation. From 2010 until 2013, Andrew Sayers was Director of the National Museum of Australia, where he oversaw major building works and staff restructuring, and revitalised displays — notably through the Big Objects project of major collection items installed as a firstimpact arrival experience in the NMA’s large entrance hall. The National Museum extended Andrew’s longdeveloped experience in exploring ideas and using objects to tell manifold stories. Under Andrew’s directorship the NMA underwent a re-branding change, emerging with the eloquent tagline: ‘Where our stories live’.

Andrew’s continuing commitment to Aboriginal art played a major role in the generation of exhibitions while he led the National Museum, notably including Old Masters: Australia’s Great Bark Artists (opened in December 2013), and reinforcing early negotiations by his predecessor (Craddock Morton AM) for a collaborative project with the British Museum to show Australian Indigenous works collected as far back as Captain Cook’s voyage mapping the east coast of Australia in 1770. These steady negotiations with British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor, led eventually to the Encounters exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, opened in December 2015 — a reworked and expanded version of the exhibition at the British Museum, Aboriginal Australia: Enduring

Civilization (shown in London, 23 April–2 August 2014). Sadly, Andrew did not live to see this outcome.

Andrew was also known as a serious performer on foot, running fifteen marathons in various cities in Australia between 2005 and 2014. Health and meditation were key to his abilities to think through and approach issues in novel ways, and he loved the clear air of Canberra and the readily afforded opportunities to engage with its natural bush setting.

However in retirement he concentrated on painting full-time, taking up and recommitting himself wholeheartedly to the creative endeavour of visual art, which had remained an important preoccupation since his youth. Andrew’s commanding self-portrait featured in the 2014 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, and his portrait of close friend, environmental lawyer and art historian, Tim Bonyhady, was an Archibald Prize finalist at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2015.

Before he had left Canberra to join his wife, Perry Sayers, and their three daughters for a more consolidated family life and creative pursuits in Melbourne, Andrew Sayers made another outstanding leadership contribution to the museums field in Australia, serving as President of Museums Australia.

During a decisive year in this position he advocated for, and hosted at the National Museum of Australia, a national Museum Summit in May 2013: bringing together directors from CAMD, CAAMD, Museums Australia National Council and other colleagues for a seminar on the sector’s needs in discussion with leaders of cultural policy in the Commonwealth Government, including also representatives of the Australia Council and DFAT. This initiative — Andrew’s last outstanding ‘gift’ of leadership of the museums and galleries sector in Australia — has ongoing effects in continuing closer consultations between government, the museum Directors Councils, Museums Australia and the national sector today.

In mourning Andrew’s untimely death as a result of cancer at the age of 58, and expressing condolences to Perry Sayers and Andrew's family, Museums Australia pays tribute to the achievements of his life, to his great personal charm, intelligence and warmth. Friends and colleagues celebrate the enduring and remarkable contributions of Andrew Sayers to Australia’s culture and heritage. [ ] (Special thanks are extended to colleagues in national institutions, especially the National Portrait Gallery (Director Angus Trumble and colleagues), the National Museum of Australia (Director Mat Trinca), and the National Gallery of Australia (particularly Assistant Director Simon Elliott, who worked for years with Andrew as his deputy at the National Portrait Gallery), for information that has enabled the compiling of this tribute.)

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

MLP 2015

Reflections on the Museum Leadership Program, sponsored by the Gordon Darling Foundation, Melbourne

In early 2014, the Trustees of the Gordon Darling Foundation considered another iteration of the Museum Leadership Program, designed for senior management or those ready to take the next step up.

This is an initiative of which the Foundation has been proud, and the MLP (first delivered in 1999) has now a solid legacy in its large list of alumni, many of whom have moved into senior positions, including directorships of major museums and galleries over the last 16 years. By 2014 there had been six MLPs offered biennially, each with around 37 participants from Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The Foundation wondered about its continued need.

Had we saturated the market? Was there still a need for the program?

The obvious course was to seek advice from the Museums and Galleries sector. A simple question was posed “Do you see potential for participation in the Museum Leadership Program again in 2015?”

The response was overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the program, and planning for the 2015 Museum Leadership Program commenced. [GDF]

Andy Baird (Acting Deputy Director, Audience Engagement, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart)

top to bottom:

Andy Baird, Brett Dunlop, Dermot Henry.

Across a week of intense thinking, learning and immersion, the Museum Leadership Program provided a multitude of insights large and small. I dug the well and definitely struck water and, as hoped, reignited the passion for museums as the place to be.

Key insights? The idea of creating a powerful ‘foundation myth’ for a museum as espoused in the session with Neil MacGregor had particular resonance; it opened up understanding of how a poetic, visual, and intellectually robust yet simple narrative can guide an institution in such diverse ways as defending beneficiaries (the public) against threats, aiding partnership development, fostering community engagement, embracing the online world and brokering discussion around object ownership.

Conversely from the same day’s session: the empowerment that arose from a realisation that we in Australia and New Zealand have a significant divergence from British imperialism in our understanding and respect for First Nations’ intellectual and property ownership and where knowledge resides — apologies to Neil if I’m misrepresenting.

I dug the well and definitely struck water and, as hoped, reignited the passion for museums as the place to be.

I learnt, with no great surprise, that I’m on ‘L’ plates with social media engagement, but now I can see how to turn the ignition key and the opportunities are so bloody evident! ‘Elegant design’ as a feature of good strategy (and solutions in general) was another brilliant framing of perspective and a criteria-tool for seeking solutions. And the creed about focusing on the important rather than the urgent — I wish.

Of course, the chance to talk shop with diverse fellows, now a network of colleagues across Australasia who share so many similar challenges, will be an invaluable help in the digging that will come with an ongoing career in learning and museum leadership.

Yep, the MLP program was — is — a fantastic opportunity and highly recommended: Dig in!

Brett Dunlop (Director Museums, Sovereign Hill Museum Association, Ballarat, Victoria) There were many personal highlights for me in MLP 2015. One was spending a day with Neil MacGregor, gaining an insight into how he has reframed problematic repatriation discussions into a compelling narrative about the British Museum’s origins and purpose.

Another was working with Jeanne Liedtka on strategy and techniques for ‘designing a new future’ for organisations.

A learning that I can put into action immediately came from Kay Sprinkel Grace on fundraising — which is to perceive fundraising as an opportunity for donors to make a gift to the community through my organisation.

This will require quality conversations with potential donors to understand their goals and values, but for me it is far less intimidating to help a donor make a gift than it is to ask them for money!

Dermot Henry (Manager, Natural Science Collections, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) The course definitely exceeded my expectations.

The week-long residential experience, hosted by the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, provided the opportunity to work with high-level museum and gallery professionals from across Australia and New Zealand.

The learning environment of syndicate groups, daily changing work groups, and of course the discussions in the dining room, ensured that, across the week, I engaged with all the participants.

Our thought-provoking course facilitator, Professor Jeanne Liedtka, kept the group entertained and alert

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 15

for the entire week (even after our fine luncheons).

The guest speakers, all successful international leaders in their subject, were informative and engaging and challenged the group to look at problems from a variety of perspectives. The openness and honesty the participants brought to the discussions throughout the week was, for me, the most valuable aspect of the course.

I feel the course provided the opportunity to reflect on the problems affecting modern cultural institutions. The emphasis on developing quality planning processes and on the importance of implementing strategies to shape change, rather than merely react and respond, is something I hope I can further develop, and implement in my work practices, to help address the challenges facing Museum Victoria.

Carolyn Murphy (Head of Conservation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) The Museum Leadership Program was a wonderful opportunity to meet colleagues and make connections.

It has been interesting to reflect on my expectations going into the program and what I came away with.

As with all good learning experiences, I have come away with new ways of thinking about the things I had hoped to cover, plus a whole lot of new things to think about moving forward. I was particularly impressed with the teaching of Jeanne Liedtka and Neil MacGregor, who were both generous with their time, knowledge and expertise.

I also appreciated the opportunity to look at philanthropy and fundraising in more detail – which is an area of work I am regularly engaged with but have sometimes found challenging.

Probably the greatest outcome for me has been around approaches to strategic thinking and leadership, and the importance of storytelling as a means of shaping and guiding the future of an organisation by making connections and continuities with its past.

Sarah Murray (Curator Human History, Curatorial Manager Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand) Taking the time to reflect on learning is an important part of the process and, in the weeks since the 2015 Gordon Darling Museum Leadership Program, I have often found myself contemplating all the exciting and energising concepts we covered in what was a jam-packed six days. While the course traversed a wide range of relevant topics, there were

several aspects that stood out in particular for me.

As a relative newcomer to the role of Curatorial Manager at Canterbury Museum, I was particularly interested in learning about my management style and the strengths and weaknesses that different approaches can bring to a role. The DiSC profile and related exercises were, for me, a new way of considering my behaviour and the ways I can best work with the team I manage, as well as working with my colleagues in the management group. MLP has encouraged me to reflect on the ways I interact with my high-performing team and it has inspired me to confront some of the issues facing us as a group, so that we can achieve more and do so with improved communication.

While relationships between team members was a key area of interest for me, in a related, albeit different line of inquiry, the course has also caused me to contemplate the time, effort and ways my organisation nurtures the advocates we already have. As a museum, it is easy for us to thank our stakeholders for their donations or assistance at the time of support, and then forget about them afterwards. What difference could a follow-up thank you or invitation to an event some months later make to these relationships? Could it mean that we turn a supporter into a more vocal, and generous, advocate? How can we best create, nurture and develop these relationships within the limits of our organisational resources?

One of the most valuable aspects of the course was participating in a learning environment with other experienced and passionate cultural sector workers. The chance to meet leaders in the field, and to share ideas, techniques and strategies was unparalleled. Conversations about commonalities such as challenges in working best with team members, communication issues, and working with heritage collections or heritage buildings, provided an opportunity to share experiences and learn from one another’s practice and skills. The course was a good reminder that sometimes simply taking the time to consider institutional and personal challenges, and to share these with like-minded and impartial professionals, can be of great value in working through an issue and creating a plan for tackling it.

On both a personal and professional level, the opportunity to build connections and networks throughout Australasia has been of enormous benefit; our group and sub-groups are already corresponding via email on a range of diverse subjects. The fact that the MLP achieved significant results not only in the six-day residential course but in the weeks that followed is testament to the fact that such training offers our leaders an amazing and significant opportunity, with valuable networks continuing afterwards.

top to bottom:

Carolyn Murphy, Sarah Murray.

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

MLP 2015

top to bottom:

Anna Thurgood, Michael Varcoe-Cocks.

Anna Thurgood (Artspace Mackay Director, Mackay Regional Council, Queensland)

Michael Varcoe-Cocks (Head of Conservation, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)

When I was accepted into the 2015 Museum Leadership Program, I felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. As the director of a regional art gallery, I wondered if my issues would be the same as those faced by staff from larger institutions. The curriculum, however, appeared very topical and relevant to the sorts of issues I face on a daily basis.

Upon arriving though, my fears were allayed. My colleagues and peers were all lovely, and indeed, it became obvious fairly quickly that we all share very similar issues.

The program was extremely well-presented.

Jeanne Liedtka was an excellent facilitator, and her presentations around strategy and strategic thinking were wonderful. In fact, all the tutors were experts in their field and presented information in a stimulating way. I particularly loved the session we had on Boards and Fundraising. I have presented my notes from this session to my own Foundation board members, and have started the conversation about refocusing their role back to where it should be — fundraising. I will continue to present to the board, using Kay Sprinkel Grace’s excellent book “Beyond Fundraising”, which is inspirational.

Overall, I learnt more at the Museum Leadership Program than I have at any other professional development course or workshop I’ve ever attended.

Apart from learning about how to face the issues and challenges of our time, it has also instilled in me a new confidence in my role as a leader. For this reason alone, the program was invaluable. Rather than feeling isolated and wondering whether what we do as a regional art gallery is ‘up to standard’, I now have a new network of colleagues I can talk to, and I am confident that my gallery is operating in a very professional way.

I am extremely indebted to Museums Australia and the Gordon Darling Foundation for running this wonderful program. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone working in a public gallery or museum. It will teach you invaluable lessons that you’ll be able to apply to your professional life in so many ways.

The 2015 Museum Leadership Program was an entirely engaging, stimulating and above all fun experience. The success of such a program will depend as much on the participants as those delivering content; however the coordinators and session speakers were astonishing and guided the focus of participants on specific themes for set periods of time to maximise our engagement.

I found the MLP the perfect opportunity to scrutinise and reflect on the positive and less successful attributes of my professional environment in a manner that would not be possible in the physical and mental space that occupies day-to-day life.

The newly introduced session on social media was a timely inclusion. Although my institution has dedicated Digital Communities Coordinators, I found discussions around the issues of positioning social messaging, and the importance of ensuring the value of any social message is consistent with broader values, very poignant. This emphasis on core values of an institution and how it should inform all museum activities was a central theme throughout the week.

From a personal perspective, an especially key aspect of the program was simply spending time with colleagues from other cultural organisations to gain insights as to how both similar and indeed uniquely different museums approach common challenges. The daily, more relaxed evening group sessions, encouraged an honest and in-depth dialogue amongst participants. It was these closed and frank debates that helped me to understand where museum leadership really is in Australia and New Zealand today.

Perhaps the most unexpected aspect of the 2015 MLP was the degree of enjoyment and fond memories that it created. [ ]

Rather than feeling isolated and wondering whether what we do as a regional art gallery is ‘up to standard’, I now have a new network of colleagues I can talk to.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 17

An exhibition digitally augmented at the National Gallery of Australia

New technologies, traditional art: Two perspectives on Myth + Magic

Crispin Howarth and Matt Adcock

Crispin Howarth, National Gallery of Australia

W top:

Exhibition installation shot of five Brags (masks).

above:

Crispin Howarth.

1.

Myth + Magic: Art of the Sepik River was shown exclusively at the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 7 August – 1 November 2015.

hen it comes to creating informative content for museum and art gallery displays, there is a real skill, an art, to writing a contextual label. That art lies in the ability to compress two or three salient facts into a 60-to-80 word label that captures the reader’s attention; makes the viewer want to share that information; and importantly, increase interest to look at the object itself again, with the difference of ‘fresh eyes’ that those facts create.

Getting the amount of information right is sometimes tricky. A didactic panel of 200 or more words is heavy and daunting; perhaps unlikely ever to be read unless the viewer is already interested in the subject matter; or is indifferent but in dire need of distraction as their phone battery has died.

Over the past two years, my work has been focused on researching, developing and curating the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition, Myth + Magic: Art of

the Sepik River.[1] This project involved a bi-national selection of works of outstanding cultural heritage value. The exhibition brought together for the first time 80 remarkable works of traditional art from the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea, selected from Australian collections, alongside five masterpieces from the collection of the National Museum & Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea.

Objects from the Murik Lakes, the Porapora, Keram, Yuat and Korewori Rivers as well as those of the Iatmul and Sawos people of the Middle Sepik region were featured, with the exhibition focusing mainly on the period between 1914 and 1939, when early Australian involvement in the Sepik region resulted in large collections of Sepik art entering the country.

The displayed arts were predominantly figural sculpture, masks and other objects carved of wood; they were painted in ochres, decorated with feathers, crocodile teeth, pig tusks, human bone and an array of other natural materials. Most objects have been in Australian museum anthropological collections for the better part of the past century.

For visitors to the National Gallery of Australia, art from Papua New Guinea created for ritual and performance by un-named artists is perhaps a little

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

An exhibition digitally augmented at the National Gallery of Australia

right:

East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea Brag [mask] 19th to early 20th century, prior to 1920 wood, ochres, laundry dye 67 x 22 x 9 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1970

far right:

Screenshot of 3D scan of a Brag mask, showing ‘hotspots’ to be touched for layered information.

more challenging and less accessible in terms of appreciation than a retrospective of a known and acknowledged Australian, American or European artist. I had to ask myself: What proportion of the visiting audience has ever heard of the Sepik River? — before thinking about what proportion or demographic component of the audience might ever have visited, or lived in, Papua New Guinea, the closest Pacific country to our own. From the outset I needed to conjecture that while the selected works are of the highest calibre in terms of their aesthetic nature, historical and indigenous context, is there another way of providing an in-road for experience and appreciation of these objects? Can the contextual label alone, at the bottom of the display case, still cut it with museum visitors?

During the development of Myth + Magic, I met Dr Marc Ghysels, a radiologist based in Brussels, who works in the private sector creating CT-scan analysis of African, Pacific and Pre-Columbian artefacts. This process has great value in detecting restorations and other changes to objects for sale on the art market; but, more importantly, such investigative work can reveal more information of value about the nature of an object.

An intriguing discovery emerged: that a private collector’s ancestor plaque from the Sepik River (made of basketry, un-fired clay, and hundreds of pig and crocodile teeth) had hidden within it a series of small wooden carved figurines. No other similar ancestor plaques — despite there being around twenty or so known in the world — have been assessed through such an analysis; so the revelation of the smaller ‘enclosed’ figures is remarkable.

Dr Ghysel’s advanced work in developing threedimensional scans from the inside out is fascinating and exceptionally useful. I realised that something similar, albeit carried out within budgetary constraints and other limitations, could be of value to the exhibition. Digital resources in one form or another are now ubiquitous in museums; yet few are directed to new ways of looking very closely at objects. The website for the 2015 exhibition, Embodiments: Masterworks of African Figurative Sculpture, presented at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, had offered layered information, and a feature to enable a zoom in on the textural surface details of African sculpture through hi-res images, but from one angle only. A further prospect beckoned: Wouldn’t it be invaluable to see a sculpture from all

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 19

sides, to gain a real sense of its proportions, multiple views and details?

With some of these questions in mind when preparing Myth + Magic, Clyde D’Rosario, Head of Digital Strategy at the NGA and I visited the CSIRO Digitisation Lab at ANU in Canberra to meet with Matt Adcock. We were keen to learn about what technologies they were working with that could be employed to create something visually attractive and accessible to both the ‘digital natives’ — those who have grown up with touch screen and on-line information feeds — as well as late users such as myself who have difficulty even with Netflix.

Matt Adcock, CSIRO For over 80 years CSIRO has been collecting precious examples of Australia’s flora and fauna. The Australian National Insect Collection, for example, has more than 12 million specimens carefully preserved in a purpose-built facility in Canberra.

More than 15,000 of these specimens are Holotypes — the irreplaceable historic specimens that were each once used by an entomologist to name respective

species. The vast majority of objects in these collections are inaccessible to the public, and even access by researchers is closely monitored. Moreover when trying to establish whether a new species has been found, it has typically been necessary for either the scientist or the specimen to travel and meet the other party. This is not only costly but risks damaging the specimens. Such challenges are not unfamiliar to galleries and museums in caring for a complex diversity of objects in their collections, so it is perhaps unsurprising that when Crispin and Clyde first came to visit CSIRO, we already had much common ground on which to collaborate.

A few years ago we decided to investigate the use of digital 3D scanning at CSIRO, exploring ways to reduce the number of specimens that are currently shipped around the world each year in the cause of research. CSIRO had been restrained by the lack of available systems capable of capturing 3D models of very small objects. Micro Computed Tomography (Micro-CT) scanning had been available for some time; however, as with medical x-rays, the technology failed to capture colour. To overcome this deficiency, CSIRO developed a new system called InsectScan — the first natural colour 3D scanner for tiny things.

top:

Using the touchscreens to study detail on the Orator’s stool (see magazine cover for detail).

above:

Matt Adcock.

20 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

An exhibition digitally augmented at the National Gallery of Australia

above:

Exhibition installation shot of Myth + Magic: Art of the Sepik River.

There is a video about this technology available online at <https://youtu.be/THvfu6shJjg>.

However 3D scanning on its own is insufficient.

In fact it is fairly easy for large 3D models to end up captured on a network share-drive somewhere, and be just as inaccessible there as their physical counterparts. Worse, such files might be stored in any number of different formats, each requiring a special viewing technology for access. We also observed that a great deal of metadata to be stored alongside 3D models was pertinent to just a specific part of a given object.

In order to derive as much value as possible from our 3D insect models, Stuart Anderson and I (from CSIRO Data61), in collaboration with CSIRO’s National Biological Research Collections and the Atlas of Living Australia, have been developing a web-based platform for 3D annotation and sharing.

Using this platform, a scientist can attach a great deal of additional information to specific locations on a 3D scan. The annotations can then be published on the web and viewed by anyone with a modern web browser. The 3D model can be rotated and scaled without any special browser plugins; and because we are using the latest web standards, we can redeploy parts of the system onto different platforms such as a tablet, large touch screen, or even virtual reality headsets.

It was this interactive 3D sharing system and its possibilities that resonated with Clyde and Crispin.

It was quickly apparent that this new genre of communication was just as relevant for storytelling in the domain of art as it is in the many fields of science. With what turned out to be a relatively short

time remaining until Myth + Magic was due to open at the National Gallery, CSIRO and the NGA agreed to collaborate and bring Interactive 3D to two large touch-panels near the entrance to the exhibition.

I was able to provide advice on available 3D scanning technologies; and once one was selected, Clyde and Crispin organised for six key artworks to be brought out of storage. It took a full day to cover all six objects using a combination of coarse- and finescanning technologies. It then took some additional hours after that for the various partial scans to be stitched together. The resulting raw high-resolution scans ranged in size from 700MB to 2GB; however after some careful use of compression techniques, we were able to produce models of around 20-30MB each, with almost no loss in visual quality.

Crispin then identified a set of key features of each artwork, and we used our 3D annotation techniques to highlight those aspects and areas, and attach explanatory text. The user interface was then modified to ensure accessibility for all visitor heights, as well as consistent branding and colour, before transferring the cumulated results across to the Mac Minis driving two 55-inch touch panels. The result is an engaging and accessible interactive experience that has resonated positively with visitors to the Gallery.

Working with the NGA on Myth + Magic is the latest in a succession of collaborations between CSIRO and a cultural institution. In recent years we have installed telepresence robots at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra for virtual school group tours; and we have created a 3D replica of the HMB Endeavour, based at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. There are many more ways that we can draw on scientific and industrial advances to help bring digital innovations to museums and galleries for the enhancement of their work. Not only does this enable better navigation of opportunities in the accelerating digital economy of audience engagement, it also enables Australians to experience their cultural collections in new and enhanced conditions of viewing, enjoying and learning about the world’s artworks and cultural heritage. [ ] Link to video: https://youtu.be/9AlnBP_eCUs Matt Adcock is a Senior Experimental Scientist and Research Engineer at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Crispin Howarth is the curator for Pacific Arts at the National Gallery of Australia.

Having joined the NGA in 2007, Myth + Magic is his fourth exhibition.

Citation: Crispin Howarth and Matt Adcock, ‘New technologies, traditional art: Two perspectives’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.24(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer, 2015, pp.17-20.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 21

Strong mutual assistance project achievement in regional museums NSW

NSW Regional Museums Networking Project 2014: Waterways Mid North Coast in review[1]

above:

Debbie Sommers.

right:

Our Rivers Our History website <http:// www.oroh.com.au/>

Debbie Sommers

Project Aims and Background

T 1. The Our River Our History and Waterways project was reported by Debbie Sommers at an earlier stage of its development in Museums Australia Magazine Vol.23 (2&3) Autumn & Winter 2015, pp. 46-47.

he aim of the Waterways project was primarily to assist museum volunteers on the lower Mid North Coast to continue to document their collections, building on skills developed from Special Collections — Special Stories, a project funded by a Museums and Galleries NSW Collection Documentation and Significance Assessment Grant earlier in 2013; and secondarily, to develop a webbased exhibition showcasing the region’s collections with a water theme — hence the working title, Waterways. The project was also to include promotion of the interconnected museums and collections as a regional heritage tourism destination: developing an associated heritage trail brochure and continuing to foster and expand on existing regional collaborations, while building relationships and capacity to conduct further regional projects in the future.

The project was further intended to build volunteer skills in collection documentation, and other museum best-practice activities; to assist museums to use their collections to build new audiences; and to promote the museums while engaging audiences in new and relevant ways.

The project was seen as a way to continue to grow and strengthen museums collaboration and existing

museum networks — in this case via Museums Australia’s Mid North Coast Chapter — while extending further across the region and across Local Government Areas, noting that Council contributions to support museums on the lower Mid North Coast were, and continue to be, extremely low. The project was also intended to help identify further regional projects that might be suitable for future Arts NSW funding programs.

Additional expected benefits were: to improve access to collections by providing a web-based exhibition of local water-themed objects; to enable a web presence for those museums without one; and that the heritage trail and map would provide a focal point for visitors to the region, enabling improved access and increased museum visitations.

The project outcomes were specifically defined in the grant application as: • Identification of the key water themes across the lower Mid North Coast and associated objects in participating museum collections; • Completed documentation of a minimum of five objects, including statements of significance from each participating museum; • A web-based exhibition called ‘Waterways’; • An associated map and heritage trail brochure; • A final report on ‘where to next’ for participating museums.

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Strong mutual assistance project achievement in regional museums NSW

Project Details – What actually happened Preliminary work on the project commenced in late 2013; however with the usual distractions over the holiday period, it began in earnest with the first project steering committee meeting and workshop in January 2014. From that meeting onwards, a regular email bulletin to participating museums and volunteers was used to communicate project expectations, timelines, deadlines, next meeting dates, etc. This seemed to work well, and compliance with requirements, deadlines and meeting attendances continued strongly throughout the project. A total of 14 bulletins were issued throughout the duration.

The first part of the project was to identify the key water themes and associated objects in participating museum collections. The museum/significance consultant Kylie Winkworth achieved this following site visits to Camden Haven, Kempsey, and the Mid North Coast Maritime Museums, and through discussions with other participants whom she had visited previously while working on other projects, and was and therefore providing familiarity with their collections. The initial list comprised some 8 themes, 22 sub-themes, and 93 potential objects for documentation and inclusion in the planned online exhibition. Over time this list was modified and culled to a more manageable 7 themes and 58 objects, in view of the relatively short time-frame for the project.

Planning with partners, assessing capacity, scheduling delivery targets The original expectation and plan was to document a minimum of 5 objects at each participating museum.

However it became clear that there were many more relevant and significant objects that could and should be included. It was also decided to include Tinonee Museum in our project, because this organisation was associated with one of the lower Mid North Coast Rivers targeted in the project. Tinonee Museum volunteers had earlier indicated they did not have the capacity to participate, and this was also known from their involvement in the previous Special Collections– Special Stories project. Their involvement was negotiated on the basis that they would not attend meetings or workshops, but would liaise directly with the project manager who would complete object documentation on their behalf, provided they submitted basic object information. Their involvement was limited to 2-only objects and they

were ineligible to receive payment for object research.

This brought the number of participating museums to 7, and the final number of objects documented for the project was 58 compared to the initial target of 30.

Increasing the number of objects for the web exhibition was the major contributing factor to the delay in completing the project on time, according to the original schedule; however there was a desire and enthusiasm by the Project Steering Group to learn and produce quality outcomes, and this became a driving force.

Building the skills-set of volunteers – especially ‘Significance assessment’ The increased number of objects documented contributed greatly to the project outcomes. Despite several Significance training and development sessions and workshops being held on the Mid North Coast over the past five years, it was apparent after the second project steering group meeting, and project workshop, that many participants lacked the skills necessary for the project but were willing and wanted to learn. Many were new to collection documentation and ‘significance’ issues — which unfortunately is mostly the case in a sector that is totally reliant on volunteers.

At this point the steering group meetings became meetings and workshops, where participants brought their research, objects assessments, and draft significance statements along for review and

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 23

Maintaining motivation – building momentum Volunteer participation continued strongly throughout the project, possibly driven by the $1500 project contribution grant to participating museums for their object research. Motivation is an important factor for the success of any project, and the grant not only provided an incentive to volunteers to see the project through to completion; more importantly, it also recognised their contributions in a meaningful and tangible way, and this benefitted their respective museums.

Overall, there were 8 official project steering group meetings and workshops held during the term of the project.

above:

Waterways project community on eHive <https:// ehive.com/community/1075> left:

Port Macquarie Museum volunteer Margaret Blight with photographer Paul Dawson.

discussion with the group. This process contributed greatly to the project outcomes, and to make the most of our Significance consultant, her visits were changed with her agreement to more frequent singleday visits. Additional days and travel expenses were funded from other savings in the budget. In between the consultant’s visits and meetings, the project coordinator provided ongoing support and feedback to museum volunteers, including on training, research and ongoing documentation review in some instances.

Cultural tourism connections and branding of a project Our cultural tourism consultant also attended project meetings as necessary, and held a branding workshop with the group to determine the project’s logo, name, etc. At this point it was agreed the project’s public outcomes would be called Our Rivers Our History — with the description: ‘Explore our rivers, their history and experiences featuring the Manning, the Camden Haven, the Hastings and the Macleay Rivers’.

Despite all of the above, some museums still did not have the capacity to complete their object documentation to the standard expected and/or in the time-frames required for this project. In those cases, the project coordinator and other project volunteers worked to produce the final Significance statements for the participating museums.

Photographic documentation and digitisation Once object documentation was nearing completion and we had agreed on our final object list, a professional photographer was engaged to take images of each of the objects. This was a very pleasant and interesting experience for those involved, and the photographer also provided some ad-hoc photography and digitisation advice to several of the museums during his visits, increasing their skills-audit in these areas.

Seven ‘web exhibitions’ created The final object documentation was completed in late October, and we handed the project and our statements of significance over at this point to our cultural tourism consultant Kevin Williams, who is also the Regional Arts Development Officer for Arts Mid North Coast. He worked on turning our significance statements into more tourist audiencefriendly stories, and created the 7 web exhibitions for the project, along with their catchy names of: Ahoy there!, At Play, Bringing Prosperity, Creating Memories, Crossing Over, Dangerous Waters and Pescetarian Platter. The project coordinator wrote the introductions for each of the 7 exhibitions.

Online river-themed trails added As the project progressed, our cultural tourism consultant decided it would be more appropriate and more accessible to have online river-themed trails (rather than a printed map and trail) showcasing our top 10 places to visit for each of the four rivers, and with the inclusion of Google maps and GPS coordinates. He worked with the web developer to design the Our River Our History website <oroh.com.

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

Strong mutual assistance project achievement in regional museums NSW

au> and information brochure. Again, the consultant’s job was expanded to meet our desired outcomes and extra time was funded with savings from the anticipated branding and brochure costs. The brochure printing was also increased to a 20,000 print run, rather than the 10,000 budgeted when smaller in size. The web design and development took three months to complete, longer than anticipated. But we believe it was worth the wait.

Getting onto eHive and collection management resources online Early in 2015, when it became apparent that not all objects would be included in the web exhibitions, and that some of the significance statements would need to be edited in the exhibition to make them more ‘audience friendly’, we decided to take advantage of the eHive online Collection Management system.

The project was now captured in eHive, as a new closed community called ‘Waterways’, and all 58 documented objects and their accompanying images were loaded to the website resource at <https://ehive. com/community/1075>. Most museums did not have previous experience in using eHive, so the project coordinator created an account for each museum and loaded up the objects on their behalf. This enabled us to link the objects in each web exhibition to the full statement of significance in eHive. One of the advantages of this is that those volunteers researching and writing the statement of significance have had their work attributed to them.

After much design work, checking, review and corrections, finally the website, web exhibitions and information brochures were completed towards the end of April 2015. Whilst participating museums in this project are spread across 3 Local Government Areas, as it happens they are also spread across 3 State Electorates. We worked with the Member for Port Macquarie, Leslie Williams, in determining a launch date for the project outcomes, as the funding had originally come through her office. We also liaised with the Members for Myall Lakes and Oxley, and were very pleased that the Member for Oxley, Melinda Pavey, was also able to attend the launch. We tried very hard to have the Minister for the Arts attend, however this was not possible within our time-frames.

The public launch – ensuring political and business recognition Our Rivers Our History was officially launched on Tuesday 28 April 2015 by The Hon. Leslie Williams, Member for Port Macquarie, Minister for Early Childhood Education, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs

and Assistant Minister for Education — the event was held at the HW Boutique Hotel in Port Macquarie overlooking the Hastings River entrance and Tasman Sea. Most participants were also in attendance, and the launch was an opportunity to publicly recognise and acknowledge their work. Invitations were also extended to Museums and Galleries NSW, Arts NSW, and local water-based business representatives however none were able to attend on the day. Other attendees included local tourism representatives and the media.

Outcomes For participants as a whole, the outcomes of the Waterways project include a new website, Our Rivers Our History, and a supporting brochure showcasing the four rivers of the lower Mid North Coast and local collections, places and stories, through 7 online exhibitions featuring 51 objects from 7 museums, backed up by online river trails featuring our top ten places to visit for each river, which of course includes our museums!

Ongoing skills and resources for participating museums The project has also helped to develop a cohesive project group involving 7 regionally linked museums who have demonstrated they are capable and able to participate in and complete projects of this size, when provided with some professional support and project management. One of the tangible outcomes has been to build and demonstrate the group’s capacity for projects of this type — and their readiness to develop new projects in future.

Experience in delivery of grant-funded projects An added benefit and spin-off from this project was that we successfully applied for a Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme grant in August 2014, using the 48 completed — or at that time, near-completed — project object assessments and statements of Significance, to validate the heritage importance and values of our newly-interpreted collections. The grant of $6160 funded condition assessments and reporting by a trained conservator for each of those 48 objects. The project coordinator provided the consultant’s travel to each of the five participating museums as the Chapter’s contribution.

The assessments took place in February 2015, and were reported on, and the grant acquitted in time for the next MMAPSS grants round. The Port Macquarie Museum has already used their condition reports to

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 25

Regional and volunteer-run museums elsewhere may find the model useful when exploring ways to access much-needed resources and professional support.

‘Value’ audit – costs, outcomes, training, ongoing resources We believe the project has provided extremely good value for money and that the project outcomes evidence this. Dividing the total grant money by the number of objects documented alone amounts to $724 each — aligning with a little over the current daily rate paid for a museum adviser. We doubt that a paid professional could have documented as many objects within the available budget. Adding in the project collateral such as the website, exhibitions, brochures and photographs, museum volunteers training and the foundations and partnerships established as a basis for further projects, the value of the project speaks for itself.

Project lessons – ‘the long view’ successfully gain further funding for conservation treatment of two objects under the 2015/16 MAPPSS grant program. This highlights the flow-on effects that larger grants can provide. The condition assessments also provided a new focus and retained interest in the project, whilst the web design and web exhibitions were in development.

Improved collection management – building public engagement and access From a collection management perspective, the project outcomes include 58 object assessments and significance statements, and professional photographs of those objects. From an exhibition and public engagement perspective, the project has resulted in 7 online exhibitions featuring 51 objects.

From a public access perspective, this project has placed 58 objects from 7 museums online, both through the Our Rivers Our History website and also through the eHive Waterways Community, making them accessible to the public generally via the web.

Some museums have also made their objects and stories accessible through their own websites — e.g.

Port Macquarie Museum online at <http://www. pmhm.org.au/collections.php>.

Marketing and audience development From a marketing and audience development perspective, the Our Rivers Our History website is compatible for all devices including tablets and mobile phones. The Our Rivers Our History brochure also features a QR (Quick Response) code, to encourage direct exploration of the website, exhibitions and river trails.

We have said these things before and most recently in the acquittal report for our previous project Special Collections – Special Stories, but think they need to be said again.

Professional Support Understanding of collection documentation processes and Significance assessment appears to be greatly enhanced by regular professional support and contact, including professional review and not just initial training. Several museums’ understanding of Significance assessment methodology and criteria was found to be inaccurate, despite attendance at a number of previous Significance workshops.

Significance assessment can only be learned by actually undertaking the processes, and having ongoing support and review helps to consolidate learning. This project has seen a great improvement is some museum volunteers’ understanding and documentation work, whilst for others it is still a learning process.

Capacity and Time The demands on museum volunteers involved in collection management and documentation are great.

This aspect of museum work is usually left to only a few interested and capable people, and there is little time available for collection research, documentation and Significance assessment in volunteer-run museums as a normal state of affairs.

There is not a large number of museum volunteers with the interest and/or or capacity to complete the large volumes of collection documentation work needed to vastly improve collection management and interpretation at most museums. Even with a local

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Strong mutual assistance project achievement in regional museums NSW

champion, most museum volunteers are not naturally interested in this often time-consuming and complex work; they are certainly not keen to do this important work without professional and ongoing support at a local level.

Training Training is an ongoing issue in all aspects of work at volunteer-run museums, however the word training is over-used. Training and skills development at volunteer run museums need to be on an ongoing cycle, given the nature of volunteering and that volunteers come and go constantly. Most importantly, training needs to be followed up with ongoing support, otherwise it is a waste of time and money.

Training is and can only be effective if followed up with ongoing professional review and support.

Currently most support on the lower Mid North Coast is provided by volunteers. Meaningful training and support associated with planned project outcomes, as was the case with this project, would seem to provide sound outcomes, greatest benefit, and opportunities for sustainability.

Professional Support Models When Port Macquarie Hastings Council made the position of Regional Museum Curator, then held by Liz Gillroy, redundant in November 2012, the Council decision effectively removed the only professional museum curator accessible to volunteer-run museums on the lower Mid North Coast. Left without a professional curator, or even a museum adviser, to help initiate training and manage grants and projects, we decided to try and keep the momentum going and build on Significance projects developed during Liz’s tenure: notably Timber Stories, Her Story and Harvesting the Hastings.

Museums Australia – Mid North Coast chapter’s role The Waterways project is the second successful significance project coordinated by Museums Australia — Mid North Coast chapter. Our model is a simple one, embedding regional networking, collection research and significance training in projects with tangible and beneficial outcomes for all involved. We believe that larger grants to fund projects like this one provide an alternative way for networks of volunteer museums to access and work with museum, arts and cultural consultants, professional photographers, artists and designers, to ensure the vitality and sustainability of our community-run museums.

Next Steps We believe the Waterways project has demonstrated

that there is a commitment and capacity within MA-Mid North Coast Chapter museums to successfully complete projects of this type and size.

There is also a keen desire by most of the participants to continue with collaborative projects of this type, and to build further on our outcomes. There is also some interest from other museums within the Chapter network to join the collaborations achieved through the Waterways project, and access the training, support, development and outcomes that similar projects will provide.

We note the recommendations from our Museum/ Significance consultant for this project, and with the support of participating museums are applying for Arts NSW Project Funds in the October 2015 grant round: to progress the experience and planning recommendations harvested through Waterways, and expand and enhance Our Rivers Our History outcomes through further innovations.

In the meantime, Our Rivers Our History website will be monitored using Google Analytics; collaborating museums will be monitoring visitor numbers and feedback; and we will continue to promote the project, the Our Rivers Our History website, its exhibitions and river trails to attract new audiences.

This was, after all, what the project was about! [ ] Debbie Sommers is President of the Port Macquarie Historical Society. She acted as the Waterways Project Coordinator and manager, on behalf of MA Mid-North Coast (MNC) Chapter, New South Wales.

Citation for this text: Debbie Sommers, ‘NSW Regional Museums Networking Project 2014: Waterways Mid North Coast in review’, Museums Australia Magazine, Museums Australia, Canberra, Vol. 24 (2), Summer 2015, pp.21-26.

above:

Waterways coordination group.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 27

Creator of the Pioneer Women’s Hut at Tumbarumba NSW

Wendy Hucker: museum leader, thinker and innovator

right:

Wendy Hucker.

Kylie Winkworth

T 1. The Pioneer Women’s Hut is located on a rural reserve at Glenroy, 8 km from Tumbarumba NSW. http:// www.pioneerwomenshut.com/ 2. Unpublished lecture on museums and memory, c.2000.

3. See for example Margaret Somers, ‘Pioneer Women of Queensland; the Other Story’, in ‘Out of the Box – A Special Issue on Women in Museums’, Museums Australia Journal, edited Kylie Winkworth, 1990.

he death of Wendy Hucker this year marks the passing of a great museum leader, thinker, feminist and innovator.

Wendy Hucker was the founder and museological brain behind the development of the Pioneer Women’s Hut (PWH) at Tumbarumba, NSW,[1] which was the first and only museum in Australia dedicated to interpreting the lives of rural women. Resisting community nostalgia to create a Pioneer Ladies’ Museum, Wendy was uncompromising about the importance of representing ordinary women’s lives.

Always ahead of her time, Wendy recognised the central importance of the stories of objects, their provenance, history and context. This might seem a commonplace concept today, but in the 1980s most museums catalogued their collection in terms of what the object looked like. At this time there was scant interest in capturing detailed object histories in the donation transaction, and most museum catalogue forms had little or no space to record provenance and history.

Wendy felt strongly about the lives of women on the margins, such as Aboriginal women, spinsters, and those whose lives left few material relics. In one of her

many inspirational lectures she wrote: Museums send unspoken messages to visitors that they represent people who had possessions. This is obvious but nevertheless needs to be said. So how do we represent women who had very few possessions, and there were many, many of them? They are historically dispossessed unless we collect their stories and memories.[2] This was one of the central preoccupations of Wendy’s museum practice. And in answer to this question she developed a host of projects and strategies to counter the silence about women’s everyday lives of work and sacrifice. Apart from richly documented and contextualised objects, she encouraged women to write the unvarnished stories of their mothers and grandmothers.[3] Using her training as an anthropologist, she documented domestic work practices, such as the steps in a traditional wash day on ‘Gunbar’ station in the Riverina; and small-scale rural industries such as eucalyptus distilling. Indeed in its first decade, the PHW was funded largely by the sale of eucalyptus oil from Tumbarumba.

The Pioneer Women’s Hut opened in 1985 in a series of converted prison huts, with a national mission to collect and interpret the experience of rural workingclass women and families. Unlike most museums, almost every object was provenanced. Wendy turned the usual museum practice of passive collecting on its head. She knew that the objects she was seeking for the museum would not walk through the door. Few donors then thought that wagga rugs, improvised furniture, rag rugs, aprons, darned socks, pegs, flour bags, or ordinary household crafts were important enough to be in a museum collection. Wendy strategically collected for the museum by contacting families, promoting the museum’s collecting priorities, speaking on radio, writing in rural newspapers, and above all by honouring the stories of the women who owned or made the items. Within a decade from the early 1980s, Wendy Hucker had created a women’s history collection of national significance.

It was an object lesson in museum making and collecting: staying focused on the collecting priorities, strategically searching for rural women’s objects with their associated stories, and saying no to items that were not relevant to the acquisition policy. As everyone knows, this is a hard ask in small communities, especially for a new museum. Wendy put backbone into the museum volunteers by holding training sessions on how to graciously say ‘no’ to offers of donation.

Wendy Hucker had a knack for distilling policy and museum ideas into plain English. The PWH’s collection policy and values statement is a model of clarity:

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

Creator of the Pioneer Women’s Hut at Tumbarumba NSW

It is our policy to collect domestic objects relating to rural families, especially the women, and by gathering the stories put these objects in the context of their lives. We recognise the great diversity of women’s lives and, from the first days of settlement, the very different ethnic origins that give us our Australian identity as women. We acknowledge the major contribution of Aboriginal women, especially in understanding the environment, and remind our visitor that they were our first needlewomen.[4] The Pioneer Women’s Hut broke the museum mould in many other ways. Visitors were allowed and even encouraged to touch items. The museum was always a buzz of conversation, one of Wendy’s particular KPIs. It was one of the first museums to have accessible storage, so visitors could open plan cabinets and look at doyleys and textiles. And from its foundation, the Pioneer Women’s Hut was envisaged as a national museum, reaching a national audience through its research, publications, national collection initiatives, collaborative projects and generous loans to many state and national museums. The Pioneer Women’s Hut still sets a standard for national impact and innovation that some state and national museums struggle to reach.

One of Wendy Hucker’s major achievements was the creation of the National Quilt Register (NQR),[5] a survey and documentation project to record the provenance and women’s stories behind quilts in public and private collections across Australia. This was Wendy putting into practical action her concerns about recording vulnerable object histories that opened a window into women’s lives and experience.

In keeping with her inclusive values, Wendy was adamant about valuing rough and ready waggas, and unfinished quilts and fillings, as much or even more than beautifully made quilts. The NQR documents

more than a thousand quilts and women’s stories that might otherwise have been lost as memories fade and owners die. Among its landmark achievements, the NQR was the first national survey and documentation project for any category of material culture in Australia. It is notable that this landmark project was initiated not by a well-resourced state or national museum, but by a volunteer-managed museum working with a network of volunteers across the country. Wendy Hucker didn’t think this was at all remarkable.

In its accessibility and focus on provenance and people stories, the NQR has inspired other collaborative material culture research initiatives such as the Migration Heritage Centre’s Belongings project,[6] documenting migration objects and stories, and the Powerhouse Museum’s Australian Dress Register.[7] In addition to her work at the Pioneer Women’s Hut, Wendy Hucker was the initiator or partner in a number of exhibitions. She was a contributor to the 1988 Hearth and Home exhibition and catalogue,[8] and other exhibitions presented by NSW Historic Houses Trust, now Sydney Living Museums. She was the instigator of the 1993 travelling exhibition Mum Stayed Home, about women’s experience of the 50s.

And she helped shape the Powerhouse Museum’s travelling exhibition, Births of a Nation, in 2000. This work was part of a long collaboration with staff from the PHM, which recognised Wendy Hucker’s work through presenting her their Distinguished Service Award in 2001.

When the PWH was on its feet at Tumbarumba, Wendy moved on to assist other museums with their collections. She did contract work for the National Museum of Australia, researching and documenting women’s collections and a proposed exhibition on backyards. (What a great idea.) She was the consultant curator for the development of Mugga Mugga, the historic slab house near Canberra. With Jan Lucas

bottom left:

Pioneer Women's Hut at Tumbarumba, NSW.

bottom right:

One of the permanent exhibitions 'Never Done' at the Pioneer Women's Hut.

right:

Tussock grass hat belonging to Caroline Casey, c.1880.

4. http://www.pioneerwomenshut.com/ about-pioneer-women-s-hut.aspx 5. Originally hosted by amol (Australian Museums On Line) and then by CAN (Collections Australia Network), the site has been archived by Pandora http://pandora.nla.gov. au/pan/22046/20021203-0000/ amol.org.au/nqr/index.html. The National Wool Museum at Geelong has offered to host the National Quilt Register, but the site is not yet live.

6. http://www.migrationheritage.nsw. gov.au/belongings-home/index.html 7. http://www. australiandressregister.org/ 8. Wendy Hucker, ‘The Pioneer Women’s Hut and Rural Domestic Crafts’, in Hearth and Home; Women’s Decorative Arts and Crafts 1800-1930, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, 1988. http://www.migrationheritage.nsw. gov.au/belongings-home/index.html

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 29

and Shirley Clark, Wendy catalogued the remarkable Mavis Furner collection of crochet dresses, now installed in the Up to Date Store at Coolamon, NSW.[9] Through the PWH, Wendy and her collaborators Anne Thoroughgood, Elsie Shepherd and Ellen Bradley, published a number of books and catalogues based on original research into women’s stories including Memories of My Mother, The Midwives of Tumbarumba, The Midwives of Rosewood and Elsie Shepherd’s My Life with Aprons 1937-1997. Wendy was generous in sharing her knowledge, networks and research, and her work informed other books on women’s history and material culture, including Jennifer Isaacs’ books, The Gentle Arts and Pioneer Women of the Bush and Outback.

Wendy Hucker’s knowledge and good sense were highly valued. She served on funding committees for Arts NSW and was a trustee of the NSW Historic Houses Trust, now Sydney Living Museums. She had a great impact as a mentor, thinker, writer and lecturer on museums. Excursions to the Pioneer Women’s Hut were an inspiration for a generation of museum studies students. Wendy was always a plain speaker and truth teller, delivering memorable papers and questioning received museum ideas. She was no fan of museum accreditation schemes, seeing them as an irrelevant straightjacket that didn’t take account of what made excellent museums. Her performance indicators were about improving the visitors’ experience, and making a difference in peoples’ lives today, which she expressed through the mantra of ‘relevance not relics’.

As Wendy Hucker’s work reveals, real museum leadership is not the consequence of one’s position or the prestige of an institution. She embodied the essential qualities of a true museum leader. She was a great listener, teacher and communicator.

She practised the idea of museums as inclusive organisations. She was a collaborator with community, state and national museums, and with volunteers across Australia. She enlarged opportunities for people and museums wherever she worked. And her work demonstrated the power of museums to make a difference in people’s lives today.

Above all, Wendy Hucker was an outspoken advocate for rural women’s history, regional equity, and volunteer museums. She had an inspiring belief in the capacity of community museums to be leaders and museological innovators, writing that: Small museums in Australia are the heart of the museum industry; we are the main custodians of our Australian-ness — we are the reference point of the major state museums.

We are real leaders and we are the ones who will help show the people’s way into the next century.[10]

Visiting the Pioneer Women’s Hut or browsing the National Quilt Register who could argue with that? [ ] Wendy Hucker: 1928 - 2015 Kylie Winkworth is a museum and heritage consultant. She first met Wendy Hucker in 1983, and vividly remembers their conversation about the difficulties of collecting darning. <wink8@bigpond.com> Citation: Kylie Winkworth, ‘Wendy Hucker: Museum leader, thinker and innovator ’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 24(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2015, pp.27-29.

In one article Wendy wrote of acquiring a rare tussock grass hat, and of the need to spend more time ‘understanding the heart of the maker or user’.

We were given recently a woman’s hat made about 1880 from native tussock grass at ‘Dry Plains’ Adaminaby. Last week I was speaking with Phyllis about her grandmother, Caroline Casey, who made and wore the hat. We stood yarning in the winter sun about ‘Dry Plains’, recent stock prices, the present Tumbarumba weather and I was about to go when Phyllis told me that when Caroline was old, and had long since left ‘Dry Plains’ and lived with them in Tumbarumba, she would save part of each pension cheque for a year and then get Mick Mullins, who ran the local Tumbarumba taxi to take her to ‘Dry Plains’ (over 100 kilometres) for the shearing. What a sense of place and love for the farm she must have had and how information like that gives us an insight into Caroline and through her to the hat. It’s our sort of ‘performance indicator’.

From ‘The Reality of the Dream: The Women’s Hut… Six years Down the Track’, Wendy Hucker, in ‘Out of the Box – A Special Issue on Women in Museums’, Museums Australia Journal, edited Kylie Winkworth, 1990, p.27.

9. http://www.coolamonshire. com.au/f.ashx/The-MavisFurner-Collection.pdf 10. Unpublished lecture on museums and memory, c.2000.

30 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

Exhibition Review

Ultrasound of a museum’s collections: MAAS Recollect: Health and Medicine Exhibition reviewed

above:

Rebecca Lush.

right:

An overall view of the exhibition space and how the glass cabinets were arranged. far right: The display cabinets showing how coloured backgrounds have been effectively utilised.

Rebecca Lush

I 1. In fact the re-naming returns the museum to its historical title carried since 1950, which links back to the Technology Museum of 1893, then provided a dedicated building in Harris Street Ultimo.

This continued as the main home of the state museum for science, technology and applied arts until the redevelopment and rehousing of the main exhibitions and staff facilities in 1998, as a Bicentennial project in the repurposed former Ultimo power station – under the shorter branding title of the ‘Powerhouse Museum’.

n August 2015, the newly re-named Museum of Applied Sciences (MAAS),[1] formerly Powerhouse Museum, unveiled its new Recollect suite of exhibition displays, focusing on health and medicine.

To provide some context, the Recollect project of a series of exhibitions produced its first instalment in 2014. In ideas and organisation, this series challenges what has become the standard, often narrative-driven, chronologically sequenced exhibition display. Instead, Recollect showcases a large number of objects in the museum’s collection under certain overarching themes, stimulating interpretation through a series of linking narratives around particular groupings of objects. For example, there have already been displays focused on familiar object-types, such as shoes, toy trains, cars, and underwear.

To some extent this type of exhibition harks back to the early ‘cabinet of curiosities’ model of historical collecting, in which a strong concentration of objects is brought together, with few labels distinguishing individual items, and a focus more on the aesthetics of display. In noting this, however, curators Tilly Boleyn and Damien McDonald are in other ways drawing on recent technologies of exhibition practice, and instead of individualised information for each object, have

provided thematic text panels.

However this provision of synthesised information has also been in response to earlier feedback from visitors who responded negatively to the unassisted ‘curiosities cabinet’ display format when first launched. The exhibition has, therefore, been altered to suit the needs of its target audience: a broad crosssection of the public. What is subsequently revealed is the peculiar benefits of such an exhibition. By displaying the items in a unique way, a dialogue has been aroused between museum professionals and the public that has questioned and transformed what Recollect conveys and ultimately means to its audience.

Entering the exhibition space for Recollect: Health & Medicine can be quite overwhelming. What visitors undoubtedly notice first is the massing of tall glass cabinets filled with curious objects. Opposite these cabinets are larger single objects — for example a morgue table and an Iron Lung. Behind the cabinets are two workstations especially prepared for children.

Activities are designed for interaction: a game is provided that replicates the board game, Operation; and a workshop space for teaching origami is prepared. At one end of the exhibition space is a lifesized plastic model of the human body displaying the internal organs. At the other end is a full-sized

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 31

ambulance.

It is useful to begin a visit to this exhibition at the ambulance point. This area not only functions as a general orientation space but also sets the tone for the display and establishes a context for responding to the whole exhibition.

Located opposite the ambulance is an information board explaining the purpose of the Recollect displays.

The percentage of the museum’s collection on display is referred to often, and the number is usually miniscule. Visitors learn that the MAAS only displays approximately 4-to-6% of its entire collection at any one time. One premise for Recollect, therefore, is to select and display a larger number of museumowned objects than usual, to reach a wider audience.

It provides an opportunity for the public to view many objects normally confined to storage — in fact the layout even creates the illusion that visitors have stumbled into an actual storeroom.

Allowing maximum opportunities for exhibition around a certain theme can increase visitors’ conjecture about selection and significance. The exhibition’s intention is, however, more complex.

One of the first display cases that visitors encounter after the introductory text panel is filled with deteriorated objects — for example, anatomy skulls bearing central cracks are presented. These objects

are included in an attempt to teach the public about the importance of managing storage conditions in the museum. It was wise to include a small amount of explanatory text highlighting their purpose in the overall display, since this presents a great opportunity to elevate the exhibition from merely a display of the collection to providing learning-tools, revealing behind-the-scenes information about the responsibilities of museums and how they carry out their work of collections care.

One great feature of the Recollect exhibition is where it has been positioned inside the museum — located on level one, which is below ground in the four-storey Powerhouse building. Visitors, if entering from the main entrance located on level three, must venture down to the lowermost level.

Following the widespread image of a museum storing its collections in the basement, this location supports the exhibition’s concept of ‘putting the storeroom on display’. If visitors enter via the alternative entrance on level one, a similar atmosphere is still achieved through the skillful use of lighting.

Recollect is quite a dimly lit exhibition, with spotlights highlighting the massed objects inside the cabinets and contrasted to the larger, stand-alone objects positioned opposite the showcases. In some display cabinets a painted red background absorbs the

32 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015

Exhibition Review

light, accentuating individual objects within crowded groupings. A particular cabinet that well utilizes this colour accent holds metal medical instruments resting on a red board.

In other cabinets no coloured background is used, allowing light to pass through the transparent glass and build the illusion of more objects summoning attention. For example, when there are many medical bottles grouped together, a glass background accentuates their number while also allowing visitors to view some of the objects from either side of the display case, easing congestion within a compressed space.

Although the layout of the overall exhibition is impressive and physically transports the visitor into a museum storeroom, there are some problems raised in the manner of presentation, through the reliance

on more thematic panels than would normally be employed. For example, there are six panels in total that introduce a group of similar objects. These are differentiated by action-options: ‘dispense it’, ‘deliver it’, ‘study it’, ‘enhance it’, ‘power it/question it’, and ‘stop it’. The thematic panels carry small, white text on a black background, and are positioned at an appropriate eye-level height for adults; each panel blends into its surroundings so as not to interfere with the objects on display.

As indicated by their titles, the panels cover an array of themes relating to treatments of illness. The first, ‘dispense it’, traces the history of how medicine has been dispensed historically from the time of apothecaries. Their ‘tools of trade’, including various bottles and containers, are located nearby. The next theme, ‘deliver it’, focuses on how medical treatments

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 24(2) – Summer 2015 33

To some extent this type of exhibition harks back to the early ‘cabinet of curiosities’ model of historical collecting.

left: Bottles on display in the glass cabinet showing how the lighting was highlighting individual objects.

and medicines have been delivered across long distances to tend those in need.

The next three themes — ‘study it’, ‘enhance it’ and ‘power it/question it’ — focus on innovations in medicine. These include machines that revolutionized medical practice, prosthetic limbs, and the role of electricity in bringing healing to the body. The final section, themed ‘question it’, delves into the world of pseudo-science. The objects on display here invoke the realm of quackery and gullibility, including oral sprays guaranteeing weight loss. Their inclusion in the display presses beyond healing and conventional medicine, incorporating a more holistic representation of the volatility of human responses playing into medical history.

The conclusion of the exhibition is marked by the theme ‘stop it’. This particular theme would have benefitted from more thorough labeling. The thematic panel explains that MAAS holds a large collection of contraception objects — pills, condoms and instructive booklets, to name a few. However these objects opened up a frustratingly incomplete potential, as they suggested considerably more themes to be explored. Stories of female empowerment through greater control of sexual health especially came to mind when observing the last assortment of objects.

Whilst many such objects are meant to spur visitors’ curiosity, the exhibition runs the risk of frustrating the interest aroused. From witnessing visitor interaction within the space, the larger objects with labels consistently attracted the most attention.

Although some of the objects in the display cabinets have their collection record tags attached, the majority do not provide information and it inevitably

occurs that visitors are intrigued to have better support information for unidentified objects. What the museum might consider for future exhibitions on the Recollect model is that electronic tools such as mobile devices or iPads connected to the museum catalogue could immeasurably enhance the visitor experience. The exhibition is aesthetically appealing to wander through, but learning engagement may be thwarted unless objects are known or able to be identified personally. Without information support, it is difficult to commence a dialogue with individual works or understand the networks of association many objects may have both fed into and created.

A particular section that comes to mind in review is that concerning medical teaching models. There are some wonderfully rich stories that could be ‘told’ by the objects themselves. However, when massed in one space this tends to skew their significance through being part of a multitude, rather than heightening engagement with individual objects or their unique representations. The curator-led tour, by contrast, offered wonderful stories and support interpretation that, if permanently included in the exhibition’s support tools, would have considerably enhanced understanding of the content on display.

Overall, whilst the purpose of the exhibition was clear, interesting and well delivered, the selectivity of its information ran the risk of being too vague for a visitor committing time and curiosity to learn about the museum’s holdings. However the location and lighting of the exhibition suggestively created the environment of a museum’s storeroom, providing an alluring space filled with objects arousing much curiosity.

Many exhibitions in fact take collection objects from storage as part of temporary exhibition programs, contextualising and interpreting such objects to provide a broader context for their origins and significance, for wider public experience of the heritage museums hold. This exhibition, however, in adopting the device of replicating storage conditions, inevitably favours massing and categorical groupings of objects over individualised engagement.

Nevertheless the premise of the exhibition is clear and it does stimulate the desire to know more of the richness of contents held in the extensive collections of the Museums of Applied Arts and Sciences’ numerous stores. [ ] Rebecca Lush is a student of the Masters of Museum and Heritage Studies course at the University of Sydney. She currently works in the heritage sector in New South Wales.

Citation: Rebecca Lush, ‘Ultrasound of a museum’s collections:MAAS Recollect: Health and Medicine Exhibition reviewed’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 24(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2015, pp.30-33.

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