Museums Australia Magazine 20(1)

vol 20 (1) – august 2011

Museums Australia

Museums Australia & Interpretation Australia National Conference

At the Frontier Exploring the Possibilities

Save the date 14th - 18th November atthefrontier.com.au On behalf of Museums Australia and Interpretation Australia we welcome you to join us for the 15th Museums Australia National Conference combined with the 19th IAA National Symposium, to be held in Perth from the 14th to the 18th of November.

Frontiers are created by, and in turn create, our natural, built and social environments; they reveal much about who we are and who we want to be. Frontiers generate new experiences and ways of doing things. What do we do when we reach a frontier? Where are we headed? What have we left behind? What if we find ourselves in-between frontiers?

Join us in ‘exploring the possibilities’ of culture, arts, heritage, environment, recreation and tourism and the diverse ways in which they define our position and place; in engaging with the past, where we are right now and into the future.

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[Museums Australia]Jobs listing Museums Australia facilitates ‘Positions Vacant’ advertising on our new and improved website.

Our online Jobs Listing and Bulletin allows organisations to reach thousands of industry and professional people in metropolitan and regional Australia, as well as overseas in New Zealand, the UK and beyond.

Our Jobs Listing is available for everyone to view online, not just MA members.

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For details and bookings visit www.museumsaustralia.org.au

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Museums Australia is pleased to introduce an all new National Award for institutions.

The Museums and Galleries National Awards, or MAGNAs, will recognise excellent work nationally in the categories of exhibitions, public programs and sustainability projects.

exhibitions

The MAGNAs will be open to all Australian and New Zealand cultural collecting institutions, member and non-member.

Any project that promotes sustainable practices. Including architecture, collection management, administration, technology and media, energy consumption, and adaptive reuse projects.

A physical or virtual interpreted presentation of materials owned or borrowed by the institution.

public programs Community development and education projects that promote the institution’s vision and collection.

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For further information on the awards please visit www.museumsaustralia.org.au/site/magna.php

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Graduate study options include, art history and curatorship, museums and collections, cultural and environmental heritage, visual culture research, history, classics and archaeology.

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7 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 7

Contents

In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2011—2013 top:

President’s message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

middle: bottom:

ICOM Norway: Responding to an

left: right:

overwhelming national tragedy in July . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Memories, voices and silences in museums. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

president

Dr Darryl McIntyre FAIM (Retired CEO, National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra) vice-president

Belinda Cotton (Head, Travelling Exhibitions, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) treasurer

Suzanne Bravery (Manager, Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne) secretary

Museum Metadata Exchange (MME) update. . . . . 14

Evolving Identities –

Belinda Nemec (Museum consultant, Melbourne)

King Tutankhamun:

Meredith Blake (Research Fellow, RMIT University, Melbourne)

Fascination with an 18th Dynasty monarch. . . . . . 20

Rebekah Butler (Executive Director, Museum & Gallery Services Queensland, Brisbane)

Plants, baskets, and prints in London:

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

Australian season at the British Museum. . . . . . . . . 22

Robert Heather (Event & Exhibition Manager, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne)

Fabulous Connections. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Soula Veyradier (Curator, City of Melville Museum & Local History Service, Booragoon, WA) Frank Howarth (Chair, ICOM Australia), Director, Australian Museum

Women in museums

public officer

COVER IMAGE: Golden Falcon, found on King Tutankhamun’s mummy.

Photo: Cassie May.

Advertising: 02) 6273 2437 Subscriptions: (02) 6273 2437 Fax: (02) 6273 2451 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice Murphy Design: Brendan O’Donnell & Selena Kearney Print: Blue Star Print Printed on 100% Australian, 70-100% recycled carbon neutral paper stock.

ex officio member

2010 & 2011 Christchurch earthquakes. . . . . . . . . . 30

convening in Alice Springs (2012). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Editorial: (02) 6273 2437

members

Contemporary Indigenous Art. . . . . . 16

A wake-up call: Museums in the aftermath of the

Museums Australia Magazine PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608

William (Bill) Storer (previously: President, MA-NSW; Chair, Community Museums Network; Newcastle)

© 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 Office for the Arts and Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities; National Museum of Australia; Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum); Western Australian Museum; and Link Digital (Canberra).

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

Dr Don McMichael CBE, Red Hill, Canberra state/territory branch presidents/ representatives (subject to change throughout year)

ACT Carol Cartwright (Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra) NSW Dr Andrew Simpson (Director, Museum Studies Program, Macquarie University, Sydney) NT Michelle Smith (Curator, Territory History, Museum of Central Australia, Alice Springs) SA Robert Morris (Head of Collections, South Australian Museum, Adelaide) TAS Chris Tassell (Managing Director, National Trust of Australia (TAS), Launceston) QLD Lisa Jones (Curator, Queensland Police Museum, Brisbane) VIC Daniel Wilksch (Coordinator, Digital Projects, Public Record Office Victoria, Melbourne) WA Christen John Bell (Curator, History House Museum, Armadale, WA)

8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

President’s message Darryl McIntyre

T

The new MA National Council held its first meeting for 2011 on 1 July 2011 at the Melbourne Museum. On behalf of Council and the association, I would like to thank the outgoing Council members, Jennifer Sanders, William (Bill) Seager, Tim Hart, and Lorraine Fitzpatrick, for their support, guidance and varied contributions as Council members since 2009 (and in the case of Tim Hart, Treasurer, and Lorraine Fitzpatrick, VicePresident, for their previous term as Executive members of the National Council in these same positions).

The new Council members are listed opposite, on the inside cover of this issue. Bill Storer continues as Secretary; Suzanne Bravery has moved from a member of Council to Treasurer; meanwhile Carol Cartwright (ACT Branch president), Andrew Simpson (NSW branch president), Robert Morris (SA branch president), Daniel Wilsch (VIC branch president), and Christen Bell (representing the WA Branch), continue to provide service and leadership for the association as ex officio branch members of Council.

The Council meeting in Melbourne discussed membership issues, strategies for increasing membership and the role of National Networks (former SIGs). A standing committee of Council will examine membership benefits and provide focus on the direct interests of members in the welfare of the association. There was also discussion of the MA Strategic Plan for 2011-15, and working parties (comprising Council and ordinary members) will progress the development of particular strategic objectives and agreed outcomes, considering also performance indicators as the year progresses.

The Museum Metadata Exchange (MME) project steering committee met on 12 July 2011 at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Also present were representatives of CHASS (Council of Humanities and Social Sciences) and ANDS (Australian National Data Service), the project funding provider on behalf of government.

The MME website is now online and more than 900 collection datasets have been uploaded, including datasets from regional and remote museums (using the CAN website to ensure this important information is not lost, following the Cultural Ministers Council decision in February 2011 not to apply further funding towards the development of CAN).

A presentation on the MME project will be made at the 2011 National Conference in Perth in November.

Meanwhile CAMD Executive Officer, Dr Meredith Foley, has provided a valuable update report on the MME project in this Magazine issue (pp.14-15).

Planning for the 2011 MA National Conference to be held in Perth in November is progressing well, and a great range and number of abstracts was received by the Planning Committee. Planning is also progressing for the 2012 National Conference in Adelaide (likely in September), and the 2013 National Conference in Canberra (in May, during the centenary year celebrating Canberra s establishment as the national capital).

On 2 August 2011, a CHASS-organised workshop on the development of the National Cultural Policy was held at the University of Western Sydney’s Parramatta campus. At this workshop, introduced by Professor Stuart McIntyre on behalf of the CHASS board, Senator Kate Lundy was an opening speaker, representing Arts Minister Simon Crean, who, along with Deputy Secretary Richard Eccles, later formed a panel to answer questions and provide information on the intentions the Minister has in developing the NCP, as the first-such national policy promulgated for 20 years.

A large gathering of arts and other cultural heritage–related bodies and individuals participated in the Parramatta workshop, out of which CHASS will be developing advocacy positions for forwarding to the federal Minister. On 11 August Minister Crean released a discussion paper on the National Cultural Policy, inviting submissions in a consultation period that will be open until 31 October 2011, which is available on the Minister’s website < http://www.minister.regional.gov. au/sc/releases/2011/august/sc099_2011.aspx>.

Minister Crean has indicated that the NCP will be detailed and refined by government during the last months of the year and released in its final form in early 2012. Museums Australia will of course be producing a submission within the open consultation period within the next two months.

We will meet shortly with the cultural diplomacy branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about possible funding for speakers on the situation facing museums in the Middle East; also on the agenda is funding for speakers from Africa, SouthEast Asia and the Pacific regions.

It is of great concern to Museums Australia that the continuing efficiency dividend demanded of all federal agencies is continuing to impact at deepening levels on all the National museums. This has led variously to voluntary staff redundancy measures and contraction of exhibitions. Effects impact directly on the delivery of national outreach programs by our valued national institutions, with funding contractions also continuing to impact further at some state government levels.

Museums Australia has raised its concerns in the past about these issues in submissions to government, and will continue to do so in it’s advocacy work. The national association is also particularly concerned about budgets tightening at local government levels, affecting our community-based and regional museums, which play such an important role in the sector at large. [ ]

Dr Darryl McIntyre, FAIM National President Museums Australia

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 9

Museums and civil society in times of crisis

ICOM Norway: Responding to an overwhelming national tragedy in July

top: middle: bottom: left: right:

Bernice Murphy (National Director, MA)

W above (right):

Leif Pareli (Chair, ICOM Norway).

ithin hours of waking to world news of the tragic deaths and destruction in Oslo and on Utøya Island on 23rd July, I wrote to six colleagues within the museums sector in Norway. I had been on those streets where the July attack on government offices occurred only a few months previously, when participating in an ethics workshop during a weekend visit to Oslo in March.

Through the generosity of ICOM Norway Chairperson and colleagues, I had been driven around the intimately scaled capital to regain a sense of the important buildings historically as the city grew, and from a nearby mountain had looked over the islands just offshore from the capital.

I could picture the location of the events vividly.

The following week Frank Howarth, Director of the Australian Museum and Chair of ICOM Australia, wrote to his counterpart and colleague, Leif Pereli, Chairperson of ICOM Norway; and I also followed up with a more general message from Museums Australia on behalf of MA’s President and Council.

Frank Howarth’s message about Australian colleagues’ empathy and concern mentioned a comparable moment of mass deaths at the hands of a lone gunman in Australia (the Port Arthur massacre, 28 April 1996, claiming 35 deaths and 21 people wounded). The message from ICOM Australia alluded to the role of museums in reflecting upon and perhaps helping to bear witness to the grief and assault on values that occurs at a time of such enveloping tragedy.

By way of reply, ICOM Norway’s Chair, Leif Pereli, sent a moving response to ICOM Australia, copied to MA, in which he relayed the atmosphere of the people’s vigil that spontaneously emerged as a civic reaction in subsequent days. Then we learnt that the shootings had even claimed the life of a museum director in Oslo, who had been helping at the island youth camp that fateful weekend.

With permission of Frank Howarth and Leif Perelli, the details provided in the response from Norway are conveyed to Museums Australia’s members and colleagues below. Leif later sent some images accompanying his message, and these are shared below with colleagues – he appears in one, among the Rose Walk vigil gathering on Monday evening, 25 July. [ ]

Message to Frank Howarth, Chair ICOM Australia, from ICOM Norway Thank you for your words of concern.

It means a lot to me and others to receive such messages of sympathy from friends and colleagues around the world. I will of course convey your message within the Norwegian museum community.

I myself am safe and well, and so is everybody else I know, but we are bound to know some of the victims as name lists get released (or at least their parents – most of the victims were just teenagers, to make this horrible incident even worse).

The museum community was also directly hurt, as one of the adult persons murdered at the island happened to be the recently appointed director of the Norwegian Maritime Museum, who for many years had been serving as the ‘housewife’ of the Utøya summer camp, and was especially mentioned as such by the Prime Minister in his moving speech at the memorial service in the Oslo Cathedral on Sunday.

Fortunately it seems Norwegian society will make something good out of these terrible events – through a determination not to be overcome by hatred and cries for revenge, but rather taking this as a cause for moving Norway in a direction of more democracy, more openness and more compassion.

The Rose Walk vigil last Monday was truly moving, with a record 200,000 people gathering in the Town Hall Square to listen to speeches by the Prime Minister and the Crown Prince and others, and all carrying roses which they later laid down all over town. The whole city is now literally covered in flowers, a very moving sight.

Again, thanks for your sympathy.

Leif Pareli (Chair, ICOM Norway; Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo) 1 August 2011

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Affirming oral history as living testimony

Memories, voices and silences in museums

Janis Wilton

I

have a passion and respect for the work done by local and regional museums as cultural institutions that survive on small budgets and the assistance of committed volunteers. I am fascinated by the memories they hold – in their collections and through their volunteers – and those that are absent.

I am intrigued by the ways in which they interpret their collections: the sometimes apparently muddled over-collections that are left to speak for themselves; the themes selected; the strategies used; the connections – and disconnections – to community and to community memories.

In my talk in an MA symposium on Museums, Memory and Ethics in May,[1] I focused on two strands: the ways in which oral history scholarship provides insight into the silences and mistakes that are encountered in museums; and the power of what I refer to as memory exhibitions. I have written about mistakes, silences and remembering in local museums elsewhere.[2] Here I focus on memory exhibitions and, in particular, one memory exhibition.

Memory exhibitions can include objects, technologies, visual and aural experiences. They are emotive. They tend to engage all the senses. At the core, the driving force is not a particular historical theme or a collection of items: it is a collection of memories. The purpose is usually to address a silence, to fill a gap, to dismantle a myth, to challenge an orthodoxy.

This happens on a grand scale in national institutions like the Museum of Terror in Budapest, or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, where the memory-making is about exposing the injustices and horrors of previous regimes and establishing a new sense of nation or community. At a community level, a similar purpose shapes the District Six Museum in Cape Town in South Africa. The memory-making in museums like these has attracted deconstruction, debate and discussion.

My focus is on a different style of memory exhibition.

It is on the work done by local and regional museums in New South Wales to fill gaps in their local histories through memories and voices, and it is on the innovative strategies and processes they employ to achieve these ends within the constraints of limited funding and resources. I offer one example.

Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG)[3] under its current director, Joe Eisenberg, has a program of exhibitions that invite art and art-making into conversations about the history of the locality. The director’s aim is to engage audiences with different ways to remember the past and to identify with the locality, while addressing gaps in the history of the area and while also stretching ideas and practices about the relationships between art, history and community. Joe Eisenberg has had artists painting views of Maitland from the other side of the Hunter River; he has commissioned an artist, designer and historian to paint, evoke and commemorate the Maitland Jewish

top:

Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 2009

above:

Janis Wilton

1. Museums, Memory and Ethics (Museums Australia symposium), National Museum of Australia, 19-20 May 2011.

2. See, for example, Janis Wilton, ‘Museums and memories: remembering the past in local and community museums’, Public History Review, 12, Sydney, UTSePress, 2006.

3. www.mrag.org.au

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 11

left:

The gallery space on the ground floor of the 1910 building.

This space was filled by the Maitland Technological Museum from 1910 to 1955, and from August 2009 to February 2010 was the site of Fiona Davies’ Intangible Collection.

Cemetery and the nineteenth-century community it represents; he is working with ABC regional radio and local government organisations to record, paint and present stories of the Hunter River.

For the opening of the new gallery in 2009, Eisenberg commissioned artist Fiona Davies to create an art installation that presented her responses to the stories and memories shared in oral history interviews about the former life of the old parts of the building, which now houses the Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

From 1910 to 1987, the building was the home of the Maitland Technical College; and from 1910 to 1955, the ground floor of the building was home to one of the branch museums of Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (now the Powerhouse Museum). The 1955 flood, which proved devastating for Maitland, brought about the closing of the museum: items were destroyed; those that survived were sent back to Sydney. The old buildings more recently became the home of the Regional Gallery in 2003, with the new galleries opened as one complex in 2009.

Entitled Intangible Collection, Fiona Davies’ installation occupied the lower floor of the original building – the space that once housed the Maitland Technological Museum.

Davies’ work process involved researching the site and, in particular, recording oral history interviews with those who had studied, worked in, or otherwise visited the technical college and museum.[4] She started with documentary records. These included ledgers of objects transferred between

the Sydney museum and Maitland; correspondence associated with the bureaucracy of both the museum and the technical college; material about the teaching of institutional courses, the teachers and successive principals; and newspaper clippings on displays of students’ work. The records had very few photographs and rarely included stories about the students or staff of the technical college, or about visitors to the museum or the context of the site.

By contrast, once Fiona Davies began interviewing (a total of 32 interviewees) and recording community memories, the building became peopled, the rooms had furniture, and the museum gained living details encompassing an amazing range of objects, sounds and smells.

Interviewees shared memories about the types of courses they studied or taught at the technical college, the skills learnt, the local cafés where they bought snacks and meals, the facilities or lack of facilities – the location and layout of rooms, how students travelled to and from the technical college, the behaviour expected of them, the World War II ex-servicemen who received re-training, specific items made while studying, the opportunities provided, memorable staff, the juggling of part-time study and paid employment.

Interviewees also shared memories of the museum: large glass cases, stuffed birds, a caretaker who kept close watch on visiting children, mineral samples, military weapons, a model steam locomotive with buttons to press, the crocodile skin that sat in the

4. Fiona provided an account of her process in an interview and notes recorded in 2009. See also Fiona Davies, http://fionadavies. com.au/ and the catalogue for the installation, Intangible Collection, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 2009.

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Affirming oral history as living testimony

building foyer, and the museum as a place of escape and a place to spend time.

It was the messages, images, sounds and emotions from the interviews that both shaped the art installation and layered the recorded memories back into the building.

The entrance to the installation carried a reproduction of the sign stating museum opening hours, and immediately on entry there were showcases with a small model of a Swiss chalet, stuffed birds, textile samples and a row of coal miners’ lamps. These items were temporarily repatriated from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. They were encased and displayed in ways to evoke the glass cases and descriptions provided by remembered visits to the museum in the 1940s and 1950s.

A video screen to the right had a constant flow and sound of water. It subtly evoked the flood that brought an end to the museum. Memories of the 1955 flood featured in the oral history interviews: it was a pivotal and cathartic moment, not just for the museum but for Maitland. The 1955 flood is a constantly revisited Maitland memory.

The museum displays for the project in 2009 sat within a cage made from recycled wooden frames and meshing. At one end, a row of women’s uniforms hung from the top of the cage; at the other end, men’s clothing. The technical college was remembered as a gendered place: boys and girls were kept apart – in different courses, in different parts of the technical college. A pile of papier mâché typewriter carcasses, echoing with an audio recording of the click, click, clack, ping, click, click, clack, ping of manual typewriters, completed the memories packed into the meshed cage.

The cage itself had meaning. Constructed to mirror the types of cages used in factories to lock up tools or machines, it provided, as Fiona explained, ‘a semipermeable membrane’. Most visitors followed the more formally defined pathways, but some climbed through and around. This represented both the gendered nature of the technical college and the attempts to control visitors in the museum; oral history interviews affirmed that the gender barriers were sometimes broken, and that visits to the museum were not always about looking at the objects – they provided moments of escape and they were social occasions.

In the second section of the installation, work done by students of the technical college, and retained afterwards as mementos of that experience, was incorporated into displays that evoked the skills taught and learnt, the traditions of showcasing students’ achievements, and the memories and stories that flowed around these items. Moments from those stories and memories could be heard. There was a looped audio of excerpts from the interviews. And a wall with movable panels mixed Davies’ drawings with photographs and documents provided by oral history participants and found during the research process.

For visitors, there were no interpretive labels; no explanations of the significance of components of the exhibition. Their task was to experience and to take away whatever impressions and messages they received. People walked, paused, looked, listened. More memories were shared. Intangible Collection offered a different way to experience the influence of oral history interviews and to engage with the past. Historical imagination took flight, visual and aural senses were

left:

Intangible Collection, birds repatriated from the Australian Museum.

below:

Views of the second part of the exhibition, located in the back part of the gallery and utilizing the arches that are an architectural feature of the space.

1. Endnotes

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 13

clockwise from top: Detail, women’s

uniforms; The cage viewed from the back; Garments designed and made by students; Intangible Collection, view on entering the installation; Detail, papier mâché typewriter carcasses.

engaged, aesthetic sensibilities were aroused. Visitors were inspired to record their own differing reactions.

The Visitors’ Book notes some visitors who wanted to share their memories of the technical college; some who simply enjoyed the art work; and others who wondered what it was all about but still found it stimulating.

Intangible Collection was presented through an artist’s response to a particular building and history.

It was therefore layered through the imaginative and creative skills of an artist.

However the ways in which the memories shared through oral history interviews shaped Fiona Davies’ interpretation and installation, and the creation of a heavily sensory experience – visual, aural, imaginative, emotional, challenging – as well as the repatriating of objects and memories to fill a silence and to interpret a building, are all indicative of the powerful, useful and, I argue, essential role that oral

history scholarship and practice can offer museums and art galleries, and indeed history more broadly.

Intangible Collection was also testament to the types of innovative exhibitions and projects initiated by local and regional museums and art galleries today, despite the limited funds and resources available to them. [] Dr Janis Wilton OAM is a public and oral historian based at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW. Photographs

by Michel Brouet, Fiona Davies, Noel Wilton.

Citation for this text: Janis Wilton, ‘Memories, voices and silences in museums: Affirming oral history as living testimony’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp.10-13 .

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

A project making Australian museum collections more accessible online

Museum Metadata Exchange (MME) update

Meredith Foley

T top: MME Database Homepage <http://museumex.org/> above:

Meredith Foley, Executive Officer, CAMD

1. The Atlas of Living Australia, which was initiated by CAMD in 2005, is supported by the CSIRO and a wide range of biodiversity collections in museums, universities and government agencies. See www.ala. org.au/. It has received substantial funding as a capability area under the federal government’s Strategic Research Infrastructure program.

he landmark Museum Metadata Exchange (MME) digital program is reaching the end of its initial phase, with close to 1,000 collection descriptions ready for upload to Research Data Australia. The result of a close collaboration between the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD) and Museums Australia (MA), the project has been hosted by the Powerhouse Museum and funded by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) under the National Research Infrastructure Strategy Program and the Super Science Initiative.

The MME project grew from a desire on the part of CAMD and MA to increase online access to the humanities collections held in Australia’s museums, in much the same way as has been achieved for biodiversity collections via the Atlas of Living Australia.

[1] This interest coincided with the desire of ANDS to add information from cultural collections to Research Data Australia, its online discovery service for research academics in the humanities and social sciences. The ANDS investment has allowed a modest, but potentially far-reaching, start to the work of releasing the enormous, and to date relatively untapped, humanities resources held in museums across Australia.

The need to make this information more accessible to researchers in the humanities, arts and social science fields has presented participating museums with an interesting challenge. Museums have been used to cataloguing and organising their collections object by object; academics, on the other hand, want to be able to identify the relationships between these objects and their field of research. The solution was to rethink collections by identifying groups of objects unified through people, places, events, technologies and other relational criteria.

In the process of conceptualising these collections, donated collections and collections already assembled for exhibitions were identified and written up fairly quickly. Far more creativity was needed by museum staff in identifying other notional collections within their institutions’ larger catalogue. With the assistance of the MME’s Data Analysts, Lynne McNairn and Julie-Anne Carbon, and Project Coordinator, Dan Collins, over 950 collection-level descriptions have now been assembled. Although up and running for a relatively short period and relatively unpublicised, the MME website, at http://museumex.org/ has already had several thousand hits with a large number of visits emanating from universities in Australia and overseas.

A browse through the Museum Metadata Exchange website reveals collections that touch on every aspect of Australian life, from fashion to sport, from war to life on the home front, and from pipes to computers.

Congratulations are due to the staff of the following museums for their efforts in preparing high-quality collection descriptions that far exceeded the quota required by ANDS: • Australian Centre for the Moving Image • Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory • South Australian Museum • Australian Museum • Museum Victoria • Sovereign Hill Museums • Australian National Maritime Museum • National Film and Sound Archive • Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery • Australian War Memorial • National Museum of Australia • Western Australian Museum • Historic Houses Trust NSW • Powerhouse Museum • History SA • Queensland Museum Some museums have begun to include images and further details of significant objects within the described collections. In addition, a promising start has been made in broadening the base of participants in the MME by harvesting readily available descriptions of collections in regional museums from the Collections Australia Network (CAN).

Early testing of the MME collection-level descriptions with university partners at Monash and RMIT has elicited positive responses from academic researchers.[2] Those who had not used museum collections before were impressed with the potential research data that could be brought into the academic domain. Most saw the concept of accessing information about museum collections online, alongside other academic resources, as ‘potentially powerful’ and ‘a useful tool at the beginning of a project, to help establish what’s available in a particular field or class of material’ outside the usual sources. The workshops also elicited useful advice about how the collection descriptions and associated search engines might be

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 15

above:

Dolls House, Powerhouse Museum

2. Academics participating in the MME workshops were from a range of fields including History, Australian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Art, Design, Architecture and Medical Anthropology.

3. ‘Digitisation Infrastructure’, Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, 2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure, June 2011, p.37, at http://www.innovation.gov.au/ Science/ResearchInfrastructure/ Documents/2011_Roadmap_ Exposure_Draft.pdf

enhanced to meet academic needs. Further workshops are planned for Flinders University, Adelaide and the University of Sydney.

With the current funding for the MME project coming to an end, discussions have already begun on sustaining and extending this start. One of the main aims of the project was to encourage museums to become self-sufficient in developing and uploading further collection descriptions and enhancements directly to the MME and RDA sites. This need is being met through the development of a module to manage collection-level descriptions as an integrated part of collection management software. Woing to ANDS ownership requirements, this work has been undertaken with Australian-based KE-EMu only; it is anticipated that the open-source nature of the module will see it picked up progressively by other collection software producers.

A group with representatives from MA, CAMD, ANDS, the project technical advisory team, the

universities and the Academy of Humanities has been set up to explore the future of the MME concept. It will meet in September to discuss opportunities to broaden the scope of project participants, and the development of additional tools including a collective thesaurus.

As the first humanities project funded by ANDS, the MME project has proved to be a successful and timely initiative. The effectiveness of its approach drew favourable mention in the recent exposure draft of the 2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure.[3] For the first time, the Roadmap included a ‘capability’ area aimed at supporting the digitisation of cultural collections ‘by assembling state-of-theart digitisation technology and expertise’. This was linked to a new ‘Cultures and Communities’ capability which aims to make a range of humanities-based data, including material for cultural collections, discoverable and reusable. CAMD and MA will push for funding for these interconnected aims over the coming months.

The success of the MME project has allowed the museum sector to make a number of important points about: • the depth and breadth of research resources in Australia’s collections; • the distributed nature of these collections and the critical need to enhance access using digital tools; • the value of these research resources to academics from a variety of disciplines; • the potential for collections to inspire new and innovative approaches to humanities topics; • the willingness of museums and their peak organisations to work together to make these collections accessible; and • the opportunities for museums and academic researchers to work more closely in the future.

Over time, it is anticipated that the potential shown by the MME project will further illustrate the need to resource the development of a national program to make Australia’s cultural collections systematically discoverable and accessible online. [ ] Meredith Foley is the Executive Officer of the Council of Australiasian Museum Directors (CAMD).

Citation for this text: Meredith Foley, ‘Museum Metadata Exchange (MME) update: A project making Australian museum collections more accessible online’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .14-15.

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

WA university collections form a benchmark collaborative exhibition

Evolving Identities – Contemporary Indigenous Art [1]

Mark Stewart

above:

Mark Stewart.

Photo: Brian Richards.

below: Julie Dowling, Minority Rites, 2003, synthetic polymer, ochre, plastic on canvas, 80 x 150cm (triptych). Image courtesy of the artist and Murdoch University Art Collection. Photo: Brian Richards.

1 Evolving Identities – Contemporary Indigenous Art was shown at the John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University, Perth, 13 May – 6 July 2011

1. Endnotes

T

aking into consideration the friendly but innate rivalry between tertiary institutions, it might seem surprising that a group of universities would join forces to deliver a major partnership initiative. However that’s precisely what happened when curators of Western Australia’s Curtin, Edith Cowan and Murdoch University art collections collaborated to present an exhibition entitled Evolving Identities – Contemporary Indigenous Art. This exhibition was an inaugural curatorial joint venture between these notable west coast university art collections; and quite possibly, a first-of-its-kind exhibition partnership among our Australian university art collections nationally.

The collaboration was somewhat inspired by another uniting of collections that took place more than a decade ago, through an exhibition project entitled Side by Side at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2000 (enthusiastically instigated by then director of AGWA, Alan Dodge). That exhibition showcased a broad crosssection of the state gallery’s collection, interwoven with related artworks drawn from notable Western Australiabased corporate and private collections, including: the Kerry Stokes Collection; the Holmes à Court Collection; and the Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art. While Side by Side celebrated the considerable cultural treasures represented in the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the state’s premier corporate and private collections, the current project, Evolving Identities, demonstrates that despite sometimes challenging budgets, our tertiary institutions have certainly kept pace with the explosion of Australian Indigenous art over recent decades. They have made astute choices in building quality art collections that are coherent, comprehensive and relevant.

In developing the curatorial premise for Evolving Identities, curators Pauline Williams (Curtin University), Connie Petrillo (Edith Cowan University), and the present author, Mark Stewart (Murdoch University), aimed to assemble a range of artworks from each university’s collection that reflect the diversity of Indigenous arts practice in Australia today. Nevertheless, in selecting the exhibition’s 112 artworks, it was not the curators’ objective to define Indigenous identity. Rather, their shared aim was to present works by artists who explore their own perceptions of self – thereby projecting Indigenous art practice as a vehicle for the survival and restatement of a strong cultural identity.

The exploration of self and restoration of identity are concerns clearly evident within urban-based communities as they emerge from the dispossession and injustice suffered by past generations. There is an ever-expanding movement of exciting urban Indigenous artists who act in response to the pressurised development of their culture, thriving on political empowerment. Fundamental to this movement is the recovery, reshaping and affirmative declaration of their cultural identity today. Through their work, many of these artists act as role models in the promotion of strong, positive images and messages – not just to Indigenous audiences, but to the wider community.

A number of artworks by urban-based artists presented in Evolving Identities use portraiture ingeniously as a device to amend archaic imagery of Indigenous Australians depicted by white people since settlement. Brook Andrew’s photograph titled Tina, from his 2003 series, Kalar Midday, depicts a shadowy female nude set against a twilight bush setting.

The image is both sensual and spiritual – a beautiful human being within a beautiful landscape. It articulates a confident re-imaging of Aboriginal identity; and importantly, a reflection on negative Indigenous stereotypes portrayed in the media and throughout history.

Andrew’s second portrait in this exhibition is titled The Man (2005). A large-scale screen-print, this work depicts a powerful, masculine and arresting image of Indigenous professional athlete, Anthony Mundine. In presenting a strong and principled Indigenous man as a heroic figure, Brook Andrew acknowledges these men and women who serve as role models and heroes both to Indigenous people and to the broader Australian society.

Also featured in the exhibiiton are the paintings of Julie Dowling, who again deploys portraiture as a central feature in her art practice. Researching the lives and stories of relatives and elders in her own community plays a significant role in the development of Dowling’s paintings. This research allows Dowling to develop painted portraits from a uniquely personal perspective. Through her integration of an Indigenous context, Julie Dowling creates a new visual

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 17

The collaboration was somewhat inspired by another uniting of collections that took place more than a decade ago

history to counterbalance the prevailing mainstream culture’s images and stories of the stockman, swagman or pioneer, as reinforced over time in Australia’s popular culture.

Similarly, Brenda L Croft integrates her own cultural heritage and wider social experience to portray both personal stories and contemporary issues. Croft employs digital media to create large-scale prints featuring imagery derived from family photographs, which is then layered with text exploring both historical and autobiographical subject matter. Croft was born in the 1960s to a white mother and an Aboriginal father who, without cause, had been taken away from his parents at the age of two under government laws and policies that allowed the removal of Indigenous children from their families.

During the 1960s, Australian social development encompassed vastly different experiences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, including the post-War influx of immigrants or ‘New Australians’.

Prior to the 1967 national referendum, Aboriginal people were confined by laws enforced by authorities of the day that involved state ‘protection boards’, night curfews, city restrictions, fringe camps and the outright removal of children from their families. Through Croft’s art, past histories that have otherwise been hidden for generations can be revealed in new ways and readdressed in their contemporary relevance.

Other urban-based artists featured in this exhibition utilise, subvert or even parody language to interrogate many histories, and in so doing, create narratives that underline the cultural alienation and displacement of Indigenous Australians since colonisation.

Tony Albert is one such artist. Provoked by stereotypical representations of Indigenous Australians in mainstream culture, Albert’s ironic use of wordplay within paintings and wall-based installations examines cultural alienation and displacement experienced

by Indigenous Australians. One aspect of Albert’s practice incorporates the ingenious recycling and altering of the context of kitsch Aboriginal-themed Australian mementos, including mass-produced objects such as the many black velvet paintings produced in Australia during the 1950s and 1960s.

Velvet paintings became popular during the postWar period as interior decorations for the home. Like

many relics from that time, they featured patronising, caricature representations of Indigenous people, which enabled white Australians of the period to maintain a ‹comfortable› yet imaginary connection to the realities of Indigenous people’s culture, historical experience and contemporary lives.

In contrast to the work of urban-based artists, Evolving Identities also illustrates the evolution of remote, desert community-based arts practice, through an emphasis on specific regional communities and their unique stylistic approaches.

It is well documented that Australia’s Indigenous people are the inheritors of one of the oldest living cultural histories in the world. Contemporary communities have kept their cultural heritage alive by passing down knowledge, arts and rituals, and by speaking and teaching languages from one generation to the next. It can be said that these cultures have survived for millennia through the remarkable solidarity that Indigenous people have with each other and their affinity with land and locations, as well as through their ability to adapt and change over time.

Many senior artists within these remote communities today are committed to teaching younger generations about their culture and art, often drawing on their personal journeys and deep connections to country.

The late Butcher Cherel Janangoo (c.1920–2009) was a highly respected key elder of the Gooniyandi language group, and was instrumental in the retention of law and

above:

Evolving Identities Contemporary Indigenous Art, John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University, Perth

(2011), installation view.

Photo: Vashti Innes-Brown.

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

WA university collections form a benchmark collaborative exhibition

right: Butcher Cherel Janangoo, Gooroowali, 2006, acrylic on paper, 105 x 75cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Murdoch University Art Collection. Photo: Brian Richards. below:

Tony Albert, clockwise from top: I am you are we are, let me abos go loose, sorry, why, i am a young austrALIEN, I’m bring’n sexy blak, …gay your life must be, coon, 2008, acrylic paint stenciled on vintage velvet paintings, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and Murdoch University Art Collection.

Photo: Brian Richards.

ceremony within the Muludja community in Western Australia’s Derby/West Kimberley area. As a deeply cultured traditional Elder, Cherel regarded Aboriginal law and language as fundamentally important to his community. In his later years, he felt distressed that his community’s young people were losing these traditions, heritage and connections with country.

Cherel actively painted at Fitzroy Crossing’s Mangkaja Arts in the early 1990s, and exhibited nationally until his death in 2009. During this time, he found great joy in mentoring younger artists who were dedicated to carrying on traditional Gooniyandi iconography that might otherwise be lost to future generations.

Within this context, art is a key vehicle for recording, communicating and maintaining cultural heritage.

Today, Cherel’s legacy lives on through the cultural and artistic knowledge he imparted to a new generation of Mangkaja artists. One such artist is Claude Carter. Like Cherel, Carter’s painting demonstrates a particularly strong graphic finesse, a refined sense of balance and often an illusionistic quality. Carter’s use of colour and precision of line shares the level of sophistication for which Butcher Cherel’s art is known. He credits his passion for painting and knowledge of traditional culture, law and language to the teachings of his renowned forebear. As such, Claude Carter also considers it his responsibility to ensure that this knowledge, culture and traditions are handed on to successive generations and not lost.

Generational guidance and influence is also evident in the Warmun Community, situated at Turkey Creek in Western Australia’s East Kimberley region. Some of Australia’s most celebrated Indigenous artists, including Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, Jack Britten and Patrick Mung Mung, have painted at the community’s nationally acclaimed and community-owned arts centre at Warmun.

Mung Mung is a senior ‘second-generation artist’ producing paintings on canvas. He is a respected elder statesman in the Warmun community, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Warmun Art Centre in 1998. Mung Mung’s paintings depict his family country located north of the Bungle Bungles in Purnululu National Park – an area distinguished by hilly terrain and abundant waterholes. Generations of the artist’s family have walked this land, camping, fishing and hunting for food.

Although his paintings have a distinctive and individual style, Mung Mung shares similar lyrical and compositional features with some of the ‘first-generation artists’, including his father George Mung Mung, Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie. These earlier artists have been a great influence on Mung Mung, and can be credited for intensifying his own deep knowledge of country and commitment to his family’s cultural memory, which is powerfully reflected through his art.

The same strong sense of interpersonal exchange and passing on of cultural knowledge is prevalent within the Tiwi communities. Tiwi art from Australia’s Melville and Bathurst Islands in the Torres Strait is unique and different from other styles of Indigenous art, even from those of the neighbouring mainland artist communities of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

For thousands of years Tiwi Islanders have practised the art of body painting (Jilamara) for ceremonial purposes. Jilamara patterning is strongly decorative, with an emphasis on the emblematic power of design rather than an emphasis on narrative. In the past, traditional Jilamara designs were used exclusively for

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 19

University art collections play a pivotal custodial and educative role through the acquisition, display and interpretation of a diverse array of Indigenous artworks

ceremonial purposes; however today, a new generation of Tiwi artists including Timothy Cook, Raelene Kerinauia and Conrad Tipungwuti, create arresting, individual and distinctly contemporary interpretations inspired by traditional Jilamara. These designs may be highly abstracted, geometric and uniform, creating a structured and sophisticated aesthetic on the one hand, or favour a free-flowing and gestural treatment on the other, reflecting a more lyrical inclination.

The passing down of stories and techniques, and the adaptation of visual imagery by a new generation of Indigenous artists, is proof of an evolving culture while demonstrating how ancient traditions are still relevant to, and reflective of, Indigenous communities across Australia today. In turn their artworks and cultural expression continue to evolve and shape the ongoing cultural heritage of future generations.

University art collections play a pivotal custodial and educative role through the acquisition, display and interpretation of a diverse array of Indigenous artworks. As joint curators of this exhibition, we have considered it not only our aim but also our responsibility to utilise these art collections in Western Australia as a powerful learning resource to encourage discussion and debate, and to promote cross-cultural awareness and respect for Indigenous heritage in all its forms. In turn, we hope this successful project forms part of a wider process that can contribute to greater social solidarity and a shared history for all Australians. []

Mark Stewart was co-curator of Evolving Identities – Contemporary Indigenous Art. He has been curator of the Murdoch University Art Collection since 2004; advisor to the Collectors Club of Western Australia since 2009; and is currently a board member of FOTOFREO, the City of Fremantle Festival of Photography, 2012.

Citation for this text: Mark Stewart, ‘Evolving Identities – Contemporary Indigenous Art: WA university collections form a benchmark collaborative exhibition’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp 16-19.

left: Claude Carter, Goongaroo Gooroola, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 120cm. Image courtesy of the estate of the artist and Murdoch University Art Collection. Photo: Brian Richards. below:

Patrick Mung Mung, Ngarragoon Country, 2006, natural ochres and pigments on canvas, 90 x 120cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Murdoch University ArtCollection. Photo: Brian Richards

20 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

The golden age of the museum blockbuster

King Tutankhamun: Fascination with an 18th Dynasty monarch

Cassie May

I above:

Cassie May, Communications Manager, Museums Australia (Victoria).

below:

Crowds waiting to go into the Melbourne exhibition. Photo: Cassie May.

far right:

King Tutankhamun’s Canopic Coffinette.

Photo: Cassie May.

1. Recent name change to Ministry of State for Antiquities, MSA, Egypt.

2. Museum Victoria Smashes Attendance Records, Museum Victoria, 6 July 2011.

3. The original King Tutankhamun blockbuster exhibition was held at the British Museum and toured America 1976-1979.

4. C., Gabriella, Big Bucks and the Boy King, The Age, 5 April, 2011.

5. The exhibition was curated by Dr David Silverman, the Eckley B Coxe Jr Professor and Curator-incharge of the Egyptian collection, University of Pennsylvania Museum.

6. J. Pes,, & E. Sharpe, Exhibition & Museum Attendance Figures 2010, The Art Newspaper, No. 223, April 2011, pp.23-30.

n conjunction with the National Geographic Society, commercial American company Arts and Exhibitions International and IMG, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities,[1] King Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition has created an extraordinary influx of visitors to Melbourne Museum in 2011.

As part of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces season, this annual series of major exhibitions is sourced from prestigious international institutions and aims to balance curatorial excellence with popular appeal. After the successes of A Day in Pompeii (2009) and Titanic: the Artefact Exhibition (2010), King Tutankhamun was strategically programmed to maintain the momentum created by these earlier blockbuster projects. Museum Victoria includes its three venues in attendance figures, which have reached 2.3 million in the twelve or so months incorporating the King Tutankhamun and earlier Titanic exhibitions, making this the most visited museum organisation in Australia.[2] IMG and Victorian Major Events Company (a State Government initiative) underwrote the staggering $10 million cost of importing and hosting the King Tutankhamun exhibition, which has reached Australia after touring to London and across America during the past five years.

Various significant items from the ‘boy king’ Tuthankhamun’s tomb are on display, including objects found on the mummy itself; a golden diadem, a falcon collar and a dagger. The allure of gold and broad appeal of ancient Egyptian culture have jointly struck a chord with Australian audiences. At this point in the Melbourne exhibition period (early August), ticket sales have reached 500,000 and are still climbing; museum hours have been extended; timed sessions are a necessity to manage visitors’ interest in an orderly manner; and booking is essential.[3]

King Tutankhamun (b.1343 BCE) was one of the last kings of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty (c.1550–c.1292 BCE) and very little is known about his life. As son of Akhenaten, a legendary pharaoh who was declared a heretic for introducing the worship of one god, records mentioning this reign and immediate successors were destroyed by subsequent royal officials. King Tutankhamun ascended to the throne at the age of only nine or ten, and died under mysterious circumstances in 1323 BCE. A rising trend in museum attendance figures nationally in the last few years highlights the popularity of staging large exhibitions of international content in Australian cultural institutions. In 2009 and 2010, The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) attracted more than 530,000 visitors; Titanic: the Artefact Exhibition at Melbourne Museum tallied an attendance of 480,879; and Masterpieces from Paris, at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), attracted 476,000 visitors. Meanwhile Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire, shown earlier at National Gallery of Victoria (International) (NGVI), received an audience of 333,000,;and A Day in Pompeii, again at the Melbourne Museum, brought in 332, 679 visitors.[4] Nine Australian institutions make the Art Newspaper’s 2010 Top 100 (rating between 35–86) of international annual attendances. These include: the Melbourne Museum; Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI); Queensland Art Gallery’s GoMA; the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW); NGVI; NGA; Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) in its main museum site; the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia; and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA).[5] Although happy to promote awareness that proceeds generated from King Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs’ [6] world tour will be used to help conservation and contribute to the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) at Giza, a final tally of the touring exhibition’s total audience catchment

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 21

internationally is not publically available. An advertising slogan on the Market Place wall in Melbourne states that at least 10% of item sales in the shop, so far totalling US$4.8 million, will go back to Egypt’s conservation fund for its antiquities and archaeological heritage.

The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), also called the Giza Museum, is currently under development.

Scheduled to open in 2013, the US $550 million museum will be one of Egypt’s largest, situated across 120 acres of land close to the Giza Pyramids. This construction will be the key element in the master plan for the plateau, and will include state-of-theart labs, storage facilities and environmental control throughout. Compared to the current Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, built in 1902, the new facility is proposed to accomplish the next big step for Egyptian cultural and tourism management.

King Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition is on track to be one of the best-ever attended exhibitions in Australia. The enduring fascination of King Tutankhamun, and the appeal of exhibitions unique to Australian audiences, have proved to be a winning combination. The enduring drawing power of large-scale exhibitions of high-quality cultural material from abroad continues to gain substantial ‘event’-level audiences. The engagement of these projects with the public’s interest, and physical response of paying visitors, continues to challenge museums and galleries to program projects of ambitious content imaginatively and on a large scale.

King Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs is on view at Melbourne Museum until 9 November 2011. [] Cassie May is the Communication Manager for Museums Australia (Victoria). She comes from an arts journalist and museums background, and has worked in various organisations including Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bundoora Homestead, and the former City Museum at Old Treasury, Melbourne.

Citation for this text: Cassie May, ‘King Tuthankhamun: Fascination with an 18th Dynasty monarch: The golden age of the museum blockbuster’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .22-23.

22 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Australian art exhibitions mounted from collections abroad

Plants, baskets, and prints in London: Australian season at the British Museum

Roslyn Russell

above:

Roslyn Russell

top: Eucalypts and other Australian

plants in Australia Landscape.

Photo: Roslyn Russell

1 Peter Campbell, ‘At the British Museum’, London Review of Books, 16 June 2011. For more information on the Australia Landscape, and videos on the concept and installation of the garden, see http://www. britishmuseum.org/whats_on/ exhibitions/australian_season/ australia_landscape.aspx

Australians visiting the British Museum over the past few months have encountered a most unfamiliar sight – eucalypts and other Australian plants growing in the forecourt of this most august of all British museum institutions, and replicating in summary form the totality of Australian landscapes.

The Australia Landscape is part of an ‘Australian season’ at the British Museum in 2011 that also features two important survey exhibitions, Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas; and Baskets and Belonging: Indigenous Australian Histories. Both are on display until 11 September 2011.

The Australia Landscape in the British Museum’s forecourt is the responsibility of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew – the ‘mother’ of botanic gardens throughout the former British Empire.

Australia Landscape: Kew at the British Museum, on display until 16 October 2011, is the fourth landscape presented in a five-year partnership program between the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, celebrating the shared vision of both institutions to strengthen cultural understanding and support biodiversity conservation across the world.

Professor Stephen Hopper, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (and himself an Australian) has said that ‘Kew is pleased to be working with the British Museum on our fourth landscape project. 2011 will see a glimpse of the fragile, threatened and strikingly beautiful flora of Australia in the heart of London.’

As visitors approach the British Museum currently, it seems incongruous to see eucalypts, grevillea,

everlasting daisies and even a Wollemi pine growing against the striking architectural backdrop of classical columns and imposing stairs thronged with tourists.

The garden traces the Australian landscape from east to west, with plants from eastern Australia closest to the Museum’s main gate, then through the Red Centre, and moving across to the plants of Western Australia. A large granite boulder atop a rocky outcrop forms a dynamic central point in the display, surrounded by strongly coloured Brachyscome iberidifolia (Swan River daisies) and Rhodanthe (Everlastings).

Interpretive signs describe approximately 12 ‘star’ plants, and make connections between their habitats and the British Museum’s collections, including illustrations of Indigenous artefacts such as those in the Baskets and Belonging exhibition inside the Museum itself. As one British reviewer commented, ‘As much of the Australian season at the BM is devoted to work by the continent’s indigenous peoples, whose relationship to the land is close, knowledgeable and spiritually intense, it’s as well to be reminded of the flora’.[1] Having explored the Australia Landscape, the next move for an engaged visitor is into the British Museum itself, where a giant blue banner with a yellow silhouette of one of our distinctive eucalypts hanging on the central drum of the Great Court promotes the Australian season.

The two survey exhibitions that form the heart of the Australian season at the British Museum are located in Rooms 90 and 91 of the museum. Even though they contain objects and artworks that are familiar, either stylistically or as exemplars of a

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 23

clockwise from top:

Rhodanthe chlorocephala subsp.

Rosea grows on red earth in the Australia Landscape outside the British Museum.

Photo: Roslyn Russell.

Twined basket, Port Essington, Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Territory. Donated 1855 by the Lords of the Admiralty.

Fibre, ochre, H 44 cm, W 19 cm. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Banner in the British Museumís Great Court promoting the Australian season.

Photo: Roslyn Russell.

2 Campell, ‘At the British Museum’.

particular artist’s oeuvre, the comprehensiveness and range of the displays of works held in the British Museum’s collections cannot fail to impress Australian visitors.

Baskets and Belonging: Indigenous Australian Histories, curated by Lissant Bolton, head of the British Museum’s Oceania section, draws upon the British Museum’s holdings to display approximately 60 Indigenous containers, including objects not replicated anywhere else in the world, with some dating from very early periods of Indigenous and European contact in Australia.

Those with an interest in Indigenous baskets and containers in Australia will be familiar with the stylistic qualities of these objects, and will have seen the range of possible object types in various museum and gallery displays across the country, as well as in exhibitions such as Twined Together: Kunmadj Njalehnjaleken, ReCoil: Change and Exchange in Coiled Fibre Art, and Tayenebe: Tasmanian Aboriginal Women’s Fibre Work. All these exhibitions have showcased particular fabrication techniques or specific regional styles. Baskets and Belonging offers a superb array of historical baskets and containers from a diverse range

of regions, cultural groups and periods of history, brought together in one exhibition. In addition, there are examples of contemporary Indigenous basketry, with the most recent examples acquired by the British Museum in 2010.

Many of the works are fine examples of their types, with collection dates stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century, including some basket types that are no longer made. For example the twined basket with a distinctive concave neck and flared top from Port Essington, donated to the British Museum by the Lords of the Admiralty in 1855, has not been made since around 1915. Another twined basket from the same area, collected in the early years of the twentieth century, was made to store a baby’s umbilical cord, and displays bold designs, with the paint intact and vivid.

They are also objects of great beauty. The ‘sculptural curves’ of bicornual baskets on display impressed one British reviewer, who praised their ‘wonderful, evolved design’.[2] One particularly fine example, collected at Mulgrave River, Queensland, at the turn of the twentieth century, still retains its bright looped design in ochre. Seeing these works, and the range and diversity of painted designs that adorn them, from the baskets

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

WA university collections form a benchmark collaborative exhibition

pictured here to the painted bark baskets (tunga) used to carry food and gifts to Pukamani ceremonies on Melville Island, one is reminded yet again of the traditional origins of Indigenous designs that are now rendered in modern materials such as acrylic paint and printing ink by today’s Indigenous artists. As the same reviewer commented, ‘The baskets are as visually satisfying as any of the works of art next door’.[3] Next door is the other survey exhibition on display in the Australian season, Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas, curated

by Stephen Coppel, an Australian who has worked as a curator at the British Museum since 1992. The first big show of Australian art of any kind to be held in London for over a decade, and the first large-scale survey exhibition of works of art on paper to be held outside Australia, the exhibition features 125 works on paper by 60 artists, and has been hailed by ANU’s Professor Sasha Grishin as ‘historically significant’.[4] The exhibition begins with works by stellar modernist artists in 1940s Australia, such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, and Albert Tucker. It moves to 1950s and 1960s London and Paris, where Boyd and Nolan, along with artists such as Brett Whiteley, Colin Lanceley and Robert Klippel, produced works that, despite these artists’ expatriate condition, continued to celebrate the Australian landscape. The work of another group of artists – those who had come to Australia from Europe as refugees from Hitler’s Germany, including Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Erwin Fabian – is also on display. The familiar sight of Hirschfeld-Mack’s woodcut print, Desolation, used recently by the National Library of Australia as the signature image for its exhibition The Dunera Boys: 70 Years On, was only the first of many jolts of recognition for this viewer, for whom the exhibition provided the opportunity to reconnect with works by many Australian artists that have long been favourites – particularly John Brack’s images of razor-cheekboned jockeys, and a young couple competing in a ballroom dancing competition, Junior Latin American, a lithograph from 1969.

Brack is among a sizeable group of Australian artists of the postwar period represented here. In fact the whole exhibition acts as a compendium of the Australian printmaking world as it progresses from the 1960s to the 1970s and beyond, with works by Charles Blackman, Eric Thake, Jan Senbergs, George Baldessin, Barbara Hanrahan and Bea Maddock, Roger Kemp, Tony Tuckson, James Gleeson, Mike Parr, Micky Allan, Rick Amor and John Wolseley, among many others.

Among Australian postwar artists whose work is represented in the exhibition, it is the work of Fred Williams that excited lengthy comment from one British reviewer for its capacity to show ‘Australian landscapes in a way that ignores European ways of shaping a scene’. The same reviewer segued from discussing Williams’ works to deal with the group of works by Aboriginal artists that for him showed a ‘sense of deep engagement with the country and its history’. [5] Interestingly, instead of dealing with these works – by artists such as Rover Thomas, Bunduk Marika, Paddy

Japaljarri Sims, England Banggala, Dorothy Napangardi, Gloria Tamerre Petyarre, Judy Watson and Kitty Kantilla – as a discrete group, Sasha Grishin considered them together with contemporary non-Indigenous printmakers such as G.W. Bot, Brent Harris and John Coburn as demonstrating ‘a lively dialectic between indigenous and non-indigenous art with work that has a strong and authentic Australian quality’.[6] Perhaps it takes an Australian to identify these synergies between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of seeing and representing this country: another British reviewer called Out of Australia ‘an oddly representative exhibition ... vast, full of unfamiliar beauties and unknown names, haphazard, genetically heterogeneous, racially problematic and pulsing with wit, outrage, inventiveness and cultural insecurity.’ She concluded: ‘The former convict depository is criminally overlooked.’[7] While most Australians will not have the pleasure of seeing the history of Australian printmaking in the postwar period unfold before their eyes in the British Museum, or experience the wonder of seeing examples of Indigenous basketry that left their homeland more than one-and-a-half centuries ago or earlier,

above:

Bicornual basket, Mulgrave River, Queensland. Collected c.

1900 by Derwent Vallance; donated

by Florence Walker. Calamus sp. (lawyer cane). H 30 cm, W 33 cm, © Trustees of the British Museum.

right: John Brack (1920-1999), Junior Latin American, 1969, lithgraph, British Museum. © Helen Brack.

3 Ibid.

4 Sasha Grishin, ‘Unique coming of age’, Canberra Times, 11 June 2011.

5 Campell, ‘At the British Museum’.

6 Grishin, ‘Unique coming of age’.

7 Nina Caplan, ‘Out of Australia’, Time Out, UK, 16 June 2011.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 25

Even though they contain objects and artworks that are familiar … the comprehensiveness and range of the displays of works held in the British Museum’s collections cannot fail to impress Australian visitors

they can obtain copies of the two excellent catalogues: one by Stephen Coppel (with a contribution by Wally Caruana on the Aboriginal prints) for Out of Australia; the other by Lissant Bolton for Baskets and Belonging. These may be sought by contacting the British Museum shop at <britishmuseum.org/shop>.

Both these catalogues are indispensable guides to their topics, and provide an opportunity, as also do the exhibitions, to experience the wealth of Australian material held on the other side of the world in the British Museum. [ ] Roslyn Russell is a Canberra museum consultant and a former editor of Museums Australia Magazine.

Roslyn Russell, ‘Plants, baskets, and prints in London: Australian season at the British Museum’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .22-25.

26 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Damien Hirst’s audacious reclaiming of historical context

Fabulous Connections

As the only illuminated feature of the richly decorated Renaissance room ... the skull commanded the viewer’s full attention for the three minutes that the ten-Euro admission ticket granted

Tania Cleary

J

ane Austen’s ‘truth universally acknowledged’ was that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.[1] An artist in possession of a fabulous curiosity might well be in want of a patron.

When Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted artworks, For the Love of God (2007) and For Heaven’s Sake (2008), went on simultaneous exhibition in Florence and Hong Kong in 2011, the lure for attracting a patron was cast. But the lure was more than the artful curiosities themselves; it was also the exhibition locations and what they represent in today’s art market: old monied Europe and new monied Asia.

However all lures need a hook to snare their prey, and the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, and the Gagosian Gallery, based in New York, suited that role perfectly.

My purpose in writing this essay is to highlight the often overlooked but highly influential role that exhibition context plays in forming public opinion, fashioning taste and establishing cultural significance.

The sole object on display early in 2011 in the small and completely blackened space in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, was Damien Hirst’s white diamond skull, For the Love of God – whereas the pink diamond skull, For Heaven’s Sake, was displayed elsewhere with Hirst’s Butterfly Fact Paintings in a large, unadorned modern gallery. In Florence the skull made sense; it was a curiosity, fabulous in conception and execution, of the kind that would have been keenly

sought by the Medici for the attributes it embodies and suggests: wealth, power, prestige and audacity.

As the only illuminated feature of the richly decorated Renaissance room in the historic Palazzo Vecchio gallery, the skull commanded the viewer’s full attention for the three minutes that the ten-Euro admission ticket granted. In Hong Kong, by contrast, the skull was isolated and ‘lost’ in its modernist space.

It was too small; and, when left to speak for itself, it had nothing to say.

Although I wasn’t surprised by my reaction to the dazzling radiance of For the Love of God when shown in Florence, I was surprised by my thought that Hirst was lucky to find such a finely shaped skull on which to form his work, because a more robust form might have conveyed grossness. Now where did that come from? Surprisingly it returned from IIIB Prehistory Honours Osteology Practice at the Australian Museum.

Under the guidance of Professor Richard Wright, Sydney University students like myself identified, examined and measured cranial and post-cranial bones. It was only through extended physical handling that budding prehistorians, archaeologists and forensic pathologists would be able to accurately identify any skeletal finds they might later encounter or uncover in the field. For weeks on end, our Vernier calipers recorded basic craniometry raw scores for the nineteen variables required to determine sex and age, including glabella-opisthocranion, bi-parietal and bi-zygomatic breadth, bi-frontotemporale, orbital height and nasal breadth. It was an extremely

above left:

For the love of God, 2007, © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved

above:

Dr Tania Cleary

1. Austin 1813

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 27

interesting course, and clearly enough of what I absorbed remained with me, so that in that blackened space in Florence I could simultaneously appreciate the brilliance of the diamonds as well as the gracile features of the skull’s form beneath them.

It was only afterwards, when reading the essays in For the Love of God, The Making of the Diamond Skull[2] that I became aware of the role Richard Wright had played in its identification. Working at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, University of London, Wright’s craniometrical measurements, his subsequent comparative analysis against a database of 2870 skulls and his spatial plotting of the results, helped clarify the Hirst skull’s origins as European/Mediterranean, age approximately 18-35 years, and sex as male.[3] Although thirty years had passed, here was a clear demonstration of the value of persistent analytical research.

In Significant Connections,[4] an earlier essay by the present author, I considered the significance of displaying For the Love of God within the Camera of Cosimo de’ Medici, with its secret passageways, concealed doors and hidden wall closets. It was this magnificent exhibition context that ultimately provided an opportunity for Hirst to exploit the Medicean patronage dimension palpable in the Palazzo Vecchio, especially the personal devices of three interlocked diamonds with the accompanying motto, SEMPER (‘always’); or the falcon holding a diamond ring in one of its talons with the motto FA CON DEO AMANTE (‘do all for the love of God’).

I suggested in that longer text the dual play on our emotional understanding of diamond symbolism: strength and permanency; and the artwork’s title surely hinting at a certain intellectual cleverness.

I recounted how visitors entered the exhibition space through the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany – a small, barrel-vaulted room commissioned in 1569: … to serve as a cloakroom for rare and precious objects, for valuable and artistic things such as jewels, medals, carved stones and blown glasses and vases, ingenious and similar things, of suitable size and placed in particular cabinets, each of its own kind.[5] Adorned with bronzes, carved and gilded cabinetry, concealed wall closets, stucco work and a rich pictorial iconography comprising more than thirty oval panels and rectangular slate paintings, the Studiolo’s walls and ceiling give an insight into the private world of Francesco I de’ Medici. Most of the paintings allude to Greek and Roman myths or represent the activities and inventions that were shaping Florentine life at the time: tapestry and wool weaving, glass manufacture, bronze and metal smelting, gunpowder and arms manufacture, and alchemic experimentation.

In Mao Da San Friano’s Diamond Mine (1570), a work jointly conceived by scholar Vincenzo Borghini, artist Giorgio Vasari, and patron Francesco I de’ Medici, we can perceive a surreal landscape worlds away from our contemporary knowledge of open-cut or underground mines. Worked on

top: middle: bottom: left: right:

slate and measuring 127 x 120 cm, the Renaissance ‘picture’ is positioned in a prominent place in the upper register near the concealed doorway leading into the Camera. It is a fabulous work in all senses of the word – the vivid colours of the turbans and garments, the lightness of the figures and the ethereal landscape reflect Borghini’s desire for a: … bizarre and extravagant [painting], one, that is, which would represent mountains more rugged than our Pietrapana or La Verna or the Caucasus of the ancients, where, with the help of cords and rope ladders (Prometheus’s chain, so they say) and with other devices there would be people going in search of diamonds and crystals and clinging to those precipices like woodpeckers.[6] The original fabric of the Palazzo and the visual richness of the Studiolo prepared the visitor for an exceptional experience in the sixteenth century.

However while this Renaissance context was being exploited in Florence anew in 2011, half a world away the Gagosian Gallery (New York) was establishing

above:

16th century Studiolo de Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, leading to the Camera of Cosimo de Medici, where Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God was displayed. Palazzo Vecchio gallery, Florence.

2. Hirst, 2007 3. Wright, 2007 4. Cleary, 2011 5. Cerruti et al 2007, p724, “Lo stanzino ha da servire per una guardaroba di cose rare et pretiose, et per valuta et per arte, come sarebbe a dire gioie, medaglie, pietre intagliate, cristalli lavorati et vasi, ingegni et simil cose, non di troppa grandezza, riposte nei propri armadi, ciascuna nel suo genere.”

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Damien Hirst’s audacious reclaiming of historical context

its presence in Hong Kong, and briefly – between 18 January and 19 March – Hirst’s second manifestation of the diamond skull was on display in the inaugural show ‘Forgotten Promises’. But unlike the Palazzo Vecchio, there was no grand or opulently decorated space to lend additional meaning to the artwork.

Viewing For Heaven’s Sake in Hong Kong was less inspirational, even though the pink diamonds cast a warm and feminine radiance and hinted at the preciousness of young life. For me it came down to three things: the shape of the skull, the blandness of the gallery, and the lack of meaning contributed by the exhibition’s context.

Infants’ skulls are not miniature versions of the adult form. The frontal bone is wider; the cranial cavity is proportionally larger; the orbital region is more pronounced, while the mandible is weak. In profile this distortion is strongly apparent. The lack of teeth impacted negatively on the smile and its ability to simulate or suggest emotion. The juxtaposition of the Butterfly Fact Paintings and the small skull (measuring 85 x 85 x 100 mm) was unsuccessful – not least because the showcase containing the principal artwork was competing with a post as the dominant vertical feature; meanwhile the skull, isolated as it was in its showcase, was dwarfed by the gallery space. And although suggestions of a fragile human presence were desired, the focal-point object conveyed an altogether alien aura.

For Heaven’s Sake followed the same construction methods employed in the making of For the Love of God: a platinum perforated mould biometrically matched to an infant’s skull, and embellished with 8128 pave-set perfect diamonds: 1023 white on the fontanelle and along the sutures, and 7105 fancy pink acting as infill. As the main source of pink diamond production in the world today is Rio Tinto’s Argyle Diamond mine (more than 90% of global output), and located in West Australia’s East Kimberley, it is possible that this mine played a role in the production of the piece. The employed jewellers, Bentley and Skinner, and the artist himself generated much publicity when they declared that all stones used in the manufacture of For the Love of God were untainted by conflict, purchased from legitimate sources, and thus complied with United Nations Resolutions.[7] Even though the stones could have been imported from Angola, Borneo, China, South Africa or Tanzania, I’m willing to conjecture that the East Kimberley played its part.

In 1570, when Vasari sought specific information from Borghini on how diamonds were mined, the latter replied: ‘As for the search of diamonds, I simply cannot say where they are found or how they are searched for.’[8] The ancients attributed the ‘invention’ of stones and precious rings to Prometheus, the Titan who shaped man out of earth and water; and the painting of Francesco Poppi (1544–1597), in the central compartment of the Studiolo’s ceiling, depicts Nature presenting the chained Prometheus with a Gem.[9] In India, the historic source of diamonds, the stone is synonymous with the thunderbolt or diamond mace originally carried by the Hindu god Indra, the warrior

deity.[10] The diamond mace is also one of the auspicious signs on the Footprints of Buddha, signifying the divine force that strikes and breaks all the lusts of the world. It is widely recognised that those who wield the diamond mace defeat the enemies of Buddhism.[11] Any diamonds adorning Medici fingers probably originated in India and reached them via Persia, or later from Goa after the Portuguese developed a trading centre there in the fifteenth century.

However in 1979, when diamonds were found embedded in an ant-hill in the East Kimberley, the traditional owners of the land, the Gidja and Mirriuwong-speaking people, had a very different understanding of how the brown, yellow, colourless and pink diamonds originated. According to the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) story: A barramundi being chased by a group of old women swims into a cave near the area now known as Barramundi Gap. As she enters the cave, the women prepare to catch her with nets made from rolled spinifex grass (a traditional fishing method known as Kilkayi). The barramundi realises she is trapped in the shallow, muddy water of the cave’s entrance, and tries to escape by swimming to the other end, toward Nunbung (Wesley Spring). But she cannot find a way out and so returns to the entrance of the cave, where the women are waiting with their nets. She swims toward the women and jumps over them, shedding her scales as she jumps – leaving them behind in the shallow water.

The scales become the diamonds of all colours that

below: Rover Thomas (1926/1928 – 1998), Barramundi Dreaming, 1989, painting, natural pigments on canvas, 90.0 h x 199.7 w cm.

National Gallery of Australia

© courtesy Warmun Art Centre

6. Cecchi, 1979:173 7. Hirst, 2007 8. Crecchi, 1979:173 9. Crecchi, 1979:173 10. Williams, 1975:116 11. McArthur, 2002:139

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 29

are found there today. The barramundi then jumps through a gap in the rocks, landing in the deep, clear water of Kowinji (Cattle Creek). As the barramundi dives, she turns into a white stone. Three of the women who have chased her there peer into the water to look for her, and they too turn to stone – forever becoming part of the landscape. Today there are three stone formations overlooking the creek. According to the Gidja people, barramundi are not found there today because of the presence of the Ngarranggarni barramundi in this place.[12] I know from personal experience that it is hard not to be impressed by the natural beauty of the East Kimberley, especially when the escarpment is bathed in the rich pinks of a setting sun or surrounding sand ridges are dotted with massed pale-green spinifex clusters. Nor is it easy to overlook the impact of the open-cut mine in towns like Kununurra or communities like Warmun. Shops selling diamonds or art centres selling paintings are as much the norm as shops selling pearls in Broome. Artists like Mabel Juli, Gordon Barney, Marika Patrick, Ramona Nocketta and Yvonne Newry, to name just a few, use a palette of warm pink ochres to depict landmarks and features associated with Ngarranggarni stories. When the Gidja and Mirriuwong identified the pink diamond with the Barrumundi’s heart, they clearly recognised the rarity and life-giving emotion of the gem.

Therefore, if For the Love of God and For Heaven’s Sake epitomise the wealth, style and elegance of the jewellery firm Bentley and Skinner, these works must also epitomise Damien Hirst’s business acumen

– even more so when the associated statistics are acknowledged. According to Rio Tinto’s website, a pink diamond is approximately 20 times more valuable than a white diamond equivalent, although this can vary; and of the approximately 20 million carats of rough diamonds that are produced annually at the Argyle mine, less than 0.1% are pink diamonds.

Naturally these are highly sought-after by collectors, investors, jewellers, and their luxury clients.[13] I leave speculation on the current and escalating value of the individual artworks to others. However I will suggest that the cultural significance of For the Love of God is greater of the two works, and that this is due, in large measure, to its impressive exhibition history. The inaugural White Cube exhibition in 2007 was followed in 2008 with a Rijksmuseum exhibition in Amsterdam, in which Hirst was able personally to select masterpieces from the museum’s seventeenthcentury art collection to accompany his display.

He could not have failed to recognise the immense cultural value that this exhibition context would supply when he stated: ‘As an artist I try to make things that people can believe in, that they can relate to, that they can experience. You therefore have to show them as well as possible.’[14] The Palazzo Vecchio delivered an equally impressive historic venue to aid Hirst in this endeavour.

In establishing a desirable exhibition history and an impressive body of literature, Damien Hirst has created a dilemma for the patron who wishes to possess a curiosity with fabulous connections. In a nutshell: should one invest in For Heaven’s Sake, because pink diamonds are rarer and more ‘valuable’? or should one invest in For the Love of God, because it is the original manifestation of the artistic concept, albeit a variation on Tibetan skull cups and Mezoamerican crystal skulls? I know which investment path I would choose. But pray, Sir, what say you Mr Darcy? [ ] Dr Tania Cleary is a museum consultant, curator and author. She is a significance assessor for the National Library of Australia’s Community Heritage Grant Program, and founder of Brisbane Fine Art Auctions, a new platform for fine art sales in Australia.

Citation for this text: Tania Cleary, ‘Fabulous Connections’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .26-29.

Bibliography Ames-Lewis, F. (1979). Early Medicean Devices. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 42, 122-143 Bucci, C. L. (2007). Guide to Palazzo Vecchio. (J. Kreiner, Trans.)

Florence: SCALA Group.

Cecchi, A. (1979). An Unpublished Drawing by Maso da San Friano for the ‘Cava dei diamanti’ in the Studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio. The Burlington Magazine , 121 (912), 173-175.

Cesati, F. (1999). The Medici Story of a European Dynasty. (M. P. Fintoni, ed., & C. P. Caughlan, trans.) Florence: La Mandragora.

Coughlan, R. (1971). The World of Michelangelo 1475-1564. Time-Life International (Nederland) N.V. Hirst, D. (2007). For the Love of God. The Making of the Diamond Skull.

(J. Beard, ed.) Other Crietria/ White Cube, London.

Murray, D. (1904). Museums, their History and Their Uses, with a Bibliography and List of Museums in the United Kingdom. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons.

Pearce, S. (1870). Museum History in Context. In E. Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum (Vol. 1). London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press.

Schaefer, S. (1982). The Studiolo of Francesco I de’Medici: A Checklist of the Known Drawings. Master Drawings , 20 (2), 125-130 +179-193.

McArthur, M. (2002). Reading Buddhist Art. Thames and Hudson, London.

Rijksmuseum (2008). Interview with Damien Hirst in OOG, Rijksmuseum magazine for art and history, no. 4, 11 Sept. 2008.

URL: http://www.rijksmuseum. nl/tentoonstellingen/hirst.

Williams, C. (1941). Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives.

Charles E Tuttle Company, Vermont, USA. Reprinted 1975.

Wright, R. (2007). Report on the Use of CRANID to evaluate the likely ancestry of the skull in For the Love of God the Making of the Diamond Skull, published by Other Criteria/White Cube, London.

12. Rio Tinto http://www. argylepinkdiamonds.com.au/ en/argyle_heritage.asp 13. Rio Tinto http://www. argylepinkdiamonds.com.au 14. Rijksmusem http:// www.rijksmuseum.nl/ tentoonstellingen/hirst

30 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Tragedy and disaster responsiveness in New Zealand

A wake-up call: Museums in the aftermath of the 2010 & 2011 Christchurch earthquakes Adrienne Rewi When the 7.1 earthquake struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, on 4 September 2010, Canterbury Museum was working on a partnership with the Natural History Museum of London and the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust to create an international touring exhibition on Capt. Robert Falcon Scott’s last Antarctic expedition (1910–1913).

above: lrft:

‘We’d been working on the show for three years’, reported Canterbury Museum Director, Anthony Wright: The exhibition was due to open at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney in June.

However the September earthquake threw us into chaos for a period and our work on the show became somewhat dislocated. My heart was in my mouth [at the time] because I knew some of the exhibition items were laid out ready for packing. But only one object was broken and it was a duplicate; so we were incredibly lucky.

Things were back on track when the much more devastating 6.3 quake struck Christchurch on February 22. ‘After that event’, Wright relates, ‘we put a dedicated team onto the last preparations for the exhibition’: They set to work documenting, filing and packing the show’s pieces. There were some real moments of angst in February, and a lot of added stress, but we got through, thanks to an incredibly gritty performance by our Christchurch team.

Wright later reported that when Christchurch was again struck by two more large earthquakes on June 13, this provided ‘just more added pressure that no-one needed’ – by then, only a few days before the exhibition opening in Sydney. ‘The fact that we finally made it, and the Sydney exhibition opened on time, is another reason to be proud of the Christchurch team.’ And he added wryly: ‘It’s good to know that all those valuable artefacts are now in a safe place in another country.’

There have been many lessons learned at Canterbury Museum in the eleven months since the first earthquake struck in 2010 in September. Still immersed in a comprehensive earthquake recovery plan – carried out amidst more than 7,500 after- shocks since September 2010 – the museum has capitalised on the disaster to rethink many of its operational systems. Director Wright is now hopeful that the museum will re-open in September. Thanks to earthquake strengthening carried out in the 1980s, the building itself has come through the three major earthquakes and thousands of after-shocks with its physical form largely intact. It has been a different story inside, however, as the staff has hurried to clear away impact-chaos and deal carefully with damage to collection items – each time being thwarted by further shakes, notably on 13 June 2011.

Adrienne Rewi

Offices in Canterbury Museum following the earthquake.

Photos courtesy Christchurch Museum.

‘My heart went out to the team on June 13,’ says Anthony Wright: We had completed all the work needed to re-open on July 1, and we’d just finished inspecting all the galleries in readiness for that event. We had very little breakage and only a third of the tipping-over of previous quakes. But it was terribly disheartening nonetheless.

Wright says the Christchurch team is now driven to achieve a September re-opening, and in the meantime they are focussing on streamlining many of their internal systems as a result of the earthquakes.

It’s certainly been a wake-up call. Some of our processes were a little too painstaking for the modern world, and while we’re still in general clean-up mode in the galleries, I suspect that the massive project of recovering and sorting the museum collection stores will be a military-like process.

Since the first quake back in September, recovery has spurred the streamlining of filing processes. It’s given us a new urgency and cut through any doubts about how tough we needed to be on ourselves.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 31

It’s been a major spring cleaning task, and one thing all this teaches you is that despite the best-laid plans, everything is ephemeral in the end. We’re still in recovery mode. But thinking ahead, tasks like the sorting and repairing of the collection stores will be a major project. From day one, everything damaged has been photographed, cross-referenced to insurance documentation, and all methodically itemised in relation to each space. It’s given us a chance to assess our filing and acquisitions systems, and to consider new ways of sharpening those.

above:

Christchurch Museum Director Anthony Wright in the Mountfort Gallery. Photo courtesy Christchurch Museum.

Two days after the 7.1 earthquake on 4 September 2010, Wright and his team entered the pitch black museum to assess damage, which he afterwards recalled was ‘like ‘A Night at the Museum’ – only it was real and not as much fun!’

We were greeted with complete disarray in the staff office areas, yet some of the galleries were miraculously untouched. In the Mountfort Gallery, though, hundreds of precious objects in the European Decorative Arts displays had tipped over. Yet only fifteen had broken.

All up, in fact, through the three big quakes of September, February and June, well under 1,000 objects of those 10,000–15,000 on display were lost, and there are perhaps another 2,000 damaged objects in the collection stores – all this in a total collection of some 2.1 million objects. None of the losses were of huge value; though that said, sometimes a prosaic object is worth more to Canterbury than a million-dollar item.

The museum’s collection stores have been locked down since September 2010, and the focus has been on the public collection displays and museum recovery generally.

We’ve stabilised the collection stores so no further damage can occur. Some of the mobile storage cabinets there were very seriously damaged, and it will be a military operation when we come to decant that.

Wright reports that the museum computer systems and all paper records came through the quakes unscathed, and the initial focus afterwards was simply on cleaning up the mess. In the first weeks after the September and February quakes, staff were removing between one and two skips of rubbish each day.

Wright affirms that as the team has gone through the process of tidying up and reinstating galleries after each earthquake, they’ve become increasingly proficient. Moreover, ‘with at least a year of uncertainty ahead of us in terms of further earthquakes,’ staff have put new practices into place. Solid mounts have been built for many objects and all office shelves have been screwed to walls and tied back with straps. Filing cabinets are now locked at the end of every working day to prevent contents flying out or drawers damaging other objects; and mobile units within the collection stores are locked down at all times unless they are in use. As Wright reviews the situation: I think it will be at least two years before damage to the collection stores is fully repaired. It’s going to be a painstaking operation and we’ll probably need outside help with that when the time comes. In the meantime, we are documenting everything we’re doing in relation to the earthquakes because there will be intense interest from other museums around the world. I suspect new standards will be developed and there’s a place for employing engineering technology to ensure everything is secure.

Meanwhile, across town in the seaside suburb of Sumner, the historic Sumner Museum is now demolished – razed to the ground by demolition crews after the building was finally declared unsafe after the two June 13 earthquakes. Built in 1907 as the former Sumner Borough Council Chambers, the demolition of the Group 3 Protected Heritage Item in the Christchurch City Plan will be a sad loss for the seaside community. The building served as council chambers until 1979, and was a repository for early archives, a land deed from 1851, plus many local diaries, photos, paintings, historic artefacts and WW II memorabilia relating to the area.

For Secretary of Sumner Redcliffs Historical Society, Topsy Rule, the loss goes beyond the material. Five generations of her family have used the iconic corner building and she says the people of Sumner will feel its absence dearly. ‘We’ve lost whole swathes of our built community. These were buildings that played a key role in community life and they’ll be sadly missed,’ was Topsy Rule’s summation.

32 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

Tragedy and disaster responsiveness in New Zealand

clockwise from left:

The upper portion of Lyttelton Museum braced after February earthquake damage; The front entrance to Lyttelton Museum has been reduced to a jumble of bricks and iron work; Sumner Museum & Community Centre interior.

Photos: Adrienne Rewi.

With help from USAR [Urban Search and Rescue] and the Fire Brigade, however, the upstairs collection was retrieved from the historic Sumner building and has been in safe keeping ever since. More recently, museum staff worked closely with the demolition crew to save as much as possible from the downstairs rooms, including a 1907 time capsule. On collection losses specifically, Topsy Rule estimates the toll: Sadly, we’ve lost some china and 23 glass display cases, but the rest is stored in a large container while we search for new premises. Unfortunately, with so many Sumner buildings damaged, it’s going to be difficult. But if we have to settle on a heated container for display, we’ll do that.

Director of the Air Force Museum, Therese Angelo, stresses that it is important that museums ‘get back into small communities as soon as possible’.

Funding will be difficult. But with Lyttelton, Sumner and Kaiapoi museums all to be demolished, the region is going to be hit hard from a heritage point of view. Our focus here at the Air Force Museum is to be working on ways we can help for the next few years – because this is a long-term recovery.

Itself unscathed by the earthquakes, the Air Force Museum has opened its doors to others. It is currently storing the 25 per cent of the Lyttelton Museum’s collection so far salvaged, the COCA [Centre of Contemporary Art] collection, the RSA [Returned Services Association] and Hebrew community collections, and the Ngai Tahu whakapapa files (and some of their researchers). The Air Force Museum is also serving as a temporary home for the Inland Revenue Department, the High Court, a firm of architects and the Department of Labour. Therese Angelo reports: We have plenty of space, so we’re happy to help.

People have to realise that earthquake recovery is a thing of enormous scope and there will be a real need for assistance in the years ahead. It’s a long-haul task. We have to help each other.

Anthony Wright sums up the effects of the loss of some of the region’s small museums as a real tragedy: They’re my favourite museums. They’re so undisturbed by the rigours of professionalism; they’re so informal and you’re face-to-face with history. There’s a wonderful sense of being enveloped in a miscellany of stuff that has been allowed to run riot. They’re not censored, they’re not all tickety-boo, and as a result they’re so alive and full of personality. It’s hard seeing them go. [ ] Adrienne Rewi, a former artist, is now a freelance journalist, writer and photographer based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her career has swung between newspaper and magazine journalism, fifteen years as a fulltime artist, freelancing, travel guide writing, pursuing her own photography and short story writing, <http://adriennerewiimagines.blogspot.com/> Citation for this text: Adrienne Rewi, ‘A wake-up call: Museums in the aftermath of the 2010 & 2011 Christchurch earthquakes: Tragedy and disaster responsiveness in New Zealand, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .30-32.

This is a significantly revised version of an article that first featured on <www.nzmuseums.co.nz>.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011 33

4th International Congress of Women’s Museums

Women in museums convening in Alice Springs (2012)

Helen Joraslafsky & Michelle Smith

I

n 2012 Alice Springs, the home of the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame, will be the proud host of the 4th International Congress of Women’s Museums. This gathering of women’s museums and strong momentum for international interaction began in 2008, when the 1st Congress was held in Merano (Italy). One result of this event was the forging of the ‘womeninmuseum’ network, a loose union of women’s museums and related initiatives, drawing in many different types of museums worldwide dedicated to women. More than 40 museums now support this network.

The activities of these museums vary widely. Some support women’s arts and crafts, while others tell the history of women within their country; others again support scientific projects that will benefit women.

Many suffer from a lack of financial and public support; however, the impact of these museums in educating their communities about the role of women in society, and in the promotion of equal rights and opportunities for women, is vital and far-reaching.

The network ‘womeninmuseum’ defines its tasks as follows: • increase the visibility and acceptance of Women’s Museums • actively support each other • make use of the internet platform in order to advance the work of the network Currently the network maximises the use of the internet to communicate with its members around the world. <www.womeninmuseum.net> features a

heavily utilised blog that is used to advertise events; highlight women’s rights issues; create project links across the membership; promote potential funding opportunities; and disseminate the latest news and activities of each member museum into broader channels of support and public awareness.

The future of the ‘womeninmuseum’ network is exciting. In 2012 it will seek affiliation with the International Council of Museums (ICOM, Paris), in the hope of becoming the 32nd accredited International Committee within that organisation.

Helen Joraslafsky, Manager of the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame in Alice Springs, has been involved in the forthcoming Congress’s organisation since its inception in 2008. She has attended all three Women’s Museum Congresses, including the 2nd held in Bonn (2009), and the third in Buenos Aires (2010).

She presented her proposal that the 2012 Congress be held in Alice Springs while attending the 3rd Congress, and was successful in gaining the support of the network’s members, many of whom are excited about the opportunity to travel to Australia’s ‘outback’. The Northern Territory branch of Museums Australia has agreed to support the event, and looks forward to welcoming visitors from across the globe to the Territory in May 2012.

One of the key changes made to the membership in 2010 was the inclusion of individuals as members alongside organisations – a change which ICOM itself made after a watershed period of reforms at the beginning of the 1970s. The change was motivated

by Florencia Braga Memendez, Director of Museums for Buenos Aires. She became so interested in the

ABOVE (LEFT): Traditional entertainment at the 3rd congress (Buenos Aires 2010).

ABOVE (RIGHT): Participants from the 1st congress (Merano 2008) from Scandinavia, Europe, Sudan.

1. Endnotes

34 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 20 (1) – August 2011

4th International Congress of Women’s Museums

BELOW: Helen Joraslafsky presenting at the 2nd congress in Bonn 2009.

network during the 3rd Congress in her country that the membership criteria were amended to include individual women, as well as women’s museums.

Such a move is welcome, offering the network an opportunity to create broader, more diverse networks and interconnections, and draw a larger membership input for the women’s museums own network and events.

In 2012 Helen Joraslafsky is hopeful that individuals and museum organisations across Australia with an interest in the work of the network will take the opportunity to join the Congress in Alice Springs.

The potential for creating new and exciting international partnerships is enormous, a benefit that Helen can attest to personally.

The 4th International Congress of Women’s Museums will be held in Alice Springs between 18th and 21st of May 2012. The event will feature Central Australian and Alice Springs speakers, venues and entertainment, and will be attended by speakers and guests from around the world. Australians are invited to attend and alerted to insert the date in their diaries for next year.

Central Australia is at its best in the month of May. Cool nights, warm days, bright blue skies and plenty of warm welcoming smiles. Plan a visit to Alice Springs in 2012 and combine conference attendance with a trip to the Centre. The natural beauty and extraordinary heritage of this beautiful part of the world will make it a conference to remember.

Membership of the network is not necessary to attend the conference, but as membership is free it is certainly encouraged! Expressions of interest and further enquiries can be pursued by contacting: Helen Joraslafsky, Manager, National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame Inc PO Box 9193, Alice Springs NT 0871, Australia Phone: [+61–(0)8] 8952 9006 <www.pioneerwomen.com.au> [ ] Helen Joraslafsky is Manager, National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame. She is the Australian Co-ordinator for the 4th International Congress of Women’s Museums (2012), Michelle Smith is Senior Curator Territory History, Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. She is also President of the Museums Australia (Northern Territory) branch of MA. Citation for this text: Helen Joraslafsky & Michelle Smith, ‘Women in museums convening in Alice Springs (2012); 4th International Congress of Women’s Museums, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2011, pp .33-34.

Network of Women’s Museums Fourth International Congress of Women’s Museums National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame Alice Springs - Australia 18-21 May 2012

You are invited to meet and share ideas with women from across the world who are part of the ‘womeninmuseum’ network.

This network is an international union of Women’s Museums and other initiatives dedicated to women.

www.womeninmuseum.net

For more information contact : Helen Joraslafsky, Manager, National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame PO Box 9193 Alice Springs NT 0871 Australia (08) 8952 9006 www.pioneerwomen.com.au

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1. Endnotes