Museums Australia Magazine 21(2) Summer 2012

vol 21 (2) – summer 2012 $15.00

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Through a vibrant program focused on debating issues and exchanging ideas, the conference will explore some of the challenges facing the industry today such as the changing nature of work within museums, managing audience expectations with finite resources and preparing the next generation of museum and gallery professionals.

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8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Contents

In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2011—2013 Contents President’s message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Shining a light on global achievements: ICOM Australia Award for International Relations 2012.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Burlganyja Wanggaya: ‘Old People Talking’ in a new exhibition in Carnarvon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 MAPDA 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

president

Andrew Sayers AM (Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) vice-president

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

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

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

Cinderella, 15 years after the ball . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Belinda Nemec (Museum consultant, Melbourne)

Innovation in Exhibitions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

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

‘The oldest book in Queensland’ –

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

Discovering The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

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

Australia’s first hospital and the landscape of health

Soula Veyradier (Curator, City of Melville Museum & Local History Service, Booragoon, WA)

and medical museums today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

ex officio member

Floodlines: Two exhibitions interpret public

Frank Howarth (Chair, ICOM Australia), Director, Australian Museum

memory of natural disaster in Queensland . . . . 37

public officer

Tribute to Cathy Santamaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

state/territory branch presidents/ represent-

Dr Don McMichael CBE, Red Hill, Canberra

atives (subject to change throughout year)

ACT Carol Cartwright COVER IMAGE: Fragments of Book of the Dead collected from Dahr-el-bahrae near Thebes. Image: Queensland Museum.

Museums Australia Magazine PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608 Editorial: (02) 6230 0346 Advertising: 02) 6230 0346 Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346 Fax: (02) 6230 0360 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice Murphy Design: Brendan O’Donnell & Selena Kearney Print: GEON, Canberra

Printed on 100% Australian, 70-100% recycled carbon neutral paper stock.

© 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.

(Former 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 Regan Forrest (PhD Candidate, Adelaide) TAS Sue Atkinson (Museum Consultant, Tasmania) QLD Edith Cuffe (Director, Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Caboolture)

Museums Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation:

VIC Daniel Wilksch (Coordinator, Digital Projects, Public Record Office Victoria, Melbourne)

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).

WA Soula Veyradier (Curator, City of Melville Museum & Local History Service, Booragoon, WA)

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

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 9

President’s message

I

was very encouraged by several dimensions of the successful 2012 Museums Australia National Conference in Adelaide in September. In addition to offering a range of stimulating ideas and discussions about museums, the Conference also provided the National Council and executive of Museums Australia with an opportunity to hear from members.

The importance of the annual conferences was re-affirmed; members see the conferences as one of the significant benefits of membership. Whilst there were positive and useful suggestions about how future conferences might be structured, the opportunity of getting together with colleagues from across the country continues to be regarded as providing strong value.

One of the messages from members is the importance of accreditation programs in promoting standards and recognition. Museums Australia has been active in this area, and the development of a scheme of national accreditation is one of the work priorities for the organisation in 2013. Such a scheme would augment but not supplant the excellent statebased accreditation schemes that are already in place in parts of Australia.

Other topics in which members expressed strong interest were in the fields of training and skillsdevelopment. These are areas in which a member organisation such as Museums Australia has long played, and will continue to play, a key role.

The networking and development opportunities that were uppermost in the minds of conference attendees will, I believe, be further enhanced as Museums Australia works in closer collaboration with the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD). Whilst MA represents all of Australia’s museums, large and small, CAMD plays an important role in harnessing the concerns of the large state and Commonwealth museums. The close co-operation between the two organisations will be demonstrated at the 2013 annual conference in Canberra, next May, during which a CAMD meeting and the MA National Conference will be adjacent. This will be an

right:

Trade booths in Bonython Hall at MA2012, Adelaide 24-28 September 2012. Photo: Pauline Cockrill (MA SA).

top far right:

The MA2012 National Conference Welcome Event. L-R: Karl Telfer, Senior Kaurna Cultural Custodian, Jarvis Harrison and Michael Mills of HeapsGood Productions. Photo: Pauline Cockrill (MA SA).

opportunity to demonstrate, yet again, the coherence of the museums sector in Australia.

This year Museums Australia has continued to play a key role in sector advocacy. Museums Australia submissions relating to developing cultural policies, together with national heritage concerns and related legislation, have often been complementary to those submitted by CAMD and by individual museums. Yet the emphasis of Museums Australia submissions will always reflect a national perspective as well as having a strong regional emphasis, reflecting the very broad

geographical distribution of individual and organisational membership across the country.

Advocacy works. The introduction of the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Bill 2012 into Federal Parliament in recent weeks is a good example of how a significant and necessary legislative reform, bringing Australia into line with international practice, was the result of advocacy – through art museums and museums working together to convince government of the need for legislative protection. The Bill is one of a suite of legislative protections for cultural property in which museums have a considerable stake.

In 2012 Museums Australia has been supported by an active and focused National Council. The term of the current Council concludes in May 2013, and the AGM (to be held in Canberra at the time of the National Conference) will be the occasion for the newly elected Council for 2013–2015 to be declared.

I urge all members to take an active interest in the elections and to nominate effective people in their state or territory for Council positions. Nominations close on 11 February 2013. [] Andrew Sayers AM National President, Museums Australia (Director, National Museum of Australia)

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

ICOM National Committee continues to honour Australians’ international museum work

Shining a light on global achievements: ICOM Australia Award for International Relations 2012

Annette Welkamp

M top:

Min-Jung Kim (Curator, Powerhouse Museum) and Dr Robin Hirst (Deputy Chair, ICOM Australia). bottom:

Dr Amareswar Galla and Dr Robin Hirst (Deputy Chair, ICOM Australia).

right: Exhibition view : ‘Kingdoms of Gold’ section, Spirit of jangin: treasures of Korean metal craft, Powerhouse Museum.

Photo: Marinco Kojdanovski. © Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

any of Australia’s museums and their staff are not only active and engaged on a national front; they also look beyond our huge island continent to see how they can participate, and importantly contribute, abroad. These efforts, and many kinds of international ventures by our colleagues, often go unnoticed and unrecognised beyond those aware in a host institution or body connected with particular projects.

The Australian National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) seeks to redress this situation. ICOM Australia is determined that sustained international activity, great projects and outstanding work that advances the Australian museum sector’s contribution on a global level should be acknowledged and celebrated back home.

This is the fourth year that ICOM Australia has presented the Award for International Relations. As the name suggests, the focus is not simply on working internationally; rather it is about facilitating and strengthening museum developments further afield, through sharing Australian expertise and often also resources.

As in the past, the range and calibre of nominees presented ample evidence of the high quality of Australia’s museum professionals, and was a clear sign of their willingness to contribute where it is needed. Two Awards were presented at the Museums Australia 2012 National Conference in Adelaide by Dr Robin Hirst, Deputy Chair, ICOM Australia: one recognising the sustained work of an individual over many years; the other for a single project that came to fruition in the past year.

The recipient acknowledged this year for his outstanding individual achievements over many years was Professor Amareswar Galla, who is a leading expert on museums, sustainable heritage development and poverty alleviation, through cultural resources being brought in as the ‘fourth pillar’ of socio-economic planning for a community’s or nation’s enhanced future. Dr. Galla is a long-standing champion of cultural democracy, indigenous cultural rights, intercultural dialogue and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. He has an outstanding research and development record, directs a mobile project of publications, collaborations and international conferences entitled The Inclusive Museum, and is a very worthy recipient of the 2012 ICOM Australia Award for International Relations.

The second Award was presented to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, for the exhibition that it developed and presented in 2011 in conjunction with Korean cultural institutions, entitled Spirit of jangin: treasures of Korean metal craft. The exhibition

reflected the Museum’s longstanding recognition of the importance of understanding and communicating the cultures of neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It was considered particularly important since Korean history and culture are still relatively unknown in Australia. The project (which extended into 2012) is noteworthy because of the strong international ties achieved between the Powerhouse Museum and Korean cultural institutions and individuals, which will continue beyond the life of the exhibition that has forged these connections. KoreanAustralian Min-Jung Kim, Curator Asian Arts and Design, received the ICOM Award on behalf of the Powerhouse Museum.

It is always an honour for ICOM Australia to receive the Award nominations, and the accompanying submissions are certainly a pleasure for the judges to read, despite each year being confronted with the very humbling task of deciding between such excellent records of outstanding work and contributions internationally. This is very difficult indeed.

The 2012 Awards ceremony, held during the very fine MA Conference dinner on 27 September at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide, enabled ICOM Australia to shine a light, even briefly, on some of our colleagues who accomplish great things.

All Australian museum professionals should be proud of the effort and achievements of those who have been presented with the ICOM Australia Award for International Relations in 2012. We look forward to honouring other colleagues and institutions in future years. [] Annette Welkamp is Convenor, ICOM Australia Award for International Relations subcommittee, and Director, Cultural Connotations. Further information on the Awards, and the 2012 and earlier recipients, is available at icom.org.au Citation for this text: Annette Welkamp, ‘Shining a light on global achievements: ICOM Australia Award for International Relations 2012’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, p.10.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 11

Winner of the MAGNA National Awards for 2012

Burlganyja Wanggaya: ‘Old People Talking’ in a new exhibition in Carnarvon

right: Receiving the MAGNA National Award at MA2012, Adelaide. L-R: Justine Lawler (Gwoonwardu Mia Centre Manager), Scott Watson (exhibition designer, Scott Watson Design), Toni Roe (Gwoonwardu Mia Arts Development Officer), Andrew Sayers (Museums Australia President), Andrew Barrie (Lightwell Pty Ltd). Photo: Leanne Gollasch.

Editor’s note

A

remarkable new cultural centre and permanent exhibition display facility in Carnarvon (WA), Burlganyja Wanggaya: Old People Talking – Listen, Learn and Respect, first earned recognition in the Museums Australia MAGNA awards this year at a divisional level: as a Level 4 winner (based on budget size) for a permanent exhibition realised in 2012.

When the MAGNA judges finally reviewed all three categories and differentiated levels of awards decided, the Carnarvon project in the far north-west of Australia – with a distinctively strong and innovative Aboriginal elders and community presence guiding the formative ideas and outcomes – stood out as outstanding on national comparison, across all categories. It was decided to honour further this permanent exhibition, serving both the surrounding community and visitors so strongly in its active interpretation of local history. The exhibition, Burlganyja Wanggaya: Old People Talking – Listen, Learn and Respect, was made the overall national winner of Museums Australia’s MAGNA Awards honouring museums sector achievements in 2012.

This recognition was announced at the conclusion of the general Awards ceremonies evening within the 2012 MA National Conference in Adelaide in Bonython Hall (25 September 2012). The National Award across all MAGNA categories was presented by MA National President Andrew Sayers to the Centre’s Development Officer, Toni Roe, and a group of key representatives of the Gwoonwardu Mia/ Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage & Cultural Centre, who had travelled to Adelaide to be present for their recognition among peers and colleagues nationally – an exuberant moment captured in an accompanying image here.

Since the MAGNA National Award by Museums Australia, further recognition has been garnered by this innovative project, more than four years in the making and including a gallery shop, artists-in-residence facilities, a café with a bush tucker flavour and conference rooms for hire. It has won the Best in State and Award of Merit at the prestigious 2012 Design Institute of Australia (WA) Awards, in which judges commented: ‘The exhibition helps to demonstrate a rich Aboriginal culture via a contemporary style of architecture and interior design’.

Capping its opening half-year, one more honour for the new Cultural Centre and its feature exhibition, Burlganyja Wanggaya: Old People Talking – Listen, Learn and Respect, was achieved in the form of a Bronze Award in Category 7: Indigenous Tourism, within the 2012 Perth Airport Western Australian Tourism Awards, announced in November 2012. [Ed.]

Justine Lawler, Scott Watson, Malcolm Allbrook, Mary Anne Jebb

O

n 8 June 2012, the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, opened a new permanent exhibition at Gwoonwardu Mia – the Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre in Carnarvon.

The exhibition, Burlganyja Wanggaya, which in Carnarvon’s Indigenous Yinggarrda language means ‘Old People Talking’, officially saw the light of day before a large multicultural crowd of Carnarvon and Gascoyne residents.

Once the ribbon had been cut, members of the Yinggarda, Bayungu, Malgana, Thadgari and Thalanyji communities, representing the five main language groups of the Gascoyne region, guided the Premier through the exhibition. This was their culture and history on view, and they were eager to show their connections, to welcome and explain to visitors, to tell stories, to interpret. For the first time, the Aboriginal history of the region was taking pride of place as part of a rich and vibrant history of the Gascoyne area, which extends back into the deep, pre-colonial human past.

The privileged team that produced Burlganyja Wanggaya consisted of historians/curators Mary Anne Jebb and Malcolm Allbrook, designer Scott Watson, Centre Manager Justine Lawler, with curatorial guidance and direction from Lorraine Fitzpatrick, of the Gascoyne Development Commission, and Board Chairperson Kieran Kinsella. The project had begun four years before, when the historian-curators, were appointed to prepare an Interpretation Plan. This was then used as the starting point for development with the designer of a detailed conceptual plan of the gallery, identifying major content storylines and layout ideas with the Gwoonwardu Mia Indigenous Reference Group. Once the concept plan and initial exhibition costings had been completed, it took another two years to secure funding, gained through Royalties for Regions and Lotterywest, whose

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Winner of the MAGNA National Awards for 2012

contributions allowed the full potential of the exhibition to be realised.

The Gwoonwardu Mia Indigenous Reference Group, made up of members from each of the five language groups, took an active role in the content and design of the exhibition. Members wanted the exhibition to present their history and culture, their stories of ancient and continuing connections to the land of the Gascoyne. These had largely been hidden in the telling of the history of the Gascoyne, while Aboriginal culture – made up of many different language and kin groups – had never been given the prominence demanded by their long connection with the country.

The Burlganyja Wanggaya exhibition was to provide a place where groups could tell stories, where they could welcome everyone in their broad invitation to learn about their history and culture.

Exhibition spaces have been designed to highlight story-telling, in which members of the Aboriginal community communicate information through text, quotes, images, sound and film, to explain to visitors the different people of the region, their languages and the lands they are connected to. Sound and visual imagery illustrate Aboriginal stories of the creation of the Gascoyne River, the river that gives the region its character and life, together with the Ashburton, Lyon, and Gifford Creek.

Visitors are invited to sit down and listen to the story of the snake Warlu and the creation of the river, told in 1964 by the late Bob Williams, a Yinggarda man held in high esteem both by the Aboriginal and white populations. Located at the beginning of the exhibition, in a specially designed seat housing the speakers in the rear of the furniture to create a more intimate sound source for such a significant story, the narrative draws the visitor into an initial understanding of the region and its creation.

From there, the exhibition progresses to another intimate, darkened story-place to reflect Aboriginal people’s knowledge of the astral sky at night, as some of the earliest astronomers. The night sky is displayed in a manner that enables visitors to learn about the right: ‘Burlganyja Wanggaya’ exhibition. Photo: Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre.

way Aboriginal people used the stars as a guide to living and exploiting of natural resources, focused on the story of Jangguna, the night sky emu.

The night sky is projected onto a domed ceiling using 360-degree time-lapse photography, which required a customised four-metre dome ceiling to be built – originally reported as obtainable only at a vast cost from Malaysia. It was then that local knowledge and the recent technological history of Carnarvon lent a hand.

Someone knew of a disused dome sitting in a friend’s back yard. No longer needed by the NASA space tracking station, it was the perfect size and shape from which to build a mould and create a fibreglass dome. The fibreglass dome provided the ceiling and screen to project a vivid and spectacular production of the Gascoyne night sky incorporating the story of Jangguna, the emu: highlighted in the stars and related by one of the Aboriginal members of the region. Visitors have been mesmerised as they sit and look up at the ceiling – usually far longer than expected, with many continually returning during their visit to the exhibition.

Initial research located very few historically significant objects connected to the region, normally the central element of such exhibitions. One special object was well beyond reach: a 32,000-year-old set of shell ornaments found in the Cape Range National Park by archaeologist Kate Morse in the 1970s – thought to be the first example world-wide of the use of jewellery for body ornamentation. Understandably, the WA Museum was unwilling to donate this highly significant collection! It was decided to use a high-quality reproduction and display the shells in a beautifully lit, glass case as if they were ‘the crown jewels’. Titling this section ‘The Oldest Jewellery in the World’, the shell neck-ornaments were displayed to vividly signify the importance and long history of human habitation of the Gascoyne region.

A number of other historical objects were located through the ‘Can You Help?’ column in The West Australian newspaper. Some had been made years before, given as gifts or simply removed from the area; others had previously featured in earlier displays and been long stored – such as a small collection of objects in a local council shed that had been part of a regional exhibition in the 1990s.

A number of long-term Gascoyne residents also donated objects, and a Perth couple were keen to return an old grindstone that had come into their possession, which had originally been taken from Meedo station in the 1950s.

A display was eventually formed, entitled ‘They belong to the country’, highlighting to visitors the sad truth that a number of important objects have been removed from country, but retain a spirit and are as much a part of the country as the Aboriginal people themselves.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 13

Other objects included carved shields, a wanna and digging sticks, boomerangs and spear throwers, which were collected from the Gascoyne over the past sixty years. All the objects are now housed in conservationstandard, TASHCO glass showcases, not only for their preservation but also to signify their great importance.

Since the opening of the exhibition, the Centre is now expecting to become the resting place for many new objects that local people have been holding in their possession for many years. The exhibition has worked positively in highlighting the significance of such objects and how important it is that they return to country. Due to the respectful displaying of the objects in the exhibition, people are now comfortable in leaving such objects for long-term care, knowing they will be well looked after, secure and available to be viewed and shared with many others. This was always anticipated in the design stages (‘If you build it, they will come’); so as new objects come in now, there is allowance to exchange displays and rotate objects, while also helping their preservation.

It was important to the reference group to provide a contemporary perspective on their histories and cultures, and to demonstrate the continuity and strength of their communities as they progress today.

A program of oral history recordings of local people was implemented using digital sound and film equipment to create exhibition material, and provide the opportunity for community members to present the stories they wished to tell. These might be stories

of growing up on the stations or in town; of being sent to the Carnarvon Mission as children; of work in the fishing industry at Shark Bay; or life on the old Carnarvon Reserve (from 1919 to 1974) and the present Mungullah Village. The station way of life is remembered and treasured by the members of the older generation, who had grown up on stations with only occasional visits to towns.

On the stations they worked hard, but had the time to keep their knowledge of country and its resources alive, and pass this on to younger generations. There were also times of great hardship and violence, particularly in the early days when some Aboriginal people continued to live in the bush, away from the stations.

One such episode took place at Moogooloo Hill on the upper Minilya River in 1882, when a number of Aboriginal people were killed by local station workers. The exhibition covers a report by Sergeant Troy, who was sent to investigate the reported massacre, and a recorded story by Tommy Dodd, a stockman at Middalya Station until the 1960s, re-telling the story of the massacre he had heard from his grandfather.

Thus the exhibition moved onto ground that has often been controversial. However the strong evidence from historic police reports, and the determination of the reference group to tell a story many of them had grown up with, meant that a powerful story of one of the lesser-known episodes of Gascoyne history was finally presented.

As the story was so sensitive and difficult for many of the older Aboriginal people to hear, due to its great sadness, it was important to show respect for such sensitivity and create a secluded area away from the other exhibits that gave visitors the choice whether or not to enter and listen. A small and sombre darkened room, with only a spot-lit shield on the wall presents a text drawn from evidence from the police report and a 1967 sound recording: these few elements are used to present the story related by Tommy Dodd, in both English and language.

On completion of the exhibition’s construction, members of the Dodd family were taken into this space for their approval. This was a very emotional occasion for all present, not only because of the horrific account presented in the story but also in witnessing the overwhelming amazement on the Dodds’ faces as the audio played their father’s voice, which many hadn’t heard since they were children.

Another exhibit features the Dawson’s Burrowing Bee, the B-52 of indigenous bees and ubiquitous to the clay pans of the Gascoyne. This bee is indeed a remarkable creature, featured in David Attenborough’s BBC ‘Life’ series some years ago.

The Burrowing Bee is also known as Mungudgurra, and its larvae are a source of sweet food for Aboriginal people, many of whom speak with reverence for

left: Mungudgurra (Dawson’s Burrowing Bee). Photo: Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre.

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Winner of the MAGNA National Awards for 2012

below: Girls from the Gascoyne region visit the ‘Burlganyja Wanggaya’ exhibition.

Photo: Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre.

the bee and fondness for the food it provides. This was a story that needed to be told, and with the assistance of the Fremantle-based film project, Indigenous Community Stories, together with the exhibition team, a week was spent camping out in the Gascoyne region with Aboriginal elders, recording the stories about the bee and many other topics.

The final Burrowing Bee exhibit features members of the reference group speaking about Mungudgurra’s traditional significance, and the way to prepare its honey as a food source. Once again the exhibition utilised contemporary stories: demonstrating continu-

ing connection to land and culture today and teaching the younger generations. The recorded production is displayed on screen, whilst the visitor sits back in a specially designed curved seat that incorporates the audio speakers in the rear of the seat, at ear level, creating intimacy with the story and assisting all to hear within the larger open exhibition space. The Burrowing Bee has become a significant exhibit in many ways, first in engaging visitors with the story of the bee itself, and its unusual nature, then encouraging them to connect with a few locations around Carnarvon, where they can go out and view the bee for themselves.

The Indigenous Reference Group was insistent that the exhibition portray Gascoyne Aboriginal people as part of a living, dynamic culture and society, not just associated with an historical past. It should be a place not only for visitors from elsewhere but also for their own younger family members to learn about their history and their people – encouraging the younger people to have strong connection with family and an understanding of where they come from.

To achieve these connections it was decided that the best way to engage young people is through technology. This led to the development of a large multi-touch interactive light table running through the centre of the gallery. Research had located a large volume of historic and contemporary photographs, far more than could be exhibited in the exhibition space, so an electronically-based format proved the perfect platform to display such a wealth of material.

Digitally-based systems provided a way of using these photographs and making them accessible through touch-screen technology, incorporating the ability to manipulate and move the images. The resultant exhibit allows visitors to do many things – including to photograph themselves through an in-built camera which then loads their portrait into various Gascoyne landscapes, creating a group collage to include younger people’s images with those of their ancestors and living family members. In effect, they can produce their own visual family history.

The reference group was pleased, as this format allowed the younger people to make the strong connections they were after, even enabling email of new creations back to their authors, to keep a permanent copy. The images-table can also be updated with further images and information, as more people bring their images into the Centre for storage. It is a delight to see the excitement of visitors responding to the images-table as hoped and planned: using this exhibit to show children and their extended families, telling stories, and creating their own visual history record.

Opening an exhibition is always a moment of mixed emotions for all those who work tirelessly to pull it together. For the Gwoonwardu Mia Indigenous Reference Group, it represented the end of an important phase in Carnarvon Aboriginal history, in which they were very pleased with the outcome. As John Oxenham, one of the senior members, told the audience at the opening, this was a chance to learn and understand a different perspective on the region: ‘If you haven’t changed by the time you get to the end’, he said, ‘you should turn round and go right back through it again’.

The opening was also a time of some sadness as everyone involved in the project remembered three older people who had driven the exhibition during the formative stages, but none of them had lived to see the results of their efforts. Sid Dale, a Bayungu elder who had long been an advocate for the rights of his people, died shortly after works commenced. Soon after Ron Crowe, Yinggarda elder and well known in Carnarvon, also passed away.

A great responsibility then fell on the shoulders of Maureen Dodd, who became the leading voice and sounding board for the project and kept an eagle eye on its development. The team spent a lot of time with Maureen. They went to country, to her home place

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 15

at Middalya station, to the Kennedy Ranges, Meedo, Wooramel, and made further short trips around the Carnarvon bush, looking out for the Burrowing Bee. Tragically, only a short time before the completion of the exhibition, Maureen Dodd became seriously ill and died in February 2012.

Carnarvon is a long way from Perth – over 800 kilometres. Many pass through on their way further north, stopping to refuel or perhaps enjoy a frozen mango, but not actually going into and spending time in the town. The town is currently undergoing something of a renaissance, however, as new developments and attractions make it a destination in its own right, a place to be visited and enjoyed, rather than a mere stop on the way through to somewhere else.

Burlganyja Wanggaya is now a vital part of the town of Carnarvon, adding to its growing tourism amenities; but above all, an exhibition that proudly exhibits Aboriginal life, culture and history.

Exhibition design and meaning The basis of the overall exhibition design and layout is heavily influenced by the physical design of the building, which is based on the swirl of a cyclone.

As the gallery predominantly consisted of two large outer curved walls in profile, it became very difficult to incorporate a straight line into the space. This led to creating a series of curved, circular lines, walls and spaces within the large curved room.

The overall direction that shaped the design of the gallery in the end was derived from the content development, recognising that Aboriginal culture is an oral culture of teaching and learning with very few written records, unlike European culture. Teaching is often through stories and language, and listening is a very important skill. Wanting to project these elements into the exhibition, it quickly became the driving direction for all involved, determining both the design and how the exhibition content would also be delivered.

Sound and story were the key factors, along with visual elements, large-scale imagery, and use of minimal text that is easy to read and follow from the Aboriginal point of view, and presented directly, as if in their own words. It was also identified that many Aboriginal people have difficulty with literacy, and as this is an exhibition above all for them and about them, it needed to be presented in a comfortable and inviting environment – without walls full of text panels, as in many other exhibitions.

On first entry into the gallery, the goal was to try to slow the visitor down, to prepare to take them on an initial journey of learning, of welcome, of creation and dreaming stories. Creating small, intimate, seated nooks along a one-way path was preferred, together with providing sound-recording points presenting

Aboriginal people telling their stories with minimal accompanying text or explanation.

Preparing visitors to listen was a first consideration.

Then from a controlled pathway of initial learnings, they are released into the larger, more open gallery space, providing the freedom to choose direction. Again, the larger area still contains a number of smaller, intimate, seated areas supplied with sound.

Spending time in the Burlganyja Wanggaya exhibition, observing how visitors interact with the space and speaking directly with them to gain feedback, is a delight. It seems to confirm that the initial objectives have been achieved, many visitors commenting on how refreshing it is to not be overwhelmed by large amounts of text, while the text actually used is inviting, easy to read and follow. Visitors seem to love the little intimate spaces of listening-points; and flicking through images on the multi-touch light table and taking photographs of themselves; then nestling back into the many seated areas, listening to the stories and at the same time learning.

The responses from the local community and tourists alike have been overwhelmingly positive. More importantly: they are understanding, learning and taking away with them the key messages that were intended in the creation of this unique exhibition.

In the words of Scott Watson: ‘This has been a very special project and an amazing journey for me, working closely with the Aboriginal people of the region and recording their stories, one I will remember for the rest of my life.’ [] Citation for this text: Gwoonwardu Mia, Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre (Justine Lawler, Scott Watson, Malcolm Allbrook, Mary Anne Jebb), ‘Burlganyja Wanggaya: ‘Old People Talking’ in a new exhibition in Carnarvon’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 11-15 .

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards 2012

MAPDA 2012

T

he Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards (MAPDA) celebrate excellence in design and communication in the museums and galleries sector across Australasia.

MAPDA 2012 was featured during the Museums Australia National Conference, Research and collections in a connected world, on 25 September in Adelaide.

Shortlisted entries and winners can be viewed on the MA website <www.museumsaustralia.org.au>.

Hosted by Michael Mills of Heaps Good Productions, and held in conjunction with the Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNAs), the 2012 Awards ceremony was attended by more than 200 awardees, designers and conference delegates.

Michael’s lively and unconventional presentation made for an especially enjoyable evening for all.

Winning entries were meanwhile exhibited in Bonython Hall throughout the conference.

The MAPDAs continue to attract a widening interest in the sector – increasing on 2011 numbers, in 2012 there were 221 entries from 74 institutions across Australia and New Zealand. A list of the 14 categories and entry levels is available on the MAPDA website.

Judging of the publications was hosted at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, and included the presence of industry experts and MAPDA veterans: Ian Wingrove (Wingrove Design, Sydney); Jude Savage (Art Gallery of WA, Perth; former Chair of the MAPDA Committee); Rick Cockrane (GEON Print & Communication, Canberra); and Patricia Sabine (past MA President; former Director of Tasmanian Design Centre). Judging of the electronic entries was undertaken by teleconference, and was conducted by Brendan O’Donnell (Corvus Creative, Sydney), Ian Wingrove (Wingrove Design, Sydney), and Tikka Wilson (National Museum of Australia, Canberra).

MAPDA entries are judged according to the following criteria: 1. Originality in creative idea/innovative concept 2. Level of design skill in expressing the idea – typography, photography, etc.

3. Ability to communicate effectively 4. Production values Appraising all of the wonderful winning and commendable entries, four were finally selected for their outstanding excellence: two from the print categories, and two from the electronic categories. The Best in Show for print publications went to Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) for their major exhibition catalogue, Matisse: Drawing Life. The judges were impressed by the subtle and sensitive coverage of the exhibition and its subject, and the excellent production values generally.

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu was awarded a Judges Special Award in the print publication category for De-building (designed by Peter Bray of Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand). This was selected as a standout publication for its ‘dynamic combination of different print and production techniques’ resulting in a ‘tactile and rich finish’.

The Best in Show for the electronic category was awarded to the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Contemporary app for the iPad (designed by Jo Hein from the Art Gallery of NSW). This beautifully designed app demonstrated strong sharing options and a great use of the slider timeline to effectively communicate the gallery’s contemporary collection.

A second Judges Special Award was made to the Powerhouse Museum for its multimedia entry INTER-LACE Micro Documentary Series (designed

by Paula Bray and Patrick Abboud from the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney). The judges spent much time ‘engaging’ with the ‘compelling’ information presented, and praised the website for its ‘excellent video quality’ and ‘strong colour and typography’.

There were numerous creative trends visible across the publications submitted, most noticeably the increasing move towards recycled and sustainable stock. The super shiny and glossy pages favoured earlier are disappearing, as we enter into an age of matt stocks and even fabrics, making for a more tactile (and environmentally-friendly) reading experience. Also in the electronic categories, the advance of designs integrating social media, offering sharing options and focusing on access and mobility, are more prevalent than in past years.

An additional electronic sub-category – Multimedia (B): publications produced for mobile devices – was launched for MAPDA 2012, to take advantage of these technological developments. As multimedia applications grow in accessibility and popularity, so might the entries in MAPDA’s electronic categories increase.

Museums Australia is acutely grateful for the continuing and loyal support of Australian Book Connection and Interactive Controls as sponsors.

MAPDA 2013, marking the fifteenth year of the MAPDAs, will call for entries on 1 February 2013, and will be announced on 19 May 2013 at the Museums Australia National Conference in Canberra <www. ma2013.org.au>. Opportunities for sponsorship of the awards are also available, with great benefits for supporters – email <mapda@museumsaustralia.org. au> for more information. [] Citation for this text: Stephanie Hamilton, ‘Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards 2012’, Museums Australia Magazine, Canberra, Vol. 21(2), November 2012, pp.16-17.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 17

above:

Matisse: Drawing Life from the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Winner of Exhibition Catalogue (Major) category for Level C.

left: Contemporary (app for iPad) from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Winner of the Multimedia (B) category for Level C. Designed by Jo Hein, Art Gallery of New South Wales. right:

De-building from the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. Highly Commended in the Exhibition Catalogue (major) category for Level C. Designed

by Peter Bray, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. top right:

Facebox from the National Portrait Gallery. Joint Winner of the Educational Material category for Level C. Designed by Brett Wiencke, National Portrait Gallery.

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Cinderella Collections, fifteen years after the ball: Australia’s university museums reviewed

Cinderella, 15 years after the ball

Andrew Simpson

M

aterial collections have always historically been associated with the generation of knowledge. Many such collections arose in universities – including the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ type of collection first modelled within the oldest universities in Europe.

The modern university is a complex, hierarchical and competitive organisation that both generates and disseminates knowledge which may, or may not, relate to material collections held by the institution. These collections may include nationally or internationally significant items, yet data on them is not always readily accessible either to the public or even the university community itself.

It is well known that the higher education sector in Australia holds a significant portion of the Distributed National Collection – a concept that gained currency in the early 1990s through the work of the Heritage Collections Committee, later Council (HCC). Meanwhile also during the 1990s, the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections (CAUMAC), at the time a separate entity from Museums Australia, was instrumental in establishing two broad investigations under the aegis of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AV-CC).

The results of these investigations were two sectorwide reports.[1] These important documents became known as the Cinderella Collections reports. The first, in 1996, identified 256 university museums and collections in Australia. Among its most important findings, the researchers disclosed a widespread, poor level of awareness by universities of the museums and collections in their care.

The Cinderella reports produced a raft of recommendations directed towards senior management and university curators in relation to policy development and industry standards.[2] The work was based on surveys and forums held around the country with staff, students and other interested parties responsible for higher education collection management.

Submissions and testimony led to the conclusion that despite the significant scale and often unique nature of university collections, a lack of funding, adequate housing and storage facilities – and in particular an absence of qualified staff – had caused the management of many important collections to fall below acceptable professional standards.

While these generalised findings appeared strongly critical, it must be remembered that university museums and collections are highly varied. They range from high-profile organisations such as the Potter Museum of Art on Melbourne University’s Swanston Street border that – at least as far as many of the public are concerned – appears almost to have a life

separate from its parent institution, through to diverse collections previously used for university teaching that are now locked away from the mainstream of their campus life, and in storage.

It has now been more than fifteen years since the results of the first sector-wide survey of university museums and collections in Australia was published.

The reports certainly raised awareness of general issues relating to campus-based material collections; nevertheless responses to the reports among universities since that time have been highly varied.

Some universities established procedures for institutional-level recognition of some collections, placing them on a more sustainable footing and aligning them more closely with individual institutional development strategies. Some undertook a proliferation of policy developments. Meanwhile other universities transferred some major collections out of the sector altogether, while further institutions – according to anecdotal evidence – undertook a course of simply, and quietly, disposing of collections perceived as no longer relevant.

All of these responses are understandable in both an historical and strategic overview. Many university collections were originally developed predominantly to support teaching practices;[3] however many others have long served functions in support of both research and community engagement. Over time, the interconnections between research priorities, teaching pedagogies and a collections utility for engagement can change, as institutions evolve in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape.[4] The decline in public funding for tertiary education since the late 1990s has meanwhile had a profound impact on staffing arrangements across the academic horizon nationally. University restructuring has increasingly favoured clustering various discipline areas into fewer constellations of streamlined faculties or ‘schools’, thereby rationalising support systems and reducing the number of support staff provided to service these entities. In this much-altered environment, it is the support staff that usually shoulders the responsibility for the management of university collections.

Further profound and accelerating change is anticipated, including the stark prediction that none of the current business models of any public university in Australia will survive through to 2025.[5] In view of these fundamental and far-reaching changes in higher education, the data presented in the original Cinderella reports of the 1990s on Australian university collections is best considered today as of historic value. Meanwhile the recent work of the Membership Review Committee within Museums Australia in 2012 prompted CAUMAC to consider the basic question: Who are our current constituency?

above:

Andrew Simpson

1. The two reports are: University Museums Review Committee, Cinderella Collections: University Museums and Collections in Australia (Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, 1996); and University Museums Project Committee, Transforming Cinderella Collections: The management and conservation of Australian University Museums, Collections and Herbaria (Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, 1998). http://www.amol.org.au/craft/ publications/miscarticles/ cinderella_contents.asp 2. Similar investigations occurred in other nations at around the same time.

These are summarised in Andrew Simpson, ‘Modelling Governance Structures for University Museums and Collections’, in Jandl, S. & Gold, M. (eds), A Handbook for Academic Museums: Beyond Exhibitions and Education (MuseumsEtc, Edinburgh & Boston, 2012), pp.178-218.

3. Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections, and Pigott, P.H., and Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia, Museums in Australia 1975: Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections including the report of the Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia (Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1975). http://www. nma.gov.au/newmuseum/images/ Museums_in_Australia_1975.pdf 4. It has been argued that many of the changes faced by higher education derive from long-term trends of corporatisation as a response to globalisation – see, for example, S. Slaughter & L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997).

5. University of the Future (Ernst and Young [Australia], 2012).

Available at: <http://www. ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ University_of_the_future/$FILE/ University_of_the_future_2012.pdf>

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 19

top:

Cinderella Collections: University Museums and Collections in Australia (Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee, 1996).

bottom: Transforming Cinderella Collections: the Management and Conservation of Australian University Museums, Collections and Herbaria, (Australian ViceChancellor’s Committee, 1998). right:

Macquarie University Art Gallery Arboreal Exhibition, 2011.

Photo: Effy Alexakis.

6. CAUMAC acknowledges and thanks museum consultant, Andrew Reed, for this work in 2011.

7. Andrew Simpson, ‘Modelling Governance Structures for University Museums and Collections’, op. cit.

CAUMAC, therefore, recently undertook its own sector-wide data gathering exercise: as a way of connecting with this MA National Network’s key stakeholders to provide a clearer picture of its interests and needs, and to inform future advocacy efforts on its behalf. The CAUMAC survey involved webbased searches to identify material collections in Australian universities.[6] One result demonstrated a numerical increase in museums and collections across universities, and revealed a potentially expanded service footprint for CAUMAC within Museums Australia. A surprisingly higher number of museums and collections was identified than in the 1990s, now totalling 403.

However this does not necessarily mean there has been exponential growth in the sector. Some university collections or museums that were previously listed in the Cinderella reports are either no longer operational or have been transferred out of the sector.

The higher number aggregated therefore probably reflects different research methodologies used, and an improved awareness of university museums and collections generally – in particular, specialised collections held by university libraries – as well as much more widely employed digital access to collections data.

A further complicating factor is recently published work[7] that indicates there is a large number of

essentially ungoverned collections within the university museums sector that operate beneath the radar of awareness of a university’s central administration and strategic development. None of these collections would have appeared in the earlier Cinderella reports data, because research methodologies employed at that time (surveys, interviews, etc.) required collections to take the initiative in identifying themselves – leading to weighted, self-selecting data contributions.

The new research of the present decade meanwhile has thrown open many questions concerning the data and original definitions applied to university collections in the 1990s reports – through later identification of further categories of collections, such as collections of digital objects; and collections and archives held by residential colleges, theological colleges and student organisations across academic campuses.

Ignoring the numerical differences between the two sets of data, can anything of challenge and urgent significance today be discerned about changes in the nature of Australian university museums and collections over the last fifteen years? To address this question, a rough taxonomic scheme was devised in 2011 to classify the different collection types. Six broad categories have been identified for current research purposes. For this exercise, there has been no fundamental distinction drawn between museums

20 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Cinderella Collections, fifteen years after the ball: Australia’s university museums reviewed

above:

Fig. 1

8. The issue for university natural history collections has been covered in more depth recently by M. Pearce & A. Simpson, ‘A recent survey of the current status of university natural history museums and collections in Australia’, in Interesting Times: New Roles for Collections, Museums Australia National Conference 2010 (Conference papers, Museums Australia, Canberra, 2011), pp.169-173.

9. One example is the University of Queensland’s geology collection, which was transferred to the state museum in Brisbane in 2000.

and collections – the one important, linking factor being a publicly accessible display space in the former.

The following conspectus of collections and institutional types has emerged to describe the contemporary situation across Australian university settings: 1. Art collections. This includes all media of artistic works and sculpture collections.

2. Ancient History/Classics collections. This includes all material collections utilised to enhance learning in this area.

3. Modern History collections. This includes social history, archives, and thematic collections relating to a particular place, event or endeavour.

4. Natural History collections. This includes geological collections, herbaria, and specialised fauna and flora collections, including micro-organisms.

5. Science and Technology collections. This includes medical, dental and pathology collections, engineering collections, and collections of architectural structural models and drawings.

6. Cultural and Anthropological collections. This includes indigenous collections and other culturally specific collections of all types.

It must be noted that these categories are somewhat arbitrary, and there are some collections that could be classified under more than one grouping. Nevertheless the point of this new typological exercise was to examine whether any broad trends can be discerned by comparing the historic Cinderella reports data with contemporary data. The two sets of data are presented graphically in Fig. 1.

Some trends are apparent. What can clearly be seen is a growth in the number of art collections in the higher education sector. Many universities have developed art collections in recent years, possibly as a mechanism to bolster institutional identity through their deployment in community engagement. Yet even universities that don’t teach visual arts programs have art collections, suggesting a non-traditional (that is, non-teaching) rationale for their establishment.

There has also been an obvious decline in the number of natural history collections[8] This probably reflects changing research foci, and diversion away from whole plant and animal studies in botany and zoology, in favour of utilising new technological methods and capturing the expansion of bio-molecular research.

There has been a further change in pedagogic focus in the delivery of biology and geology programs within our universities, marked by a declining use of specimens in practical components. It is known that some significant collections have accordingly

been transferred out of the higher education sector altogether as a result of these changes in teaching in recent years.[9] The comparative longitudinal data appears to show a massive growth in the number of modern history collections held within universities. However this trend is possibly exaggerated because of the earlier absence of many archival collections, and many ‘ungoverned’ research collections, which did not form part of the 1996 survey. Recent data also indicates growth in the number of anthropological and cultural collections, while there has been a small decline in the number of scientific and technological collections.

While this rather cursory comparison of data gathered since the 1990s suggests some interesting changes, the information now appearing on institutional websites is not always an accurate representation of reality.

How are university collections now used, and how well do they align with an ever-changing corporate agenda of their host institutions? How many universities are taking an institution-wide approach to the management of these collections, and how many still have ungoverned collections buried deep within their organisational substructures? How many collections are today at risk of disposal, as institutional budgets contract and many administrators reconceptualise their university’s ‘core business’ and search for savings? How many universities are capable of seeking out alternative futures for collections, or for significant items therein, which might no longer be deemed useful in this changing environment?

University collections, and the museums that house them, are different from other public collections because of the academic mission of their host organisations. However like any organisation, decisions to commit resources need to entail optimisation of their use, and demonstrated value produced in the results of their deployment.

Overviewing this dynamic and changing landscape, CAUMAC believes that the brief survey outlined here in fact sets the stage for a deeper investigation into the sector, which will address some of the above questions, help inform policy and practice regarding university museums and collections in Australia, and demonstrate appropriate stewardship of this part of the nation’s Distributed National Collection.

CAUMAC is actively seeking partners and supporters for this important undertaking. [] Dr Andrew Simpson is Director, Museum Studies Program, at Macquarie University, New South Wales. He is President of MA (NSW) and a member of Museums Australia’s National Council.

Citation for this text: Andrew Simpson, ‘Cinderella Collections, fifteen years after the ball: Australia’s university museums reviewed’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 18-20 .

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 21

Converging dichotomies: critique of exhibition design and management practices in Australian museums

Innovation in exhibitions

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

(Albert Einstein)

Georgia Rouette

E

xhibition design fundamentally depends on realising the relationship between content and context, interaction and experience.

Effective exhibition design brings to life the objects and stories of a project, and heightens the relationship between things through their interpretation.

Museums[1] today aim to be inclusive, accessible, relevant, unbiased, collaborative and democratic.

Exhibition teams aim to create exhibitions in spaces that provide lifelong learning opportunities. Such environments are ‘inclusive spaces where physical, intellectual and cultural barriers to access may be overcome’;[2] they are ‘flexible space[s] open to change, responsive to visitor needs and in touch with contemporary issues’.[3] Exhibition teams with diverse expertise aim to encourage exploration and love for learning in their target audiences. In supporting these broad objectives, museums become the conduits and facilitators of knowledge development, in spaces where entertainment co-exists productively with learning outcomes.[4] It was within this matrix of interest in audiencedriven program outcomes that I received a Gordon Darling Foundation Grant in 2012, to research current trends and innovation in exhibition development processes, design and production methods. The central question I was interested in when I began my inquiry was: What innovative exhibition design strategies and methodologies are museums developing to create unique museum experiences?

The focus was on innovation and uniqueness – on how museums differentiate themselves from other museums and non-museum experiences through their delivery of exhibitions. In the course of the project I visited sixteen museums covering the states of Tasmania, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Most of the organisations visited were state museums and galleries; and medium-sized museums, both metropolitan and regional. Their associated disciplines covered art, science and social history.

Staff interviewed ranged from museum directors, to heads of exhibition departments and design managers.

All were asked the same questions, and most revealed they had very similar issues in mind.

The questions I put to relevant museum staff were: • Where does exhibition design sit within the exhibition process/ management structure?

• What innovative exhibition design strategies is

your organisation developing to create unique museum experiences?

• How is your museum unique/different (setting itself apart from other museums)?

• What design methodologies are used to achieve knowledge development through informal learning?

• What ‘green’ strategies are used in exhibition design?

• How does your organisation use new technologies to create unique, memorable experiences?

The general aims of this research were quite clear to me. However it soon became apparent that designers and exhibition managers found that the dialogue provided an opportunity to have their voices heard on underlying concerns, in an environment where they otherwise were not able to express opinions so candidly. Therefore rather than deliberating on institutional innovations in the areas of design and exhibition management more generally, discussions tended to move quickly to fundamental issues affecting their work that exhibition designers faced on a daily basis.[5] A crucial question therefore became: Why do some museums achieve their projected outcomes better than others?

All museum participants indicated that they faced institutional constraints – such as budget,

above:

Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart, Tasmania.

Photo: MONA/Leigh Carmichael.

1. The term ‘museum’ takes its referencepoints from the Museums Australia Constitution (1994; revised 2002), which can be accessed at: www. museumsaustralia.org.au. The more widely used, international definition of a museum is provided by ICOM (International Council of Museums), which can be found on the ICOM website at: http://icom.museum/ the-vision/museum-definition/ 2. Suzanne MacLeod (ed.), Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, Routledge, London and New York, 2005, p.1.

3. ibid, p.5.

4. Georgia Rouette (ed), Exhibition Design for Galleries and Museums: an insider’s view, Museums Australia (Vic), Melbourne, 2010.

5. I wish to emphasise that my findings are based on the museums that I visited and the people with whom I had discussions in those institutions.

The conversations conducted with these museum professionals were candid, and the honesty and trust extended to me remain respected.

22 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Converging dichotomies: critique of exhibition design and management practices in Australian museums

above:

Installation photograph from Star Voyager, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. Photo: Mark Ashkanasy.

organisational politics and human resourcing – which impacted on the outcomes of their projects. Museums that were able to succeed in achieving, or exceeding and sustaining, projected outcomes were those that were able to see beyond their constraints and turn restrictions into opportunities.

The fundamental issues for exhibition design staff meanwhile included questions of leadership, the role of the designer within their organisation, and the exhibition development process. Most design staff interviewed indicated that the management styles/ structures of their organisations often limited or even prevented creativity.

Some interviewees argued that the corporatisation of the museum was the core problem in creative environments. Where efforts to create efficiencies in operations predominated in critical decision-making, the corporate model invariably affected creativity negatively. Some staff argued more strongly that the business model clearly did not work, and that museums – especially art museums – should return to the artistic content/creativity-driven model.

The ‘cult of personality’ also surfaced as a genuine issue within some museums, where staff critiqued the curator- and director-driven exhibition design management model as outdated and ineffective within today’s highly competitive and technologydriven environment of cultural production.

The design process itself was highlighted as another key issue affecting creativity in museums. There

was unanimous consensus that designers should be present within the concept-development stage of the exhibition process, rather than introduced somewhere in the middle – or more alarmingly, towards the end – of the many stages of an exhibition’s realisation.

In organisations that did not embrace a participative exhibition management structure throughout development stages, it was argued that the design process had become drastically reduced to what one designer referred to, in its worst manifestation, as pre-emptive design, rather than a collaborative exercise. This vantage-point held that most of the design-defining decisions that shaped an exhibition’s final character were made without the designer’s input, and were set in place at the beginning of the exhibition management process. In these circumstances, designers were introduced only towards the end of a project’s development, and they were often considered in limited terms as ‘just layout people’.

In such a non-inclusive process, designers judged that they could only implement a design that, in many critical respects, had already been determined. Individuals affected in such ways felt that the process inevitably failed to take advantage of their skills. In consequence, staff turnover in these areas was high and morale was low.

Exhibition design staff asserted that within an institutional environment that introduced their work too late and too prescriptively, there was a general lack of understanding about what design is, and how and where its processes fit within and can contribute to a museum. Such lack of understanding has often resulted in communication breakdown and the marginalisation of the design team within a museum.

Some designers argued that managers do not understand – and are unwilling to learn – what is the role of the designer, and as a result, there are missed opportunities for truly creative solutions to emerge.

Among other issues that arose from discussions with designers was a frequent frustration of working within a risk averse environment, where taking creative risks was feared and the exhibition design potential underwent a sanitisation process. Some designers argued that they had more creative licence with sleeper exhibitions: exhibitions that are nonpopulist, have a low financial risk, are cheap to produce, and where benchmarks of success have a lower threshold of associated expectations.

Outsourcing was also an issue within many organisations. In most cases, it was argued, a tendering design company did not understand the commissioning organisation’s goals and objectives, and lacked

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 23

crucial in-depth knowledge of the designated project and context. Meanwhile the costs associated with outsourcing were often exorbitant.

Although there are many cases where exhibition designers feel marginalised within their organisations, there are nevertheless some museums that are achieving great outcomes, have well-functioning, satisfied work-teams; and are guided by transformational leaders who ensure that creative environments are alive internally and are working to produce highly effective, successful exhibitions.

Two questions then arise: How is it that some museums get things right and some do not? What are the successful museums doing distinctively that ensures they achieve their projected outcomes?

My research project led to the conclusion that museums that achieved positive exhibition outcomes managed their teams distinctively, in a more inclusive and cooperative way. Strategies for success that were elucidated by these museums included: • Moving beyond an earlier model of curator-led exhibition design, and including a designer in the concept phase of exhibition management.

• Understanding of the role of the exhibition designer as a contributor who can provide creative solutions to an exhibition’s final realisation.

• Engaging designers with diverse backgrounds – such as architects, interior designers, industrial designers and graphic designers – who are able to bring varying perspectives to design solutions.

• Affirming the importance of an environment where creativity is encouraged to flourish.

• Cultivating trust between staff and management teams.

• Allowing for experimentation and not being afraid to fail – thereby becoming less risk averse.

• Developing overall institutional support for the importance of creativity and unlocking the creative potential of staff.

• Avoiding an ivory tower attitude in favour of developing a collaborative environment between staff and across various departments within an organisation.

• Taking control of the design process and limiting outsourcing – instead, favouring the in-sourcing model, which creates a sense of institutional ownership of both the design process and its various outcomes.

• Affirming the importance of team dynamics, inclusiveness, staff acknowledgment, and an allowance for innovation to occur.

The research findings of my project have brought

to prominence the issue of leadership, which is often a low-ranking topic in museology but is at the core of how well a museum can function. A frank discussion of leadership still remains a very delicate issue within institutions when reviewing internal systems and processes reflectively. Individuals feel that they can speak of this topic only at their own risk, and fear for their jobs if a critical opinion is voiced openly.

Although there may be nominal efforts made to acknowledge the role of leadership, in practice this can rarely be discussed openly and honestly. A selfcongratulatory approach of the status quo tends to be adopted, rather than permitting any critique or shared reflection.

Museums however can be leaders in developing truly creative environments, and I believe they should support consideration of alternative leadership models that will benefit the sector overall. In her article, The art museum ecosystem: a new alternative model, Yuha Jung suggests that the traditional ‘mechanical’, linear or hierarchical, ‘non-communicative’ approaches to museum management have ‘excluded diverse perspectives and neglected the interests of underrepresented people’ from within the museum and the broader community.[6] The ‘museum ecosystem’ model derives from Gregory Bateson’s long-developed theoretical work based on an ecological paradigm, which views all people, organisations, societies and the natural world as interconnected and interdependent through a communicative and interactive network.[7] According to Bateson (a scientist by background), the ‘mind’

above:

Installation photograph from The White Wedding Dress: 200 years of wedding fashions, 2011, Bendigo Art Gallery. Photo: Julie Millowick.

6. Yuha Jung, ‘The art museum ecosystem: a new alternative model’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, vol. 1, 26, No. 4, October 2011, p.321.

7. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an ecology of mind, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000.

8. ibid., pp.328-329.

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Converging dichotomies: critique of exhibition design and management practices in Australian museums

above:

Installation photograph from Miss Flinders, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston.

of a healthy organisation encompasses a communicative circuit, in which all parts are interconnected and interdependent[8] – and only through such active recognition is it able to achieve meaningful outcomes.

Otherwise, its productivity can only be limited and self-serving.

The ecosystem model is also exemplified in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who utilise the botanical example of a rhizome ‘to describe the theory that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in interpretation’. In their seminal 1980 treatise, A Thousand Plateaus, featuring the rhizome as a generative motif, Deleuze and Guattari set their structuring model of incremental growth in opposition: ... to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.[9]

9. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, translated

by Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

References to nature to describe ways of managing knowledge, people and ultimately organisations, have strong value. In an ecosystem, just as in an organisation, the sum of all forces interacting productively assures a healthy environment. Remove one element and an environment may fracture and change, and critical resources may eventually disappear. In a healthy institutional ecosystem however, mutualism,

interdependence and strong communicative links create synergies that have long-lasting, positive effects.

Reviewing this project, the small community of museum-based exhibition designers and managers in Australian museums and galleries have provided diverse, sometimes polar opinions on their role within their various institutional environments.

Many ‘extremes’ in experiences that were noted and reported in the comparative investigation proved not to be isolated. Nevertheless while exhibition designers form one group that have expressed their situation strongly, there are many other silent groups that may also consider themselves as sitting on an institutional periphery, and feel not fully capacitated within their museums.

An overarching question then arises: What is preventing some museums from becoming highly effective, creative, sustainable organisations while others flourish in adapting to change?

It has long been recognised that we cannot rely on our magnificent collections to do the main work for us in museums. It’s what we do with the collections, exhibitions and public programs, and how we do this, that will ensure sustainable futures.

Just as in the natural world, where all parts can be identified as working together to achieve a well-functioniong system, so too must organisations recognise that their diverse and multi-skilled staff are integral to the success of our museums.

What I hope to encourage from the outcomes of this investigation around the production of exhibitions as a key feature in public recognition of museums today, is for leaders/managers to reflect on their management styles; to recognise more actively how they impact upon all aspects of museum operations; and by so doing, to make changes that will create better-performing, more creative, morale-boosting environments for their colleagues and staff. []

Georgia Rouette is currently Manager, Exhibition Services, Museums Australia (Vic), and has more than sixteen years of experience of working in and with museums. She is the author of Exhibitions: a practical guide for small museums and galleries, MA (Vic), Melbourne, 2007, and editor of Exhibition Design for Galleries and Museums: an insider’s view, MA (Vic), Melbourne, 2010. The outcomes of the present research project were presented at the 2012 Museums Australia National Conference in Adelaide (September 2012).

Citation for this text: Georgia Rouette, ‘Converging dichotomies: critique of exhibition design and management practices in Australian museums’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 21-24.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 25

Ancient Egypt newly revealed in the Queensland Museum’s collection

‘The oldest book in Queensland’ – Discovering The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep

Brit Asmussen and John Healy

T

he identification in the Queensland Museum in April 2012 of missing fragments of a rare ancient Egyptian funerary papyrus, Amenhotep’s Book of the Dead, was in many ways a happy accident.

Between 16 April and 19 October 2012, Queensland Museum (QM) hosted a worldwide travelling British Museum exhibition, Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb – exclusive to QM in Australia. In preparing for the exhibition’s arrival, the Museum in Brisbane took the opportunity to produce a supporting display of 80 objects. Presented in five cases, and incorporating a video screen to relay CT scans of mummified remains, this contemporary display was drawn from the Museum’s comparatively small but important holdings of Egyptian antiquities – some collected as early as the late nineteenth century.

Serendipitous events and a Eureka moment The QM display covered aspects of belief systems and the afterlife in ancient Egypt (incorporating mummified human remains and mummy linen wrappings). It also traced the role of animals in ritual practice: represented by mummified birds including falcons and an ibis; a wooden sparrow-hawk statue; amulets; and animals depicted in hieroglyphics on fragments of a Book of the Dead, a magical text containing spells to ensure the dead were fully equipped with powers and sacred knowledge needed to obtain eternal life.[1] Keen to portray ‘the other side of life’ in ancient Egypt, the Museum’s display also featured aspects of daily life, represented by a diverse range of objects such as a kohl (eye make-up) container, faience beads, scarabs and rings, children’s toys, bread, and a range of pottery vessels. One display case profiling the early history of the QM’s Egyptian collection featured rare books held in the museum’s library, together with correspondence relating to particular collection items.

It also incorporated examples of fake pieces brought back to Australia by our troops of both World Wars who had passed through Egypt.

Exhibition opportunities interconnecting collection research across disciplines The Queensland Museum’s planned display provided the first real opportunity in recent times for QM exhibition curators and present authors (Drs. Asmussen

and Healy) to conduct detailed research on the state museum’s Egyptian holdings. Examining such earlyacquired items in the QM’s collection opened up engagement of many kinds of knowledge and scholarly expertise, both nationally and internationally.

The exhibition curators carefully researched each object to determine whether individual items were copies, fakes or forgeries, and to gain data to help verify provenance. The research effort also engaged the expertise of medical professionals at the Mater Hospital, Brisbane (with the aid of CT scans), to ascertain the age at death of human remains (mummies) – to identify any signs of pathology, trauma or degenerative diseases, and to determine what these details might reveal about the life of the deceased. CT scanning of the mummified animals was also conducted, to assess the completeness of these votive offerings, which had been placed in catacombs and offered as gifts to particular gods. In support of the CT scans, X-Rays were also taken of all mummified remains – a first for the Egyptian objects in the QM collection.

As the project’s exhibition curators, we pursued collaboration internally with QM biodiversity staff to accurately identify bird species; and worked externally with a University of Queensland archaeobotanist to identify botanical remains in the collection, including samples of wheat, seeds and bread; we also provided a sample of the ibis mummy to Queensland’s Griffith University palaeo-DNA sequencing facility, for incorporation in a global project concerning the rates of molecular change evident in this group of birds.

Eminent Egyptologists were also shown the display and the broader antiquities collection in the QM Anthropology Stores.

above:

Book of the Dead exhibition installation at Queensland Museum, 2012. Image: Queensland Museum.

1. John Taylor, Spells for Eternity: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (British Museum, London, 2010) p.9.

26 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Ancient Egypt newly revealed in the Queensland Museum’s collection

The dramatic Brisbane discovery in 2012 now helps us to reassemble and contextualise some of the Museum’s early acquisitions and the location today of important items of world cultural heritage.

Mining the archives Turning to other research-sources to be explored, we, along with QM librarians, conducted intensive scrutiny of archival resources relating to the collection’s early history. There was careful hunting through early correspondence and registers to clarify donor details, confirm acquisition dates of collection items, and to find out what could be established clearly about the provenance of such a diverse array of Egyptian antiquities as the Museum had acquired in its founding period. We were also interested in knowing more about ‘how and why’ these objects were collected and donated to the Museum: whether by tourists relaying keepsakes or by more ‘serious’ collectors.

While it was well known that the papyrus fragments in the QM collection were parts of an Egyptian Book of the Dead, their origins had sunk into obscurity, and their relationship to similar objects or related material in other collections had never been researched in recent decades.

Against this background, there was intense surprise and excitement when the full significance of the Museum’s holdings of the early papyrus fragments was suddenly ‘discovered’ – and provided a comparative placement within their international reference-context – by Dr John Taylor (Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the British Museum and curator of the BM exhibition), who had travelled to Brisbane to open the visiting exhibition at the Queensland Museum in April 2012. When we conducted a curator-led tour of the QM Egyptian display, John Taylor’s interest quickly focused on four fragments

from a Book of the Dead on display in one of the QM cases – originating, as the label information stated, from ‘Dahr-el-bahrae near Thebes’ Dr Taylor, an expert in Egyptian funerary customs, the Book of the Dead and interpretation of hieroglyphs, immediately recognised part of a person’s name, and of a mother’s name, in the QM fragments selected. His attention was caught, and understatedly he remarked: ‘Now this is really something – do you have any more of these fragments?’ Yes indeed we did. Later that day, Dr Taylor was shown nearly 200 mylar packets, each holding many fragments of funerary papyrus.

Significance assessment of an ancient artifact JohnTaylor’s analysis of the larger array of Queensland fragments held in storage quickly revealed that the Museum’s items were derived from the same copy of the Book of the Dead from the early New Kingdom, held principally in the British Museum. While most known examples are from the late New Kingdom, Queensland Museum’s fragments meanwhile constitute remains from a version of the Book of the Dead with several unusual features, not present in later formats: It incorporates five pointed star borders and sun-disks, and includes a large inscription in one line on the back of the papyrus.

The most exciting evidence however, now identified within the Queensland Museum fragments, illuminates the historical context and commissioning of the manuscript. One portion contains the full title of the original owner, the Overseer of the Builders of the temple of

below left: Queensland Museum display c1930s (including Egyptian objects). Photo: Queensland Museum. below right: 1902 letters from EM Crookshank to then QM Director Charles De Vis. Image: Queensland Museum.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 27

top:

Example from the Book of the Dead, from the early New Kingdom with five-pointed star borders and sun-disks. Image: Queensland Museum.

2. E.M. Crookshank, Manual of Bacteriology[1886] (London: Lewis,1887a & b; 1896; 1897).

3.. W.J. O’Connor, British Physiologists 1885-1914. A Biographical Dictionary (Manchester, 1991) pp.192-3.

Amun: Amenhotep. Close inspection of other pieces reveals repeated references to this man, indicating that the various papyrus fragments are derived from the one early copy of the Book of the Dead.

Amenhotep the Overseer of the Builders of Amun is believed to have held high office in the reign of his famous namesake, King Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II’s reign occurred at the peak of the New Kingdom era (circa 1420 BCE), in the period of Egypt’s greatest prosperity. Accordingly, Amenhotep had a senior supervisory role in overseeing construction of some of the famed stone structures at Karnak, remains of the temple sanctuary complex surviving at Luxor, once the ancient Egyptian capital, Thebes.

Amenhotep was a man of some importance, and is also known from numerous other objects derived from his appropriately richly provisioned tomb, including his coffin (the lid in Eton College, the coffin in Sweden); a mummy mask (in the Metropolitan Museum, New York); and a set of canopic jars (in The Art Institute of Chicago).

Other parts of the extensive source-manuscript framing Queensland’s Book of the Dead papyri meanwhile are held by the British Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and several smaller institutions (the University Library of Amsterdam; the Redwood Library, Newport); and a private collection in Stockholm. That the Queensland Museum also held fragments of this important document was unknown until this discovery. Such a rich context of primary evidence now lends the Queensland Book of the Dead fragments both coherence – as a related constellation of parts from a single source-artifact – and an intense cultural significance that immeasurably enhances their heritage value and historical importance.

How did the Brisbane papyrus fragments come to rest quietly in Australia?

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Egypt witnessed a significant increase in the collecting of its antiquities, many of which were sold through dealers in Egypt and thence disseminated around the world.

Accordingly when the Overseer Amenhotep’s tomb was discovered by tomb-robbers it had been quickly emptied of its contents, and these items were on-sold via a rising network of antiquities dealers active by the 1890s. As a result of such haphazard processes, portions of Amenhotep’s funerary roll became separated from the original long manuscript and scattered across the globe (some now surviving in conditions ranging from isolated fragments to near-complete sections).

After much detailed detective work, the QM exhibition curators established that the Museum’s fragments of the original papyrus, along with several other Egyptian antiquities, were likely bought or otherwise collected in Egypt in the 1890s by E.M. [Edgar March] Crookshank, Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Bacteriology at Kings College, Cambridge, who was an important figure in the research of human and veterinary pathology, especially in relation to bacteriology and the nineteenth-century vaccination debate.[2] Edgar Crookshank had served as a surgeon in the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 (during which British warships bombarded the coast of Alexandria), and he gained a gold medal and clasps for actions at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and the Khedive Star for his service in Egypt.[3] Crookshank was greatly interested in Egyptian history, and wrote that he had stayed at Thebes, during which he made a collection of antiquities.

A visit by Crookshank to Queensland in 1902,

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Ancient Egypt newly revealed in the Queensland Museum’s collection

below: Book of the Dead of Amenhotep; sheet 16; full colour vignette; red and black ink; borders of stars above, below and to right; end of row of Hieroglyphic text verso. Image courtesy of and © Trustees of the British Museum.

drawing on his veterinary expertise, was recorded as having been ‘instigated by a desire on the part of the directors of the Scottish Australian Investment Company of which he is the chairman, to inquire into all questions affecting the pastoral industry of that state’.[4] Crookshank was meanwhile noted in the press as having presented a lecture on 26 May 1902 to the Royal Society of Queensland during his Australian visit (the RSQ was strongly associated with the Queensland Museum’s history). The invitation was from the Society’s President, Dr John Thomson.[5] QM archived correspondence from 1902 also reveals several letters from Crookshank to the then-Director of the Museum, Charles De Vis, outlining an exchange of Australian animal specimens (including mammals, birds and lungfish) in return for Egyptian antiquities. In one of these letters, Crookshank states: ‘I purchased the papyrus from a native for 10 pounds and attach great value to it’. Edgar Crookshank was a man of considerable means and interests,[6] and the collection he made of Egyptian antiquities indicates access to some important dealers. The Egyptian antiquities exchanged by Crookshank, once arrived in Brisbane, were immediately placed on display in a glass case in the Museum. The papyrus fragments of the Book of the Dead were recorded in a 1932 edition of The Brisbane Courier as being on display in the Museum, representing ‘the oldest book in Queensland’.[7] Like many colonial institutions in Australia, the QM’s early collection strategies were largely shaped by the prevailing academic and Eurocentric cultural orientations of the period, aiming to further the colony’s educational development.[8] The Queensland Museum was itself founded in 1862, two years after the Colony had been proclaimed. Operated initially by the Philosophical Society, with some government assistance after 1871, the colonial administration eventually assumed the primary responsibility for the Museum’s staff and development.

Many Queensland citizens, appreciating the unique environment of Australia, donated items to the Philosophical Society, and in due course the Museum acquired a scientific and cultural focus for both residents and visitors to the colony. Some of the earliest antiquities donations to the QM included an 1887 gift of ancient pottery from Cyprus, by the sister of a Mr Samuel Brown, named Iris; a collection of Egyptian

1. Endnotes

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 29

4. The Register, 5 June 1902: p.9.

5. The Brisbane Courier, 23 May 1902, p.4.

6. O’Connor, op.cit.

7. The Brisbane Courier,17 September 1932, p.23.

8. R.S. Merrilees, Living with Egypt’s Past in Australia (Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 1990.

1. Endnotes

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Ancient Egypt newly revealed in the Queensland Museum’s collection

pottery from Esna donated by John Garstang[9] (later namesake of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, attached to the University of Liverpool);[10] and of most relevance, the donation by Professor E.M. Crookshank which was recorded in one Museum register as ‘Egyptian and other curios’.

The early antiquities collection in Queensland was also built as a result of scholars’ and tourist-collectors’ purchases from dealers in Cairo and Luxor – of items widely gathered from looted tombs – as well as material derived from systematic archaeological excavations (such as those organised by Liverpool University’s John Garstang). Other material originated through scientific exchanges among individuals and institutions; and through additional solicited exchanges and financial donations. Still further items found their way to the Museum as the ‘bric-a-brac’of war – collections of objects gathered by the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) in Egypt, when many individuals were touched by the rekindled enthusiasm for Egypt’s past following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.[11] While much attention is focused on collection objects, it is worth observing that QM also had a significant early history of collecting relevant literature, now considered rare books. One of QM’s earliest books on Egypt is an 1859 copy of an English translation of German scholar Christian Bunsen’s work, Egypt’s Place in Universal History. This seminal study

advancing a systematic chronology of the ancient Mediterranean world, based on the inscribed and dated monuments surviving in Egypt, was signed and once owned by the renowned English geologist Alfred Tylor. The book was donated (along with many other classical works dating from 1728) through the daughter of a friend of Tylor, in 1933.

Such literature gathered in the Museum’s library in its founding period reveals the web of institutional links and intellectual interests surrounding early colonial endeavours in Australia, as well as tracking the growth of knowledge supporting material collections developed. From 1879, the QM library was routinely furnished with many important works donated by the British Museum – such as The Book of the Dead: Facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani (1890, 1894, 1895) – along with other books acquired via gift, purchase or exchange with scholars as well as national and international institutions.

Until the University of Queensland was founded in 1910, the Queensland Museum was the only scientific institution in the colony (later state),[12] and as such the institution positioned itself as a place holding many valuable and important works, for the benefit both of the colony and students of science. A firsthand press account from 1900 suggests the public recognition then achieved: On the south-eastern wall of the gallery will be found a series of facsimiles of the famous Papyrus roll of Ani in the British Museum...[Director] De Vis looks forward to the establishment of the Queensland University on a site not far from Bowen Park, and he anticipates with a great deal of satisfaction the time when the students will flock to the Museum to study. With that idea in view, he seems to be encouraged in the more scientific side of this work, but at the same time he does not fail to note the importance of making the institution under his care attractive to the general public.

(The Brisbane Courier, 29 December 1900, p.19).

Review of early collection developments across Australia’s colonial museums In a wider overview of the early collection development of the Queensland Museum, many aspects were shaped by local circumstances, despite broader

left:

Fragment containing the full title of the owner Amenhotep, the Overseer of the Builders of Amun.

Image: Queensland Museum.

9. [Ed.] The career of John Garstang, in particular, illustrates the system of collaborative ‘shareholder investors’ in archaeological expeditions in the nineteenth century, and the associated distribution conventions, or ‘partage’, of items gathered through joint financing of scientific endeavour, including division of material subsequently among supporting museums. (See ‘History of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology’, website of the University of Liverpool:<http://www.liv.ac.uk/sace/ garstang-museum/museumhistory. htm>– accessed 25 November 2012.)

10. C. Mather et al, A time for a Museum.

The History of the Queensland Museum 1862-1986. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Vol. 24 (Brisbane,1986) p.225.

11. Merrilees, op.cit., p.21.

12. Mather et al, op.cit., p.9.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 31

Such a rich context of primary evidence now lends the Queensland Book of the Dead fragments both coherence and an intense cultural significance that immeasurably enhances their heritage value and historical importance. connections and aspirations. The Museum’s early collecting focus was hindered by modest financial means, and later the effects of severe drought, which caused reduced government funding to the institution.

QM’s interests in the ancient ‘classical’ world meanwhile competed with its early obligations as a natural history museum, and the significant role it played in early ethnological collecting. A further aspect of constraint in the Museum’s earliest years is discernible in the sustained argument of the need for an accompanying library to support the colony’s growing collection of objects.

The Australian Museum in Sydney

13. ibid., p.10.

14. P. Egan, Cataloguing the Egyptian

Collection before digitisation (Australian Museum, Sydney, website [2012 accessed]); Merrilees, op.cit., p.16.

15. Merrilees, op.cit., p.61.

16.For example, QM, AM and WA

museums, and the National Gallery of Victoria (Merrilees, op.cit.)

17.Merrilees, op.cit., p.4.

18.ibid., p.5.

19. Nicholson letter, in Merrilees,

op.cit., pp.3-4.

20. Nicholson Museum website. See

<http://sydney.edu.au/museums/ collections/nicholson.shtml>

The Australian Museum, founded decades earlier, provided a model for QM to emulate, as did many of the great museums of Europe.[13] As Australia’s first public museum, the Australian Museum had been established in the New South Wales colony in 1827, with the aim of procuring ‘many rare and curious specimens of Natural History’. (Initially known as the Sydney Museum, or Colonial Museum, the institution was formally named the Australian Museum in 1836.)

The Australian Museum also embraced an early enthusiasm for the archaeology of ancient Egypt, and subscribed to the Egyptian Exploration Fund’s fieldwork from 1885/6, while receiving some share of discovered items in return for the Museum’s support.

This was a significant source of objects for that Museum’s early Egyptian collection.[14] However owing to its precarious financial state, the Queensland Museum appears not to have subscribed to the Egypt Exploration Fund in the 1880s, but relied instead on other forms of object acquisition.

In view of the University of Sydney’s nineteenthcentury acquisition of donated antiquities constituting the remarkable campus-located Nicholson Museum (as described below), the Australian Museum’s Egyptian material subsided in focus throughout the early twentieth century, with the result that it would later be transferred to form the basis of a teaching collection at Macquarie University in Sydney.[15] By contrast, the Queensland Museum’s material has been retained within the state museum, and is today being enlivened via new research collaborations with multiple universities.

A shared early collection trajectory meanwhile linked several colonial institutions holding Egyptian

material that emanated from the archaeological work of John Garstang, of the University of Liverpool.

[16] However an outstandingly different path of early antiquities collecting among Australian state museums was demonstrated in the establishment of the Nicholson Museum, in the early life of the University of Sydney.

Founding of the Nicholson Museum in Sydney The donation in 1860 to Sydney University of a large collection of Egyptian and other antiquities formed

by Sir Charles Nicholson (who migrated to Sydney in 1834), at the time marked public consolidation of the largest collection of antiquities in both Australia and the southern hemisphere.[17] Nicholson also endowed the University with generous funds to construct a museum building to house the collection. During his visits to Europe and a journey along the valley of the Nile, in circa 1856/7 and 1862 – conducted ‘with much personal labour and no inconsiderable pecuniary outlay’ – Charles Nicholson had amassed a collection of some 400 objects, mostly purchased from dealers in Cairo and modern Luxor.[18] Nicholson believed in ‘the acquisition of objects ...[as] interesting in themselves and most important in the illustration of various branches of historical, philological and classical inquiry’. He also stressed the need to build collections of classical antiquities in the new world of the Australian colonies, affirming the value of even modest examples: [I]n a country like Australia, where all is new, objects comparatively insignificant in themselves yet illustrative of the manners, religion and thoughts of those who lived during earlier periods of the world’s history, possess a value and an interest.[19] The Nicholson collection was displayed to make it accessible both to the community and to the University of Sydney’s professors, to aid illustration in classical lectures. Objects also continued to be acquired through support of the Egyptian Exploration Fund in London during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and further augmented through donations, bequests, acquisitions and various archaeological excavations.[20]

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Future prospects for Queensland’s ‘oldest book’ Following the remarkable and unexpected discovery of the Queensland Museum’s fragments of Amenhotep’s Book of the Dead, the question then arose: What should now be done to complete a very significant document that has been dispersed around the world for more than a century?

Following the recommendations of Dr Taylor, QM staff set about digital imaging of the hundreds of papyrus fragments forming its part of the Book of the Dead.

QM has developed a partnership with the Queensland Institute of Technology (QUT) and The Cube, whereby mathematicians, supercomputers and crowd-sourcing technology will be utilised, uniting people to put pieces of history back together, as a virtual jig-saw puzzle. Dr Taylor hopes to match up virtually the digital images of the Queensland fragments with other major sections of the papyrus roll located in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as some other institutions (University Library of Amsterdam; the Redwood Library, Newport) and private collections.

Photography and digitisation of each piece of papyrus began in late September 2012, and a methodology was developed that has given each fragment a unique number, allowing it to be tracked and reconnected with its neighbours. It is hoped that all images and hieroglyphs can then be authoritatively identified and pieced together, both by eye and electronically.

Digitally capturing the QM fragments fulfils many tasks in the re-assembly process. First, it creates a highresolution copy of the entire (and very fragile) original manuscript. Second, it will enable identification of the chapters and associated spells depicted on the fragments.

Third, it will result in a more complete understanding of the construction of this early example of a Book of the Dead. And finally, it will greatly facilitate comparison with the texts preserved on the dispersed portions of the papyrus held in other institutions. This cumulative process will shed further light on how such texts changed through time, migrating from early coffin inscriptions to later versions written on papyrus.

It is hoped that the QM pieces can ultimately be physically re-joined, so that a virtual or physical exhibition of Amenhotep’s Book of the Dead may incorporate the interesting story of the man the papyrus commemorates.

Impact The news of the Queensland Museum’s discovery has quickly spread around the world, particularly in the field of Egyptology. However this discovery would not have occurred had it not been for several, to some extent fortuitous, factors. These include the Museum’s hosting of the British Museum exhibition, Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb; the presence of John Taylor – a known and highly respected expert on the Book of the Dead – in Brisbane to open the visiting exhibition; Dr Taylor’s interest in a QM curator-led tour of the QM display; his ability to read hieroglyphics readily; his familiarity with other sections of the same Book of the Dead held in the British Museum; and finally, the contextual research that had already been undertaken

by Museum staff to highlight some of its own collection items and produce the QM display to accompany the exhibition from London.

below left:

Conjoined piece of the Book of the Dead of Amenhotep. Image: Queensland Museum.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 33

There are challenges ahead in the further work to be accomplished. Piecing together events surrounding the robbing of Amenhotep’s tomb and subsequent dispersal of its contents – not the least being the papyrus itself – is a difficult undertaking. There are few written records, and dealers were invariably reticent to disclose the location of their sources of antiquities.

Neverthless the dramatic Brisbane discovery in 2012 now helps us to reassemble and contextualise one more piece in a larger antiquarian puzzle. It repositions the value of some of the Museum’s early acquisitions and sheds broader light on matters of international significance and the location today of important items of world cultural heritage.

Many travellers to Egypt historically left with souvenirs from plundered tombs: Crookshank just one of them. The exhibition from the British Museum, however, led to an amazing local discovery in the Queensland Museum collection. Undoubtedly the collection holds a further wealth of untold stories. []

Dr Brit Asmussen is Curator of Archaeology, Cultural Environments, and Dr John Healy, is Curator of Biodiversity, Natural Environments – both within the Queensland Museum and Sciencentre.

Acknowledgments The authors would sincerely like to thank John Taylor (Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the British Museum) for the discovery that this article relates.

QM also thanks Queensland X-Ray, at the Mater Private Hospital, Brisbane, for CT Scanning and medial interpretation – particularly Dr Philip Dubois, Chief Executive Officer, for allowing the CT scanning and for the diagnosis of each mummy’s health at death. The Museum also thanks Bede Yates, Chief Radiographer, and Philip Lund, who scanned the mummies and rendered the images. X-Rays were provided by Meg Day, Gatton Campus, the University of Queensland. Dr Andrew Fairbairn, senior lecturer, the University of Queensland, analysed the botanical remains. We also thank staff of the QM Cultural Environments, Collection Management, Conservation and Natural Environments for their assistance, and particularly acknowledge Meg Lloyd (QM Librarian) for correspondence and register research, and photographers Peter Waddington, Scott Carlile and Geoff Thompson. Unless otherwise indicated, all images are copyright QM.

Citation for this text: Brit Asmussen & John Healy, ‘The oldest book in Queensland - Discovering The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 25-33.

References ‘Brisbane Museum established at Bowen Park – a valuable scientific institution No. 1’. The Brisbane Courier, 28 December 1900, p.6. [Accessed 17 October 2012 from Trove, NLA.] ‘Brisbane Museum established at Bowen Park - a valuable scientific institution No. 2’. The Brisbane Courier, 29 December 1900, p.19. [Accessed 17 October 2012 from Trove, NLA.] Budge, E.A. 1894. The Book of the Dead: Facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum. London: British Museum, Longman and Co. Bunsen, C.C.J.F. 1848-1867. Egypt’s place in universal history: an historical investigation in five books. Transl. Charles H. Cottrell. London: Longan Brown Green and Longmans.

Crookshank, E.M. 1886; 2nded.1887; 1887a. Manual of Bacteriology. London: H.K. Lewis.

Crookshank, E.M. 1887b. Photography of Bacteria. London: H.K. Lewis.

Crookshank, E.M. 1896. A textbook of bacteriology: including the etiology and prevention of infective diseases and a short account of yeasts and moulds, haematozoa, and psorosperms. London: H. K. Lewis.

Crookshank, E.M. 1897. A text-book of bacteriology, including the etiology and prevention of infective diseases and a short account of yeasts, and moulds, haematazoa, and psorosperms. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

‘Drought-Stricken Queensland’. The Register (Adelaide), Thursday 5 June 1902, p.9. [Accessed 9 September 2012 from Trove, NLA.] Egan, P. 2012. Cataloguing the Egyptian Collection before digitisation. Australian Museum website. http://australianmuseum.net.au/BlogPost/Rare-and-Curious/ Cataloguing-the-Egyptian-Collection-before-digitisation [Accessed 6 September 2012.]

Le Page Renouf, P. 1890; 1894. The Book of the Dead: Facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum. London: Longman and Co. Mather, P., Agnew, N.H., Bartholami, A., Belcher, R., Coleman, R.A., Gill, J.C.H., Griffin, D.K., Ingram, G.J., Monteith, G., Quinnell, M.Q., Robinson, D.J., Sanker, I., Vernon, D.P., Wixted, E.P., and Wade, M.J., (1986). A time for a Museum. The History of the Queensland Museum 1862-1986. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Vol. 24.

Merrilees, R.S., 1990. Living with Egypt’s Past in Australia.

Melbourne: Museum of Victoria.

Nicholson Museum, 2012 [website]. <http://sydney.edu.au/museums/ collections/nicholson.shtml> [Accessed 6 October 2012.]

O’Connor, W.J. 1991. British Physiologists 1885-1914. A Biographical Dictionary. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Owens, J. 2012. ‘Museum had ‘lost’ treasure for 100 years.’

The Australian, 21–22 April 2012, pp.1 & 8.

‘Professor Crookshank on Tuberculosis’, The Brisbane Courier, Friday 23 May 1902, p.4. [Accessed 19 September 2012 from Trove, NLA.] Taylor, J. 2010. Spells for Eternity: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: British Museum.

The University of Sydney, 2012 [website]. The Egyptian Collection. http://sydney. edu.au/museums/collections/nicholson/egypt.shtml [Accessed 6 October 2012.]

‘Value of the Museum. Children’s Interests. Director’s Enthusiasm’. The Brisbane Courier, 17 September 1932, p. 23. [Accessed 17 October 2012 from Trove, NLA.]

34 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Book review and Network review article

Australia’s first hospital and the landscape of health and medical museums today

Paul Bentley

I

n 2009, Elinor Wrobel threatened a hunger strike in defence of the Lucy Osborn- Nightingale Foundation Museum at Sydney Hospital. As curator of the museum, she harboured fears that its doors were about to be closed, its space reduced or its morbid anatomy collection transferred to another institution.

Her photograph and the story of her protest appeared prominently in the Sydney Morning Herald. She was interviewed on talk-back radio. Questions were raised in the NSW Parliament. The NSW Branch of Museums Australia lent support with letters to the state government. But it was Wrobel who was the telling factor in forging a new agreement with authorities about the threatened anatomy collection and fresh thinking about the museum’s future.

Sydney Hospital Elinor Wrobel has now sponsored a new book about the hospital, Caps and Veils: The Nursing History of Sydney Hospital Matrons and its Nurses 1788-1985.

Compiled and written by Valerie Griffiths, this publication sets out to provide an historical record of the methods of training in Australia’s oldest hospital. The Sydney Hospital has its origins in tents set up a few

days after the arrival of the First Fleet. A prefabricated portable structure of wood and copper later arrived with the Second Fleet, along with more than 200 convicts suffering from scurvy, dysentery and infectious diseases. In 1816, Governor Macquarie transformed these ‘pathetic, raw’ beginnings into the sturdier Rum Hospital on Macquarie Street, where the historic building still stands. Two surviving wings of the original building now form Parliament House and the Mint Museum.

When hospital matron Bathsheba Ghost, an ex-convict, died in 1866, the Colonial Secretary Henry Parkes looked overseas for nurses to serve in the Sydney hospital and set up a training school there. He had been inspired by the work of Florence Nightingale and training initiatives underway in her name at London’s St Thomas’s Hospital. In March 1868 Lucy Osburn, a graduate of the London school, arrived in Sydney with five other nursing sisters from London to take charge. The Nightingale Wing opened in 1869 as their home, and over the next seventeen years, Osburn introduced the Nightingale system as the training standard in the colony’s hospitals.

The leadership of the matrons who followed Lucy Osborn occupies most of this book. Their dedication and professionalism are evident from the honours and qualifications they accumulated. The fact that all of them were unmarried highlights another story about the history of women in Australia’s public service: married registered nurses were not accepted in the public hospital arena until the 1970s.

Details of the early training regimes are interposed with vignettes of the nurses and their patients. One famous probationary nurse was Miles Franklin, who lasted three weeks in January 1900. According to Jill Roe’s biography of Franklin, a sister in the hospital remembered her as an unusual applicant, who ‘arrived from the country dressed in a strange tartan outfit and told the matron she had an urge to write and thought a nurse’s training would give her something to write about’.

Lucy Osborn-Nightingale Foundation Museum This historical survey of a museum connected with Sydney Hospital underscores the important role of museums in amplifying the histories of organisations with which they are associated. Along with nearly 100 images from Sydney Hospital Archives and an honour roll of graduates, the list of sources for this narrative serves as a pathway to further exploration of Australia’s medical history.

Although it now houses a history dating back to 1788, the Sydney Hospital museum itself was not established until 1999, when NSW Premier Bob Carr

left:

Caps and Veils: The Nursing History of Sydney Hospital Matrons and its Nurses 1788-1985, compiled and written by Valerie Griffiths, is available online and at selected Historic Houses Trust NSW museum gift shops (shop.hht. net.au) for $65.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 35

signed a contract between South East Health Service, the hospital and the Lucy Osburn-Nightingale Foundation to set the museum up on the first floor of the Nightingale Wing. It opened in May 2001.

The Florence Nightingale and Lucy Osburn collections, spanning the period 1820-1891, are featured holdings. The anatomy collection, the Kanematsu Collection of Human Tissue Specimens, was at the centre of the dispute in 2009. Other holdings include the Sydney Hospital archives, artefacts and artworks, as well as material acquired over the years from medical staff and other donors

Health and medical museums This historical overview of Sydney Hospital’s medical collections and museum provides an impetus for wider reflection. Most of us begin our lives in hospitals. Many of us will draw our last breath there.

Investigating what happens to our minds and bodies in between is as fascinating as a Sherlock Holmes mystery. How many health and medical museums are there in Australia? And what are some of the considerations that will shape their future?

These museums are not covered as a breed in the National Museum of Australia’s online anthology of essays, Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology, a history of museums in Australia since the 1970s (eds. Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien; NMA June 2011 & October 2012). See <http://nma.gov.au/ research/understanding-museums/>.

The Guide to Health and Medicine Collections, Museums and Archives in Australia, published by Museum Australia’s Health and Medicine Museums division in 1999, listed 185 specialist collections in addition to more than 200 other collections containing health and medical material.

Some collections or museums have long been hosted within universities. The 1996 national survey report on the university-museums sector, Cinderella Collections – reviewed elsewhere in this Magazine issue by Andrew Simpson[1] – identified 30 health and medical entities in Australian universities. The University of Sydney, as one such institution, today promotes a medical heritage trail involving 19 related museums, buildings, libraries, monuments and artworks distributed across its campus. The Museum of Human Diseases at the University of NSW is devoted to the study of infectious and non-infectious diseases.

In Victoria, the programs of the Medical History Museum at the University of Melbourne are indicative of research and educational activities that benefit both universities and the wider public. Viona Fung, in Museums Australia Magazine Autumn 2012,[2] wrote about the interface between the arts and the mind in her article on the new Dax Centre and gallery at

Melbourne University (featuring the remarkable art collection formed through many years of clinical practice by Melbourne psychiatrist Eric Cunningham Dax).

Substantial collections of diverse material relating to medical science and practice are consolidated today in major museums or sometimes attached to medical specialist bodies. For example, Museum Victoria has the internationally significant Commonwealth Serum Laboratories collection, medical and surgical equipment used by Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop, and many other items.

In Sydney, the Australian Society of Anaesthetists’ Harry Daly Museum is devoted to the preservation, documentation and interpretation of the history of anaesthetic practice. The Society for the Preservation of the Artefacts of Surgery and Medicine’s museum is located in the grounds of the old Gladesville Hospital.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ History of Medicine Library (consolidated under this title in the 1980s) holds approximately 40,000 items covering all aspects of medical history, including a collection of antique medical instruments.

One potent institution in the history of Australian medical museums and related collections has become somewhat detached in recent memory, especially concerning the dark record of collecting Indigenous human remains. The Australian Institute of Anatomy collections, including Aboriginal human/ancestral remains once housed in the imposing Art Decorelated building that is now home to the National Film and Sound Archive, have been transferred to the National Museum of Australia.

The social history potential as well as scientific importance of health and medical museums are emphasised by recent international developments. In 2006, Museum of London archaeologists excavated material from some 262 burials found in the grounds of the Royal London Hospital. They recovered body parts that later formed the basis of a current exhibition, Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men. The exhibition (showing until April 2013) depicts aspects

above:

The Lucy OsbornNightingale Foundation Museum at Sydney Hospital. Photo: Paul Bentley.

1. Andrew Simpson, ‘Cinderella Collections, fifteen years after the ball: Australia’s university museums reviewed’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 18-20.

2. Viona Fung, ‘The Evolution of The Dax Centre: Exploring the interface between the arts and the mind’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 20(3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2011, pp.9–14.

36 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Book review and Network review article

right:

Sydney Hospital façade on Macquarie Street. Photo: Paul Bentley.

of ‘the heroic age of surgery’ and covers the notorious nineteenth-century trade in dead bodies. A surge in visitor numbers at London’s Wellcome Collection, devoted to the history of medicine and medical science, has prompted a £17.5 million plan to expand its facilities.

In the United States, the National Museum of Health and Medicine, with a proud track record of pioneering medical research and discoveries, is preparing to move into a redeveloped new building in downtown Chicago. Future visitor experiences will be enhanced through use of the latest technology and interactive mobile apps.

In Australia, individual doctors, academics, volunteers and philanthropists have played an essential role in transforming artefacts in cupboards into consolidated collections in full-scale museums. The Sydney Hospital Museum is partially supported by a $3.5 million bequest from a former pathologist, the late Dr Patricia Hirst. The indomitable Elinor Wrobel, as a former graduate and professional nurse, has tenaciously led the Hospital’s museum as volunteer curator since 2001, while at the same time running the John Passmore Museum, which she set up a few years ago as a tribute to the Australian painter.

Associated professional bodies in the medical field have emerged during the past two decades. The European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences was formed in 1984. It led to the establishment of the Medical Museums Association in the United States two years later.

In Australia however, despite the rich history of medical collections and museums, it has proved difficult to have a viable professional association of these bodies for collaborative or comparative work to be pursued nationally. A Health and Medicine Museums grouping within Museums Australia was active between 1991 and 2006. It continued for a while as the independent Collections of Health and the History of Medicine.

In a digital world of converging interests, concerted action by health and medical museum professionals is needed now more than ever. Questions about metadata standards, duplicate effort and data redundancy invite a deeper exploration of developments and challenges. Research Data Australia (RDA) lists nearly 800 data sets and collections in the area of health and medical science. Trove, already populated with relevant information from RDA, libraries and commercial databases, is keen to improve its coverage and welcomes discussions with medical and health museums about exposing their collections to the national discovery service.

A more thorough study of resources and future options would no doubt take into account government policies on the health sector and technology.

Recordkeeping requirements, the preservation of body parts and networking of patient information carry thorny privacy and ethical considerations. The National Broadband Network has led to regional digital hubs that offer potential for new relationships between collections and health services. University collections may be linked to campus-wide information management practices for institutional repositories, libraries, archives and museums.

Is anyone else pursuing these lines of enquiry? [] Paul Bentley is director of the Wolanski Foundation (www. twf.org.au, Twitter @thewolanskifdn). He is currently writing a longer article about health and medical museums for Thomson Reuters’ journal Online Currents. Email: pbentley@ idx.com.au. Twitter: @paulgbentley.

Citation for this text: Paul Bentley, ‘Australia’s first hospital and the landscape of health and medical museums today’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 34–36.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 37

Summer floods and a cyclone in northern Australia reviewed and contextualised historically

Floodlines: Two exhibitions interpret public memory of natural disaster in Queensland

above:

Linda Phillips (left) and Naomi Takeifanga (right).

above right:

Wall of Stories, a collection of digital stories and media footage that gave an emotive voice to the exhibition. Photo: SLQ.

Linda Phillips & Naomi Takeifanga

I

n the summer of 2010-11 Queensland experienced what has become known as The Summer of Sorrow.

Severe flooding occurred, with most of the state declared a disaster zone.

The State Library of Queensland (SLQ), nestled by the river at South Brisbane, received extensive damage to its lower-level car parks, lift wells, transformers, and mass storage areas. It was during the clean-up period, whilst staff were knee deep in mud and witnessing the massive clean-up efforts around the city and state, that it was agreed that SLQ needed to establish a record of this devastating event. The concept was cemented only a few weeks later, when Cyclone Yasi hammered the state’s north, with aftereffects experienced in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria.

SLQ plays a leading role in co-creating Queensland’s memory: actively collecting, documenting, preserving and sharing memories and material for future generations. After such a widespread disaster, we knew that the community’s voice and storytelling would be important strands of any exhibition planned.

During the natural disasters, there had been a striking use of electronic devices to capture personal experiences, and a notable breadth in sharing of

images and stories through social media. There was a sense that everyone felt they had a role to play, whether that was to provide refuge for friends or family, become a prolific baker, or to roll up one’s sleeves and join the ‘mud army’.

Over the next fourteen months, State Library exhibitions staff worked towards an exhibition that could convey the events of that summer, in an interactive experience that retained fidelity to how the images were originally captured. We meanwhile looked back through our SLQ collection material gathered from previous flood events over the past 120 years; identified the gaps in our understanding and knowledge; and proceeded to engage with a diverse range of community representatives, media and creative partners.

Through a rich fabric of stories, exhibitions and events, supported by immersive digital technology, Floodlines eventually drew together memories of Queensland’s past and present floods, distributing these finally across two exhibitions: Floodlines: 19th Century Brisbane; and Floodlines: A Living Memory.

At the heart of the Floodlines project is a commemoration of the resilience and community spirit of Queenslanders in the face of devastating natural disasters.

Floodlines: 19th century Brisbane, curated by respected historian Helen Gregory, probed the history

38 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Summer floods and a cyclone in northern Australia reviewed and contextualised historically

below right:

The Flood and Cyclone Mosaic, at the heart of the State Library of Queensland’s Floodlines exhibition. Photo: SLQ.

1. See <www.slq.qld.gov.au/ floodlines/exhibitions/19th> 2. Nancy E. Rogers, Susanna Seidl-Fox and Deborah Mack, ‘Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture: From Quiet Havens to Modern Agoras’, Museum Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, August 2012, pp.33-36

of nineteenth century flooding of the Brisbane River, examining lessons learned and opportunities lost.

Through the historical images and associated material retrieved from the State Library’s John Oxley Collection, the story of Brisbane’s larger flood history was revealed.

As ‘the river city’, Brisbane has a long history of flooding, which was somewhat clouded in collective consciousness until 2011. As Helen Gregory points out in her essay:[1] ‘[U]nderstandings of community disasters and tragedies in times past come to succeeding generations through a series of filters’ – or what she calls the ‘Chinese Whispers effect’.

Through an historical overview, this exhibition provided a holistic view of Brisbane’s landscape and society in the 1800s, and viewers were invited to step back in time. Historical photographs, paintings and novels extended their commemorative threads through the record of Brisbane’s nineteenth-century floods, and their effects on people, places and industry. Stories of survival, loss and recovery unfolded in ways that eerily mirror contemporary experiences, and remind us that at the heart of every disaster, communities shine.

In this way, Floodlines: 19th Century Brisbane lent context to the events of contemporary Queensland, and worked as a perfect sister exhibition for

Floodlines: a living memory, shown in the State Library of Queensland gallery. Focusing on people, and highlighting the significant events of the Queensland summer of 2010-11, Floodlines: a living memory celebrated the power of communities, their stories and their resilient spirit. The exhibition brought together multiple projects formed through collaborations with co-curators, independent artists and creative agencies, to create not only a unique exhibition but also an important knowledge bank and public resource for future generations.

The exhibition opened formally in April 2012.

However its public presence actually began six months earlier, with the launch of the Queensland Flood and Cyclone Mosaic, and the Flood of Ideas. The Flood and Cyclone Mosaic was created in collaboration with digital poet, Jason Nelson, and the mosaic continues to be a crowd-sourced collection initiative that has been spread Queensland-wide, through our network of public libraries.

People were encouraged to contribute their images of the 2010-11 Floods and Cyclone Yasi, to become part of an interactive, developing and continually regenerating digital artwork. This artwork was displayed in one form as a large-scale projection in the SLQ temporary gallery, where the public could itself continue to contribute and search for images. The artwork

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 39

left:

Interface for uploading to and searching the Flood and Cyclone Mosaic database.

Photo: SLQ.

meanwhile continues to be exhibited as part of the Floodlines: A living memory travelling exhibition, as it tours throughout Queensland over the next few years.

Images can accordingly be uploaded at visited libraries or from the Floodlines website. In this way, SLQ continues to develop our collections while also maintaining direct audience engagement with particular projects.

The article in the previous issue of Museums Australia Magazine, Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture,2 discussed the re-purposing of libraries and museums in an era when technology is challenging our perceptions of their role in the community. State Library of Queensland embraces this new reality. It continues to exploit new technologies in considered ways, through interactive platforms and crowd-sourced collection initiatives; to engage visitors and challenge expectations of what a library is and how information can be gathered and shared for new meaning-making. SLQ acts as a ‘knowledge bank’ and a vital community resource, still acting as a physical gathering-point while also providing an expanding, fluid virtual place for sharing, learning, collaborating and creating.

A central component of the Floodlines exhibition, both in terms of design and content, was Augmented Reflections. In the final configuration presented in the SLQ gallery space, the Brisbane River ‘flowed’

centre-stage. Augmented Reflections harnessed stateof-the-art augmented reality technology to visualise the effect of the floods and Cylone Yasi on Queensland.

Developed by the creative team at JosephMark, the result was an app for i0S devices, which allowed users to perceive the effects of rising floodwaters across Brisbane and surrounding areas along a 48-hour timeline, as well as tracking similar effects in cycloneaffected areas in North Queensland.

In preparation for the travelling exhibition, three northern Queensland towns affected by Cyclone Yasi were 3D mapped to show ‘before’ and ‘after’ effects in the towns of Ingham, Tully and Cardwell. In developing this component of the exhibition experience, we wanted to provide a different perspective of the floods and cyclone, to facilitate and enhance direct audience learning.

Augmented Reflections also demonstrated SLQ’s commitment to digital literacy. The free app produced can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes store, and used at home or for teaching purposes by downloading the markers at: <www.slq.qld.gov.au/floodlines/ exhibitions/memory>.

The State Library teamed with JosephMark to create another digital feature produced through this project. Wall of Stories, a collection of digital stories and media footage, provided an emotive ‘voice’

40 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

Summer floods and a cyclone in northern Australia reviewed and contextualised historically

right: The Magnetic Mural and digital drawing activities were a constant drawcard for children.

Photo: SLQ.

component for the exhibition. Two large adjacent projections showcased stories from ABC Open (freelance journalists), the ABC, Milpera State School, NSW and QLD police services, as well as incorporating digital stories from SLQ’s own collection.

Capturing the intensity and reality of the floods, Wall of Stories allowed visitors to experience the extent and human impact of this unprecedented event.

For example, the digital story featuring rescue helicopter pilot, Mark Kempton, is a popular drawcard on the Floodlines website, as it directly presents the frontine experience and personal impact on emergency services staff involved in the floods response.

The saturation extent of media coverage during this period was also captured in the Political Mashup by Andrew Gibbs. Viewed on a flat screen television, to represent the home viewers’ experience, the ebb and flow in volume and opacity, moving from one video to the next, represented the scale and depth of public information emerging at the time of impact.

Further conveying the complexity of events was the Floodines Soundscape produced by sound artist Lawrence English. Sounds captured as the artist travelled throughout Queensland, attempting to stay one step ahead of the floods, created a layered ‘audioscape’ testimony to actual experience, which also sensorily conveyed the interrelatedness of nature and community during the floods’ impact and the following recovery cycle. The work interconnected the

aural qualities of the natural environment and river systems, and those events (historic, social, mediaproduced) that came to dominate social memory.

It might be conjectured that an exhibition about disaster and recovery would not be ideal for children.

However SLQ staff recognised that children also experienced the floods vividly, and had personal stories to tell. Meanwhile in terms of our collection holdings, a gap had already been been identified: that little had been captured on the experience of children during significant periods of unrest at the hands of ‘mother nature’. In consideration of this gap, two activitybased projects were developed to engage children in telling their stories, and giving us their ‘big ideas’ about flood-proofing Queensland. The Magnetic Mural and digital drawing activity developed proved to be a constant drawcard for children.

Finally, as visitors moved through the exhibition, they came to Flood of Ideas – a joint initiative of Healthy Waterways Partnership, Water by Design Program and the State Library of Queensland. After the floods, everyone seemed to have an idea on how to help prevent or remediate future flooding events.

Flood of Ideas was the result of a common desire to collect and document these ideas, and make their proposals widely available, for absorption and discussion. We also wanted to shift conversations from ‘Why did this happen to us?’ to ‘How can we be better prepared?’

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 41

To create a cohesive flow, these ideas-capturing projects were developed around five central themes: Resilience, Reflect, Remember, Rebuild and Reconnect. SLQ worked closely with partners from the Department of Health and Department of Communities throughout the development of the exhibition, ultimately producing trained staff and volunteers who felt confident that they could assist visitors in the first instance; and further, to ground constructive conversations in the realisation that many people were still undergoing the recovery process, and some not even back in their homes.

These partner organisations were consulted on content and design, to ensure that we remained sensitive to the evolving social impact. Meanwhile the process-outcomes led to the creation of a resource lounge, incorporated within the final exhibition design. This lounge was stocked with reading material, and provided links to services for people still requiring help since the impact of the floods.

In June 2012, the State Library was invited to take part in PeerTalk, a peer review led by Museum and Gallery Services Queensland and inspired by the work of Kathleen McLean – who espouses the benefit of formal exhibition criticism undertaken by practitioners within the arts industry.

After viewing the exhibition, Liza Dale-Hallett (Senior Curator, Sustainable Futures, Museum Victoria), Angelina Russo (Associate Professor and Director of Higher Degrees, Research, at RMIT University) and Frank Chalmers (Director, Two Galahs) offered constructive critiques to an audience of industry peers. Presenters from SLQ included Linda Phillips (Exhibitions Project Curator), Louise Denoon(Executive Manager Queensland Memory), Linda Pitt (Executive Manager, Learning and Participation) and Naomi Takeifanga (Exhibitions Manager).

Through this process of professional critique, we received feedback for improving our exhibition delivery, while also gaining confirmation that we were leading in areas of content delivery and audience engagement.

This exhibition represented huge growth for the exhibitions team in terms of delivery of digital platforms and understanding our audiences. Staff noticed that engagement with the more innovative digital content used in Wall of Stories and Augmented Reflections presented a challenge to some visitors, and further signage was provided early in the exhibition to improve levels of audience engagement. The largely technology-based exhibition also presented challenges to staff in the planning and installation process.

Five years on from the opening of the new State Library building, and inauguration of the SLQ gallery space within it, has highlighted many challenges concerning equipment and cabling now requiring upgrades, while not currently having sufficient

funding to refresh the gallery infrastructure in line with the technology being employed. Many institutions employing an increasingly diverse range of media and digital platforms in their exhibitions delivery today would be facing similar dilemmas constraining their creative potential and expanded audience engagement.

Throughout the four-month exhibition period, visitor feedback resulting from the Floodlines project and its various manifestations was overwhelmingly positive, with the following data-results: 1137 uploads to the Flood and Cyclone Mosaic, 3238 Floodlines app downloads, 5134 hits to the Floodlines website, and a combined on-site attendance of more than 24,000 visitors. The exhibition has now commenced its extensive touring phase, and will be exhibited at 60 public libraries throughout Queensland over the next four years, with further AR models planned for western regions to extend SLQ’s ultimate reach and coverage throughout Queensland.

The State Library of Queensland continues to push exhibition experiences beyond traditional expectations conceptually, and physically beyond the walls of the building. The large public library network (engaging 318 libraries) and Indigenous Knowledge Centres (numbering 22 organisations) throughout the state are now interconnecting important collaborators in further potential exhibitions development. Together with the State Library, these distributed networks and resources provide important contributors to the socio-economic and cultural development of the state of Queensland. [] Linda Phillip is Exhibitions Project Curator, and Naomi Takeifanga is Exhibitions Manager, within the State Library of Queensland. Linda Pitt (Executive Manager, Learning and Participation, SLQ) is thanked by Museums Australia for her facilitation of this article.

Citation for this text: Linda Phillip & Naomi Takeifanga, ‘Floodlines: Two exhibitions interpret public memory of natural disaster in Queensland’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 37-41.

42 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012

A fine public servant who made a difference for the museums sector

Tribute to Cathy Santamaria

In Memoriam: Catherine Santamaria (1943 – 2012)

I above:

Cathy Santamaria

t was with great sadness that many people throughout the museums sector learned of the death of Cathy Santamaria in Melbourne on 7 October 2012.

Catherine – or Cathy as she was mostly known – became widely appreciated by the museums sector beyond Canberra, where she was a distinguished senior public servant under several arts ministers at the height of her career. She gained admiration for her supportive understanding of the work of museums and galleries, her championship of progressive proposals that required a national vision and leadership, and her integrity and even-handedness in discharge of administrative work and policy development on behalf of successive Commonwealth governments.

Significant approaches from the museums sector were made to Commonwealth officers in 1989–1990 by Daniel Thomas (then President of the Art Museums Association of Australia/AMAA and Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia) and Dr Des Griffin (then Chair of the Council of Australian Museum Directors/CAMD and Director of the Australian Museum), both representing an important new body pursuing a more united sector and advocacy position for museums: the Council of Australian Museum Associations (or CAMA).

Des Griffin recalls this period and the presence of Cathy Santamaria in government at the time as encompassing significant agency and good steerage of important relationships: ‘Bringing any group of organisations together requires persistence and the support of important players. Museums are no different. The Council of Australian Museum Associations (CAMA), the forerunner of Museums Australia, had to negotiate in the early 1990s with the Cultural Ministers Council for national coordination of museum-sector contribution to policy development, backed by Commonwealth support. The CMC represented government arts and cultural activities in the states and Commonwealth, but a national vision for the potential of collaborative effort was needed.

‘As initial negotiations came to a close, some difficulties still seemed to exist: it was like a ‘mini fiscal cliff’.

Cathy Santamaria, then First Assistant Secretary in the arts division of government, was able to recognise the long-term value of the social contribution made by museums, to perceive that this needed support, and to see past a possible disturbance to existing control structures.

‘Her intervention at a vital moment led to the eventual agreement of the CMC to establish the Heritage Collections Working Group, which became the Heritage Collections Council. It was through this Council’s work, drawing together directors from around the

country and across disciplines, that important progress was made in areas such as collections digitisation and conservation benefiting all museums. That episode – marked by collaborative purpose drawing together all types of museums, national planning, and the facilitating support of the Commonwealth government and its officers – came to a close in the years after 2002.

After Cathy’s departure, people with her far-sighted grasp of how to engage the museums sector’s contribution to national policy delivery across a range of objectives, including Indigenous issues, education, scientific endeavor and cultural heritage care, were no longer present.’ (Des Griffin AM, November 2012) Further discussion of the museums sector’s development and relationship to government policy in this period can be found in a three-part series of essays by Des Griffin, available for download at <http://desgriffin.com/essays-2/pigott-intro/> Dr Darryl McIntyre, former President of Museums Australia, who worked with Cathy Santamaria during many years within the arts bureaucracy in Canberra, has contributed the remainder of this tribute (below). [Ed.]

An appreciation of the life of Catherine Santamaria by Darryl McIntyre Catherine Santamaria was born on 11 December 1943, the third daughter of Helen and Bob Santamaria. Other members of the family include her sisters Cristina, Mary, Bernadette, and Anne, and brothers Joseph, Bob and Paul Santamaria.

Catherine attended the Genazzano Convent in Kew, then enrolled at Melbourne University, where she graduated with an Arts degree. In the late 1960s Catherine moved to Canberra, and to employment at the National Library of Australia, where she worked closely with a distinguished colleague, the late Pauline Fanning, in the Australian collection branch.

In the 1980s Catherine moved to the Department of Home Affairs and Environment, where she eventually became First Assistant Secretary of the Arts Division (which included the Arts, Film and Cultural Heritage branches). In these years, Catherine – or Cathy, as she was most generally known – became a widely recognised and valued supporter of the development of museums within the cultural sector. She was an active member of many Commonwealth-State working parties relating to the arts, and their reports formed an important part of the work of the Cultural Ministers Council (no longer in operation). Cathy also worked closely with successive federal Ministers for the Arts, as well as attending numerous board or council meetings of the various national cultural institutions.

Cathy was closely involved with the planning and construction of the Australian National Maritime

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 21 (2) – Summer 2012 43

Museum, at Darling Harbour in Sydney, whose construction costs were covered by the Australian Government. Originally conceived as a bicentenary project, the ANMM opened in 1991.

Cathy eventually became Deputy Secretary for the Arts, within the Department of Communications and the Arts (DoCA), a position that continued under the succeeding government, within the Department of Arts, Sport, Environment, Tourism and Territories (DASETT).

I worked closely with Cathy during the period of the drafting of the Creative Nation cultural policy statement under former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, which involved extensive meetings with State and Territory ministers for the arts as well as with other Commonwealth ministers. At times we worked until the early hours of the following day, refining draftdetails of Paul Keating’s ambitious and far-reaching cultural policy framework. After the cultural policy was finally endorsed by Paul Keating and submitted to Cabinet process, it was backed financially by an allocation of some $460 million earmarked for arts and cultural heritage.

Cathy Santamaria also took a close interest in the early years of planning and anticipated construction of the National Museum of Australia (during which the Museum’s intended site was relocated from Yarramundi Reach to Acton Pensinsula, much closer to the Parliamentary Triangle). She attended some meetings of the Museum’s Council in these early developmental years, and remained supportive of its cause for a permanent physical home worthy of its mission as a long-awaited Commonwealth institution dedicated to the nation’s history.

The NMA’s construction was finally accelerated as an Australian Centenary of Federation project, covered by federal funding and the personal support of Prime Minister John Howard, who opened the Museum in 2001.

Cathy Santamaria meanwhile managed government reviews of significant national legislation protecting Australian heritage: in particular, the 1986 Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act, and the 1976 Historic Shipwrecks Act, after which these reviews were approved by the then Minister for the Arts and implemented by the Cultural Heritage Branch. She took a strong interest also in world heritage issues, notably in securing UNESCO world heritage listing for a number of sites across Australia (including Indigenous sites of significance).

Throughout these important years of achievement as a senior public servant, Cathy worked closely with staff in the Arts division of government, as well as with the heads of the national cultural institutions.

In recent years Cathy’s health deteriorated following development of a brain tumour. She was treated

finally in a hospice run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Camberwell.

Catherine Santamaria passed away on 7 October 2012. Her funeral was held at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, in Deepdene, and she was buried at Boroondara Cemetery, in Kew. She is survived by her sisters and brothers.

Cathy and I worked closely together over many years on arts and cultural heritage issues, and I am confident that everyone in the arts and cultural heritage sectors who knew her will appreciate her enormous contribution to the arts, film, museums and cultural heritage generally over many decades, and her steady advocacy for their development.

(Darryl McIntyre FAIM, November 2011) [] Citation: Des Griffin, Darryl McIntyre & Museums Australia (Ed), Tribute to Cathy Santamaria, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 21 (2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Summer 2012, pp. 42-43.