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Contents
In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2015—2017 President's Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 From the Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Smoky Mouse and the human race: Contemporary collecting in natural science . . . . . . . 10 Makarraṯa: Museums and Yolngu working together across difference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 WA state gallery reaches out to the Kimberley: Changing models of community-institutional relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Sizzling in the intersections: Hot zones of contact and transculturation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 When museum members become good friends. . . . 40 More than a ghostly outline: The multifaceted art of Jonathan Jones. . . . . . . . . . . 44 Music and humour in the socially engaged museum . . 48
Turning Music Culture into Museum Programs . . . 52 Book Review: Museum collections reinterpreted and represented. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Professor Norman Palmer QC CBE: A tribute. . . . . . 60 Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney AO CMG . . . . . 61
president
Frank Howarth PSM (Former Director, Australian Museum, Sydney) vice-president
Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) treasurer
Margaret Lovell (Corporate Secretariat, Land Development Agency, Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development, ACT Government, Canberra)
secretary
Dr Mat Trinca (Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) members
Carol Cartwright (retired) Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra)
Suzanne Davies (Director, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne) Timothy Hart (Director, Public Engagement, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) Dr Lynda Kelly (Head of Learning, Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney) Suesann Vos (Sponsorship and Marketing Manager, Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Caboolture) Michael Rolfe (CEO, Museums & Galleries of NSW, Sydney) ex officio member
Alec Coles OBE (Chair, ICOM Australia), Western Australian Museum public officer
Louise Douglas, Canberra state/territory branch presidents/ representatives (subject to change throughout year)
COVER IMAGE: Bird eggs Photographer: Rodney Start Source: Museum Victoria
ACT Rebecca Coronel (Manager – Exhibitions and Gallery Development, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) NSW Emma Best (Public Programs Officer, Newcastle Museum, Newcastle)
© Museums Galleries Australia and individual authors. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608 Editorial: (02) 6230 0346 Advertising: 02) 6230 0346 Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice L. Murphy
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine is published biannually (from Volume 25 onwards) and on-line on the national website, and is a major link with members and the museums sector. Museums Galleries 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 Galleries 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 Galleries Australia, its affiliates or employees.
Content layout: Stephanie Hamilton
Museums Galleries Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation: Australian Government Ministry for the Arts; National Museum of Australia; Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum); and Western Australian Museum.
Printer: Adams Print, Melbourne
Print Post Publication No: 100003705 ISSN 2207-1806
Cover design: Selena Kearney
NT Anna Malgorzewicz (General Manager of Community and Cultural Services, City of Darwin, Darwin) QLD John Waldron (Museum consultant, Sunshine Coast, Queensland) SA Mirna Heruc (Manager, Art & Heritage Collections, University of Adelaide, Adelaide)
TAS Janet Carding (Director, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart) VIC Lauren Ellis (Programs Manager, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Program & Communications Manager, International Art Space, Perth)
8 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
President's Message
A above:
Frank Howarth
lex Marsden (National Director), Andrew Simpson (NSW branch Executive Officer) and I recently sat in front of the NSW Upper House inquiry into museums and galleries — at a hearing in September. It was a good opportunity to set out what we see as good policy for the gallery and museum sector at State level, emphasising evidence-based policy underpinned by consistent financial support. We stressed the need for access of all communities to museum and gallery services, across Sydney and across the state, while also arguing against ad hoc or precipitate decision making. It was good to see that the Parliamentary Committee clearly valued our contribution, and regarded Museums Galleries Australia as a reliable source of advice and information for the sector. Advocacy at all three levels of Government is a key role for us, and while the level of cultural policy uncertainty increases — as it certainly seems to be doing at national level — that role is ever more important. The museum and gallery sector has recently benefitted from two Catalyst grants: one in our own right; and one as part of the GLAM Peak consortium (a relatively new peak body created mainly at our instigation in order to increase effective influence by having the whole GLAM sector speak as one). At the time of writing this piece, uncertainty about the future of Catalyst was increasing — with one view being that it is likely to be subsumed back into the Australia Council, which presents a difficult issue for us in the museum and gallery sector. Catalyst has broad funding guidelines which clearly include museums and galleries as eligible for funding; however current Australia Council rules exclude direct funding to museums and offer only limited opportunities to galleries. While we deeply regretted and argued strongly against the impacts of taking substantial funds away from the Australia Council to create Catalyst (originally the National Program for Excellence in the Arts under the previous federal minister), much of our sector is actually better served right now under Catalyst. In a letter I sent recently to Mitch Fifield, Minister for the Arts, we argued for the retention of Catalyst, but with increased funding provided to the Australia Council as well. I also noted that if the Government were to discontinue Catalyst, then the Australia Council’s grant programs and guidelines need to be changed to enable museums and galleries to access funding (as was definitely the case for more than two decades, from 1974 to 1998/99). Capacity building and professional development for the sector is also a priority to help us advance exemplary practices in all aspects of galleries and museums. The current Catalyst-funded GLAM Peak project on digital access to collections has best practice at its heart — and this is not just focused on
large, (comparatively) well-funded city institutions, but equally aims to encourage high-performance opportunities for remote and volunteer-run museums and galleries. The first stage of the digital access project, now complete, has given us some key case studies and a draft national framework and toolkit to work with. We are now seeking further funding to finalise the standards, toolkits and guides for improved digital access to our collections nationally (and of course this facilitates international access as well). Evolving standards and exemplary practice is the theme running through this Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, and it will also form a key framework for our next conference, in Brisbane, in May 2017. Enjoy the Magazine, and be sure to contribute to the Conference in one of the many ways on offer as planning by the Queensland Organising Committee advances! [ ] Frank Howarth PSM National President, Museums Galleries Australia
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 9
From the Director
I above:
Alex Marsden
t’s coming up to the end of the year after another big one — for our State and Territory Branches, our National Networks, and the National Council and National Office. We’ve been pushing ahead with several foreshadowed changes as well as continuing to deliver core membership services and projects. One of the most important member benefits is the annual National Conference — this year’s was the first joint conference held with Museums Aotearoa in New Zealand. I thought it was terrific, but don’t just take my partisan words for it. The evaluation report summed it up as ‘[A] warm, extremely successful conference which provided innovative and stimulating ideas, networking opportunities and an international perspective…The cultural focus of the conference moved many delegates and inspired them to do better to equally represent all cultures.’ It was a big challenge for us both to co-develop the program and entice you all to come — I’m delighted that so many of you made the trip. Professional development is a critical part of what we offer — and the year has also seen numerous workshops and seminars developed and delivered by branches and networks, including outstanding state conferences in WA and Victoria. We know that resources are limited in some of the other states, so this year we are trialling the first workshops in a national scheme. Starting in Adelaide in early November, the SA branch hosted a workshop for emerging career professionals, modelled on the highly successful one developed by the ACT branch. Several more workshops in a range of developmental areas will be taken to other states throughout 2017. One of the more important changes this year has been the decision by National Council to transition MGA to a more responsive and effective national body. The structure and operations of the Council have been examined and publicly debated over many years, leading to minor changes to the constitution and regulations undertaken most recently in 2013. This year, the decision was taken at the Council meeting in May to explore a more substantial change. We have started a 2-year trial of a new, larger, skillsbased Management Committee that focuses on operational, governance and financial management, and a more representative National Council that focuses on strategy and sector issues and meets less frequently. The first of these expanded National Council meetings was held in Sydney on 25 November. It included a Roundtable with gallery representatives, titled Art Galleries Matter, which discussed the specific issues, priorities and possible actions for this organisation to pursue. And on the visual arts and galleries sector in particular, I’m pleased to say that the Arts Craft Design National Network has been
back in action over the last few months, is proposing some outstanding sessions for next year’s National Conference, and generally adding weight to MGA’s national cultural presence. Communications has been another strong focus for the year. As I write this, the long-promised and eagerly awaited new website and members database is about to go live. Stephanie Hamilton and Lee Scott in the National Office have slaved over this transition; and more content will be uploaded progressively, especially with contributions from you. Thanks to everyone who has helped on this demanding project, both in writing material and user testing the site. As part of rethinking and updating all the ways in which we communicate, we are also moving to a larger, bi-annual hard copy publication of the Museums Galleries Australia Magazine. One in the middle of the year will feature outstanding conference papers, and the end-of-year magazine (which is the one you are about to read now) focuses on different aspects of good and innovative practice. The aim of the Magazine is to provide a growing library of significant ideas, evolving issues and examples of exemplary practice. More newsy, topical and ephemeral material will be quickly written and accessed on other platforms, such as the new website, and Facebook and Twitter feeds. This change is part of our suite of initiatives designed to deliver more engaging and effective communications through a variety of channels. Again, please let us know how it goes (I tweet @museumsaust). In all these new communications, you’ll see that Museums Australia (MA) has moved to become Museums Galleries Australia (MGA). This is to better reflect how Australians see this sector, which is different from overseas. Council hopes the more inclusive name encourages stronger senses of everyone belonging to the one national organisation. A resolution will be put forward at the AGM in May 2017. Finally, back to the concept of good or exemplary practice that will be explored in each end-of-year magazine. This is not mandating a canon of only a few ways of doing things, but opening up reflective practice and opportunities for change. As one conference delegate wrote, their best lesson is to: ‘Ignore all my colleagues who are stuck in the mire of “best practice” because many of the innovations discussed would be outside the common thought of best practice.’ So, go for it! [ ] Alex Marsden National Director, Museums Galleries Australia
10 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Natural history and science museums reshaping our knowledge-banks for the future
The Smoky Mouse and the human race: Contemporary collecting in natural science
Robin Hirst
I above: top:
Dr Robin Hirst.
Museum Collections are an irreplaceable record of life on earth.
noticed recently that the International Committee for Natural History (ICOM NATHIST) is holding a conference in Pittsburgh next year with the title of The Anthropocene: Natural History Museums in the Age of Humanity. After around 4 billion years during which life on earth has been subject to massive forces of nature, the earth is now entering a new age, one radically reshaped by the dominant species — humans. It is believed that the impact of humans is already so profound that the fossil record into the future will feature a mass extinction of numerous species we are familiar with today, and all caused by us. The Anthropocene is a concept that is not the sole concern of museums with natural science
collections; its full examination cries out for a multidisciplinary approach. The international urgency of current challenges for society’s response to threatened environmental heritage, and the need for multidisciplinary initiatives across museums, were emphasised strongly in a recent issue of ICOM News by Michel Van-Praët, Professor Emeritus of the National Museum of Natural History, Paris: ‘The changes that societies must make will require sharing of available information, information which museums hold in their collections.’[1] When asked to contribute to the Museums Galleries Australia Magazine on contemporary practices in museums, relating to natural science collections, I was reminded again of the important record of the history of life on earth that is held within our own
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 11
museum walls, and the need to make a contemporary contribution that not only adds to the record but gives us insights into how we can influence the future.[2] The work of museums, at its heart, is simple. We develop collections, we preserve them, and we then engage the public through them. Develop, preserve and engage. What adds to the complexity is the continually changing nature of society, and the aspirations of museums to be relevant to both current and, hopefully, future generations. Phoebe Burns represents one of the new types of collector. She is in the Victoria Range in the stone country of the Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung people, in the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd). She is searching for the elusive and endangered Smoky Mouse (Pseudomys fumeus), a nocturnal species that nests in communal burrow systems. First recorded in this area in 1974, and rarely since, Smoky Mice are thought to be in decline. In the late afternoon Phoebe hikes down the steep gullies and sets a line of traps. In each trap is a comfy bed of cushion filler, should a ball of peanut butter, golden syrup and oats, at the far end of the trap, prove to be an irresistible attraction for an adventurous mouse who has to stay all night. At daybreak Phoebe retraces her steps into the gully. Smoky Mice have been active, and one is in the trap. She gently cradles the mouse in one hand and carefully takes a snip of tissue from the wafer thin ear — then puts this sample into a tube identified with its own barcode and filled with ethanol. The Smoky Mouse is measured, weighed, tagged and photographed before being released back into the wild. The tissue is destined for long-term storage at very low temperatures. Tissues are forming the new collections in natural science museums. Tissue samples are invaluable genetic resources to be used for research today. However, correctly stored, this tissue evidence will also undoubtedly be used in ways we cannot yet conceive — since new interpretive and research techniques will emerge in decades to come, and further discoveries will be made from the growing tissue-banks of today. Phoebe is one of some 30 PhD students who are co-supervised by Museum Victoria staff, a new generation of scientists well versed in ethical collecting and the value of museums in recording our wildlife.[3] The work of post-graduate students
refreshes the museum’s research, and their enthusiasm contributes to a culture of discovery. The ability to develop the collections, the information that surrounds them, and the research outputs that follow is substantially enhanced through their work. Research partnerships with universities come in many forms in Australian museums. Embedding research students within museums is of great benefit to the partners, and produces researchers who will emerge familiar with both the contributions and the possibilities of museum collecting and collections. Tissue collections are currently stored in low-temperature freezers, typically at -84 degrees centigrade. At this temperature a tissue sample can be kept for years, and DNA extracted when required in order to carry our research into the species, its relationship to other species and its evolution. In August this year, Museum Victoria launched the Australian Wildlife BioBank. This is a first for Australian museums. Built and equipped through a generous donation from the Ian Potter Foundation, this biobank is currently capable of storing some 160,000 tissue samples at -196 degrees centigrade. At this temperature the tissues will last for centuries. Cooled with liquid nitrogen which is automatically replaced, this preservation system eliminates the risk of mechanical and power failure inherent in the conventional freezer. Such conditions are the future for tissue storage in museums. In addition, at this temperature, live sperm and eggs of endangered species will be remain viable. These surviving samples of the world’s biological heritage will, in time, be the animal equivalent of the seed banks being established around the world for plant regeneration, such as in the Australian Botanic Garden at Mt Annan. The new Australian Wildlife BioBank was created in response to a comprehensive assessment of risks across all of Museum Victoria collections, including natural history. This represents a new way of thinking for museums. Dr Robert Waller — of Protect Heritage, and formerly of the Canadian Museum of Nature — has developed a methodology for assessing and quantifying risks to collections. It begins by looking at ten agents that can degrade any collection: physical forces, theft, fire, water, pests, pollutants, light, incorrect temperature, incorrect humidity, and disassociation of an object or specimen from its related information. A mathematical analysis of all the
Tissues are forming the new collections in natural science museums
1.
Michel Van-Praët, ‘Museums sounding the alarm: Challenges for museums of natural and human sciences in the face of the global environmental crisis’, ICOM News, Vol.68 (3-4), ICOM, Paris, 2015, 8-9 (p.8).
2.
See two articles on the ethical challenges of responding to current environmental changes, and a responsible social response by museums, in ICOM’s 70th anniversary volume focused on museum ethics: (i) Michel Van-Praët, ‘Reversing the de-realization of natural and social phenomena: Ethical issues for museums in a multidisciplinary context’ (Chapter 7); and (ii) Emlyn Koster, ‘From Apollo into the Anthropocene: The odyssey of nature and science museums in an external responsibility context’ (Chapter 22) — both in Bernice L. Murphy ed., Museums, Ethics and Cultural Heritage (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 61–70, & 228–241 respectively.
3.
See Eric Dorfman, ‘Ethical issues and standards for natural history museums’ (Chapter 6), in Bernice L. Murphy ed., Museums, Ethics and Cultural Heritage, op.cit., 54-60. See also ‘ICOM’s Code of Ethics for Natural History Museums’, provided as Appendix II in Bernice L. Murphy ed., Museums, Ethics and Cultural Heritage, op.cit.; this Code, produced by ICOM’s NATHIST committee, is also available for download from the ICOM website at http://icom. museum/professional-standards/ code-of-ethics/code-of-ethicsfor-natural-history-museums.
12 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Natural history and science museums reshaping our knowledge-banks for the future
far left:
Phoebe Burns, PhD student with University of Melbourne — co-supervised by Dr Kevin Rowe.
left:
Conducting a bioscan in the Grampians National Park.
bottom: Collecting tissue of a Smoky Mouse. right:
Dr Joanna Sumner, Manager Genetic Resources, in the Ian Potter Australian Wildlife BioBank.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 13
risks results in an objective assessment of collection conditions and can frame priorities for action, enabling scarce resources to be applied in a rational fashion. Museum Victoria’s tissue collection, prior to creation of the BioBank, was at the top of the list of our collections identified as ‘at risk’. Back from the field, Phoebe’s Smoky Mouse tissue sample is now transferred to low-temperature storage and registered into the collection database, preserving information of its collection time, context, and the current location of the item. The latest sample is destined for the BioBank, where it will join other Smoky Mouse samples. From such collected tissueitems small samples will be taken, and DNA can then be extracted, sequenced and shared. Phoebe was just one of 40 scientists, field biologists and historians in the Victorian stone country for a week of discovery. Rapid assessments of the wildlife present in a precinct, called bioscans, are conducted in specific geographic areas, and take place in Victoria as standard practice of the Sciences Department of the Museum. The resulting information is compiled to provide temporal and spatial records. Increasingly, local Aboriginal communities are participating in the bioscans, contributing their knowledge to the Museum’s archives and instigating their own ongoing visits to the Museum’s collections to enrich their own knowledge relating to country. Amongst the group who compiled data recently on the Grampians Bioscan was a wildlife photographer, David Paul. The wildlife photographer is also a new breed of collector. With an expert eye and highly honed photographic skills, David provides a record of natural science evidence and data that will not only become part of the permanent collection but will also be used to engage the public in the Museum’s activities and programs. Meanwhile Phoebe Burns’ Smoky Mouse can be held for temporary datagathering prior to release, and photographed to produce enduring images of this small creature that has enormous public appeal. Whilst one aim is to build and preserve the collections, to enable current and future generations to understand and make choices about environmental issues, another aim is to engage the public with nature and encourage people from all walks of life
14 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Natural history and science museums reshaping our knowledge-banks for the future
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 15
left:
The Smoky Mouse.
top left:
Installation view of Wild: Amazing Animals in a Changing World, Museum Victoria collection display. top right:
Victorian Field Guide App, developed by Museum Victoria.
4.
See also: ‘Wild and contemporary – Melbourne Museum’s progressive redevelopment of its long-term displays’, in Museums Australia Magazine, Canberra, Vol. 19 (Issue 1), September 2010, pp 13-16.
to care about biodiversity, and hopefully help arrest the ravaging impacts of what is now identified as the Anthropocene era. Phoebe’s Smoky Mouse record will also be uploaded to the Atlas of Living Australia databases, which interconnect the dispersed data for the major Australian natural science collections. Such aggregators, or information portals, exist also across the world, and provide data for understanding the whole of our natural world and the changes happening to it over time. Museums engage the Australian public with the past and future, as well as highlighting many aspects of the current plight of nature. They have done so with exhibits and exhibitions that date back to the nineteenth century. New 21st century presentations — like Museum Victoria’s digitally interactive as well dramatic physical installations, entitled Wild: Amazing Animals in a Changing World (Science and Life Gallery installation, Melbourne Museum, 2010)[4] — are highly engaging and informative exhibitions, which are also proving to be popular. Meanwhile over the last two years, natural history museums in Australia have worked together in the virtual world to produce an App on wildlife creatures for each state, which is an easy-to-use tool for members of the public to identify and understand wildlife in their own immediate environment, including in our national parks. These State or Territory Field Guides now cover the whole of Australia, thanks to support funding provided through Inspiring Australia.
Phoebe’s Smoky Mouse also features in the Victorian Field Guide App, and this guide has had some 130,000 downloads. David Paul’s photographic portrait of the Smoky Mouse in the App has a charm that can emotionally engage users. Endeavouring to persuade the public through words and figures that our natural environment is in trouble will only work for some. For others, it will be images and video footage that will carry the day. The Anthropocene is upon us. We live in a world where natural habitats are diminishing and global warming is threatening species. Perhaps the time has come when Australian museums with natural science collections, and a mandate to preserve and communicate about nature, need to work even more closely on many issues of public communication about our wildlife — as they did with the national field guide project — to bring an urgency to current debates and awareness of our natural world and its critically endangered species. Phoebe Burns’ Smoky Mice might just survive and provide a symbol of hope for us all. [ ] Dr Robin Hirst is Director, Collections, Research and Exhibitions for Museum Victoria, and is located at the Melbourne Museum. <https://museumvictoria.com.au> Citation: Robin Hirst, ‘The Smoky Mouse and the human race: Contemporary collecting in natural science’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 10-15.
16 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Evolving standards in provenance of collections
Art crime and its aftermath: Australia’s response to the Subhash Kapoor cases[1]
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 17
Lucie Folan & Natalie Seiz
C
rimes involving art from Asia, usually unsolved, are increasingly reported, studied and prosecuted (Gruber 2014: 221-235). Recent examples affecting Australia centre on former New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor (born India, 1949), who is awaiting trial in India on charges relating to illicit trade in Indian temple sculptures. In 2014 the Australian Government returned to India two sculptures bought from Kapoor’s Art of the Past dealership by (respectively) the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). Later, in September 2016, the NGA repatriated a further two Indian sculptures acquired from the same dealer. This article explores Australia’s recent and unprecedented exposure to art crime, and details strategies to manage art of suspect provenance.
Allegations against Subhash Kapoor (Authors’ note: This summary reconciles disparate reports, drawing on police and legal transcripts, firsthand knowledge and information from media and researchers. Please note that Subhash Kapoor is pleading not guilty to the charges he faces.) Following Indian police investigations and an Interpol alert, Subhash Kapoor was arrested at Frankfurt Airport, Germany, on 30 October 2011, and later extradited to India in July 2012 (Selveraj 2012). He has since been in a Chennai prison (Subramanian 2016). Police summaries indicate that Kapoor is charged with organising thefts and illegal export of Chola-period (9th–13th centuries) bronzes from disused village temples in Suthamalli and Shri Puranthan, both in the Ariyalur district of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was later revealed that US authorities were building parallel cases against the dealer and his associates (Jenkins & Ramanathan 2012). Before his arrest, Kapoor operated prominent Manhattan commercial gallery Art of the Past, specialising in Indian art. He began this dealership after moving from India to New York in 1974 (Matthews 2013). Over decades, Kapoor held exhibitions, published widely-distributed catalogues and participated in high-profile art market events. He sold and donated art to museums, such as: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore; and Australia’s AGNSW in Sydney and NGA in Canberra. In 2009, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the exhibition Living line: Selected Indian drawings from the Subhash Kapoor Gift. The arrest two years later of a dealer of such apparent high standing and respected connections naturally alarmed the art world (Mashberg & Bearak 2015). Details of numerous thefts implicating Kapoor emerged after his extradition. Indian police
documents state that 18 or 20 Chola-period bronzes were reported missing from a Suthamalli temple in April 2008, and eight from a Shri Puranthan temple in August 2008. Investigators contend that Kapoor orchestrated the burglaries from Chennai in 2005 and 2006. The Shri Puranthan sculptures are believed to have been taken around two years before they were reported missing. The Suthamalli robberies are suspected to have occurred in early 2008, with some bronzes exported to New York via Hong Kong and England (Tamil Nadu police website www.tneow.in).
Tracing the missing bronzes The village temples in Chennai did not hold records of their missing sculptures; however it eventuated that most sculptures in the region had been documented by the French Institute of Pondicherry (Institut Français de Pondichéry, IFP). From around 2011, Tamil Nadu police circulated small black and white IFP photographs of the missing bronzes, initially without qualifying details or source information. Collectors were urged to compare the images with any items acquired from Kapoor. The NGA bought 22 items from the dealer between 2002 and 2011, notably the dynamic Chola-period bronze Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), purchased for US$5 million in 2008. The sculpture was acquired after extensive research and deliberations by curatorial staff and the NGA’s governing Council, with final purchase based on the strength of its aesthetic qualities, its art historical importance, and the ownership history supplied by the vendor. The Shiva’s alleged legitimacy was supported by a number of documents provided to the NGA: a purchase receipt dated 14 May 1970 to Abdulla Mehgoub, purportedly from the dealership Fine Art Museum, Delhi; a letter from the purchaser’s widow stating that the sculpture was outside India by 1971; an invoice recording her sale of the sculpture to Art of the Past in 2004; an Art Loss Register certificate; and a letter of warranty from the dealer. The names, dates, relationships and addresses on the documents, and their changes over time, were found to correspond with other available public records. The Tamil Nadu police website, Interpol stolen art database, art theft forums and numerous art historical publications and photographic databases had been checked, with no theft or matching sculpture identified. While attempts were made to check the IFP archives held in Pondicherry, it was not then possible to search the institution’s photographs remotely, or without the name of a specific temple as a lead. Legal advice was also obtained. Checking the Tamil Nadu police website in 2011, Shiva as Lord of the Dance was found to superficially resemble the IFP photograph of the Shri Puranthan Nataraja. However it was only in 2013 that the NGA received images suitable for comparison, together with confirmation that the Nataraja was photographed in Shri Puranthan in 1994. Compelling
left:
Shiva as Lord of the Dance [Nataraja], south India, Chola period, 11th or 12th century, bronze. Photo: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. above:
Shiva Nataraja, Shri Puranthan, Tamil Nadu, India, Chola period, 11th or 12th century, bronze. Photo: S Natarajan, Institut Français de Pondichéry/École française d'Extrême-Orient.
1.
This is a revised and updated version of an article published in the June 2016 issue of TAASA Review, the journal of The Asian Arts Society of Australia. Details about TAASA and its publications are available at www.taasa.org.au.
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similarities suggested that the NGA sculpture was the Shri Puranthan Nataraja, despite the larger base of the latter. Definitive identification was delayed, however, because the Shri Puranthan Nataraja was listed as 160 x 150 cm, while the sculpture bought by the NGA measures only 128.5 x 106 cm, a discrepancy that remains unexplained. Taken in 1994, the IFP photograph signalled that the Shri Puranthan Nataraja could not have been legally removed from India, since the export of any sculpture over 100 years of age was by that time prohibited under India’s Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972. The similarity to Shiva as Lord of the Dance therefore suggested that the sculpture’s provenance documents were falsified to convince the NGA that it had been exported from India in 1970 or 1971 — before the introduction of the pivotal 1970 UNESCO Convention against illicit trafficking of cultural heritage (UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property) and relevant national legislation. Under Australia’s Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act (1986), in force since 1 July 1987 — and the law that enabled Australia’s implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention — any protected foreign cultural object exported illegally from its country of origin is liable for forfeiture without compensation on importation into Australia. Thus, a photograph that places Shiva as Lord of the Dance in an Indian temple in or after 1994 can also be used to infer unlawful importation into Australia. Residual doubts about Shiva as Lord of the Dance diminished as other Shri Puranthan bronzes were matched to items sold through Art of the Past. Photographs of the temple’s Ganesha and Parvati were found to correspond with bronzes acquired from Kapoor by Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. In 2015 a Manhattan collector surrendered another Shri Puranthan bronze bought from Art of the Past (Allicott 2015). Additional matches with illicit items were discovered during property searches (www.ice. gov, 2012) and through comparison with Art of the Past catalogues (www.poetryinstone.in).
Related legal proceedings In December 2013, Art of the Past gallery manager Aaron Freedman was charged in New York with conspiracy and criminal possession of items from Suthamalli, Shri Puranthan and the Bharhut Stupa. The theft from Shri Puranthan, and illegal export of the Chola bronzes known as Shiva as Lord of the Dance (sold to the NGA, Canberra) and Parvati (sold to the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore), were cited in New York legal proceedings as overt acts of conspiracy. Freedman pleaded guilty and remains imprisoned in the US. Meanwhile Kapoor’s sister, Sushma Sareen (indicted for criminal possession in October 2013), and Selina Mohamed (a Kapoor associate charged with conspiracy, possession of stolen property and provenance falsification), pleaded guilty to lesser charges of, respectively, obstructing justice and misdemeanour conspiracy. Each of the women entered into plea bargains allowing conditional release. (See www.chasingaphrodite.com for court documents) The New York trials concerning practices by Subhash Kapoor and his staff confirmed a pattern of criminality centred on Art of the Past. With evidence that Shiva as Lord of the Dance was stolen and fraudulently sold, the NGA filed a case against Kapoor in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in February 2014, and received a favourable judgement in June 2015.
Other apparently illicit art Since 2011, many works from Kapoor’s inventory have been identified as displaced temple sculptures, their removal presumed unlawful, but with no crime reported. Sculptures missing from Karitalai in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, and publicised by Plundered Past (www.plunderedpast.in) and Interpol, correspond to works offered to museums and collectors by Kapoor. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) estimate that they have identified 2,500 potentially illicit objects associated with Art of the Past, with a value of around US$100 million (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-hsi-partnersmajor-art-collector-recover-stolen-idol-india).
right:
Ardhanarishvara, purchased by the Art Gallery of NSW in 2004, is now believed to have come from the Vriddhachalam Temple in Tamil Nadu. It was voluntarily returned to India by the Australian Government in 2014.
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The AGNSW in Sydney bought six works from the Kapoor dealership between 1994 and 2004 — four sculptures and two miniature paintings. The Chola period Ardhanarishvara (of c. 1100) was purchased in 2004 for AU$321,000; and, like the NGA’s Shiva as Lord of the Dance, this work had provenance documentation that is now doubtful. Ownership was connected to Abdullah Mehgoub through an Uttam Singh & Sons receipt dated 15 April 1970, and corroborated by a ‘Letter of Provenance’ dated 25 March 2003 from Raj Mehgoub, stating that the work was purchased during her husband’s posting in Delhi from 1968 to 1971. The AGNSW was among the first institutions to reveal works purchased from Subhash Kapoor, publishing details online. Subsequently, a photograph apparently of the AGNSW Ardhanarishvara was discovered in Douglas Barrett’s Early Cola [sic.] architecture and sculpture published in 1974. The IFP later provided three photographs that situated the Ardhanarishvara at Vriddhachalam’s Shiva Temple, Sri Vriddhachalesvara, in 1958, 1967 and 1974. There is also an undated photograph in the American Institute of Indian Studies Center for Art and Archaeology Photo Archive (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/images/aiis/ aiis_search.html?depth=Get+Details&id=7965). The cases related to Art of the Past illustrate the vulnerability of Indian heritage and the scale of the transnational illicit art trade, despite laws fostered since the 1970 UNESCO Convention (Gruber 2012: 3-8), and ethical principles in existence even earlier. India has a population of over one billion, many people living in poverty. Important art is held in innumerable private collections, archaeological settings and temples of varying conditions of security. Government and other organisations are justifiably unable to protect all heritage, and legislation has failed to regulate trade and export (Shroff & Shroff 2015: 75-85). Concurrently, the international market in cultural heritage objects provides monetary incentives, but inadequate mechanisms to distinguish between legitimate and illegally obtained objects (Mackenzie & Yates 2015), and the market is associated with an obfuscating culture of confidentiality (O’Keefe 1997: 87–88).
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Australian and international responses Throughout the official investigations into Kapoor, the AGNSW and NGA worked with the Indian High Commission in Canberra and the Indian Consulate General in Sydney to facilitate official cooperation and resolution. On 5 September 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott endorsed India’s restitution claims, personally handing over the Shiva as Lord of the Dance and Ardhanarishvara sculptures during an official visit to India. Other restitutions followed internationally. In 2015, returns of the Shri Puranthan Parvati and Ganesha were announced by Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore and Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (Angeleti 2015). Germany’s Linden Museum repatriated a tenth century Goddess Durga (Sivakumar 2015). Honolulu Museum of Arts relinquished sculptures to US investigators, with director Stephan
top:
Jost stating: ‘Kapoor’s name on an item means it smells bad … owning tainted art is not part of our mission’ (Mashberg 2015). On 19 September 2016, the NGA voluntarily returned to India another two sculptures that were acquired from Subhash Kapoor in 2005, on the basis of documentary evidence compiled with the assistance of international researchers. During a visit to the IFP in 2015, NGA curator Melanie Eastburn was alerted to images matching the NGA’s Chola-period sculpture Goddess Pratyangira, taken in 1958, 1967 and 1974 in Vriddhachalam, Tamil Nadu — the same location in which the AGNSW’s Ardhanarishvara had been photographed. In 2015, German scholar Robert Arlt contacted the NGA with information about Worshippers of the Buddha, a stone carving dated to the 2nd or 3rd century CE. His research draws on a number of publications to demonstrate that the
Goddess Pratyangira, south India, Chola period, 12th century, granite, Collection National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Photo: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
top left:
Pratyangira, Vriddhachalam, Tamil Nadu, India, Chola period, 12th century, granite. Photo: Institut Français de Pondichéry/École française d'Extrême-Orient.
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The NGA and AGNSW are committed to improving due diligence, legal and ethical standards, and provenance research
sculpture was originally from the remote Buddhist Stupa of Chandavaram in Prakasam District, Andhra Pradesh, India, which was excavated in the 1970s (Thakkar 1979: plate 13A; Murthy 2005: 297–302; Rao 1984: figure 339; Subrahmanyam & Reddy 2008: 28). It is believed that Worshippers of the Buddha was later housed in a site museum, from which a number of works were stolen in 1988 and the early 2000s (Menon 2001). While there is no definitive record of the date or method of removal of either Goddess Pratyangira or Worshippers of the Buddha, the authenticated photographs discredit the associated provenance supplied at the time of purchase, and imply illegal export from India after the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the enactment of relevant Indian and Australian cultural heritage legislation. In an attempt to bring transparency to the issues surrounding acquisitions that involved Subhash Kapoor, most museums have declared and published relevant holdings online. Institutions including the NGA, AGNSW, Toledo Museum of Art and Honolulu Museum of Arts also released provenance documentation previously regarded as confidential (see www.chasingaphrodite.com for relevant documents). This sharing of information greatly assists understanding of the art trade, but has also opened museums to criticism. With the benefit of hindsight, standard museum provenance checks have been found to overly rely on dealer reputation, assumed propriety of public sale, art loss databases of limited scope, and documents open to fraudulent compilation. Significantly, sculptures from Art of the Past were offered with no exhibition or publication history, and from unknown collections. Documents demonstrating ownership and export were provided by the vendor, or on behalf of parties with an apparent financial interest in the sculpture. In contrast, the IFP photographs came from a third-party organisation that does not stand to gain ownership of the sculpture or direct financial benefit from the provision of information. Checks employed by the NGA, AGNSW and other museums were, however, justifiably ineffective in detecting unreported thefts. Important tools such as Interpol’s database of stolen art, the Art Loss Register, and the website of India’s Tamil Nadu police
department are effective only in cases of known, registered and documented thefts or losses. The information garnered through the Kapoor cases has informed new collecting protocols. For instance, the Australian Ministry for the Arts released the Australian Best Practice Guide to Collecting Cultural Material in October 2014. Australian institutions now require more robust evidence of ownership and export, and consultation with source countries. The Art of the Past findings, and the possibility of other suspect art on the market, threaten to limit public Asian art collections internationally (Neal 2014: 22). The March 2016 seizures during New York’s Asia Week reinforce that reluctance to collect (Moynihan 2016). The AGNSW and NGA have elected to focus on contemporary rather than historical Asian art, as have many international institutions. This does not, however, address the uncertainty surrounding material already outside its country of origin, most of which will continue to be traded privately.
Ongoing Asian art provenance research Museums internationally are continuing to seek accurate information about works from Art of the Past, and check for other illicit material. The AGNSW Asian art provenance project follows new best practice standards, requiring greater due diligence and strict compliance with new museum codes of ethics, a manifestation of policies in place since 2012. The ongoing project will also scrutinise past acquisitions, beginning with 22 South Asian sculptures purchased by AGNSW. A list of these and other works with current provenance information appears on the AGNSW website, and includes three sculptures purchased from Art of the Past: Varaha rescuing the earth goddess, Bhudevi 10th century; A winged deity 2nd century BCE-1st century BCE; and Rattle in the form of a lady playing the drum 2nd century BCE-first century BCE. The NGA provenance project aims to research and publish ownership histories for the entire Asian collection, initially focusing on art with identified issues or risks. More than 300 Asian works of art are now published on the NGA website, along with verified chains of ownership. Many of the works have
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incomplete provenance histories, but the history of others is known from the time of their creation to the present. Provenance websites are intended to expose research to scrutiny. Scholars and collectors are encouraged to contribute and comment on the accuracy of information, and source nations can use the images and information to inform cultural property claims. In 2015, the NGA engaged former justice of the High Court of Australia, Mrs Susan Crennan, to check assessment processes. Mrs Crennan examined documents, vendor biographies, acquisition proposals, correspondence, and publication and exhibition histories of thirty-six representative NGA works. Her review found that all items, including Shiva as Lord of the Dance, were acquired in good faith. Mrs Crennan wrote: ‘Like other major galleries, the NGA was the victim of a well-planned fraud by Art of the Past. These events illustrate the need to rely on sources of information other than a dealer, even if ostensibly reputable at the time of an acquisition.’ Her review confirmed the conclusions reached by the NGA that 11 of its remaining 19 Art of the Past items have suspect provenance. Purchase receipts for the ex-Kapoor Goddess Durga and Worshippers of the Buddha match the discredited source of the AGNSW’s Ardhanarishvara. The dancing child-saint Sambandar, Processional standard (‘alam), and Arch for a Jain shrine are also connected to the spurious collector of Shiva as Lord of the Dance and Ardhanarishvara. Seated Jina has the same provenance, but has also been traced to a 2002 auction, suggesting that false paperwork may have been supplied even for legitimately purchased items, perhaps to satisfy museum standards or attract higher prices. New York court documents allege that Selina Mohamed falsified provenance for the NGA’s Lakshmi Narayana and Pair of door guardians. Mohamed also provided provenance for Goddess Pratyangira.
Looking beyond the Kapoor items, IFP researchers have matched a 1958 photograph to the NGA’s Chola-period Sambandar bought in 1989 from New York art dealer, William Wolff — now deceased. The conclusions are ambiguous. From 1947 until The Antiquities and Art Treasures Act (1972) took effect, export of Indian antiques was regulated but not prohibited. Wolff’s claim that the bronze was in New York in 1970 is unverified, but the sculpture was demonstrably in the USA by 1981, appearing in Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibition and catalogue Manifestations of Shiva (Kramrisch 1981: 150). Appropriate actions will depend on information about the sculpture’s whereabouts between 1958 and 1981. NGA provenance research informed a remarkable agreement about the 2nd-century Indian sculpture Seated Buddha. The sculpture was bought in 2007 from a New York art dealer, about whom there are no allegations of impropriety, with its provenance supported by a letter attesting to purchase in Hong Kong between 1964 and 1966. Research confirmed that the individual named in the letter existed, lived at the address given, and died in 2001. However, ownership was not substantiated and the seller was unable to prove legal export or disclose all provenance details, leaving Seated Buddha susceptible to claim. Thus, the vendor refunded the purchase price paid by the NGA and both parties resolved to voluntarily return the sculpture to India. Seated Buddha was presented to the Indian Government in September 2016, as a rare act of restitution forged by a museum, dealer and source-country government. Other NGA works have good provenance, the publication of which adds to art historical and collecting knowledge. Prajnaparamita, goddess of wisdom was bought in India in around 1930, legally exported and loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art until 1941. A Chola-period Sita was exhibited in France in 1935. Vishnu with attendants appears to have been legally transported from East Pakistan in 1969. Another positive outcome of these collective efforts is the development of cross-institutional relationships. Key Australian galleries are actively engaging with colleagues in institutions across Asia, including the National Museum of India, Archaeological Survey of India, American Institute of Indian Studies, Institut Français de Pondichéry, and the wider world. Since February 2015, Australia’s Asian art curators have met regularly to discuss provenance issues, align policies, learn about regulations, and share information: all
left:
Australian Minister for Arts, Mitch Fifield, and the Indian Minister of State for Culture and Tourism, the Honourable Dr Mahesh Sharma, with Worshippers of the Buddha and Goddess Pratyangira at a handover ceremony in September 2016. Photo: Jamila Toderas (Sydney Morning Herald).
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activities that collectively have enriched knowledge and paved the way for collaborative projects. The Art of the Past cases illustrate the art market’s susceptibility to corruption, and the importance of international cooperation in the detection and restitution of illicit art. Archive photographs and art loss registers — essential in proving and publicising losses but themselves open to fraud — urgently need to be extended, secured and made accessible. To this end, the NGA has procured funding for digitisation and online access to archived records of the French Institute of Pondicherry. Having been inadvertently involved in art crime, the NGA and AGNSW are committed to improving due diligence, legal and ethical standards, and provenance research necessary for the ongoing development and use of their collections. The next challenge will be ensuring that historical Asian art continues to be collected and publicly displayed in Australia, through careful acquisitions, loans, exhibitions — and perhaps further selected purchases from source countries when there is secure evidence against the possibility of art crime. [ ]
References Allicott, S., 2015. ‘Upper East Side collector returns million-dollar statue after learning it was stolen’, in Eye Witness News (July 1, 2015). Angeleti, G., 2015. ‘Flood of restitutions deepens as museums investigate objects bought through Subhash Kapoor’, in The Art Newspaper (October 21, 2015). Gruber, S., 2012. The fight against the illicit trade in Asian cultural artefacts: Connecting domestic strategies, regional cooperation and international agreements (AsianSIL working paper, 2012), pp.3-8. Gruber, S., 2014. ‘Perspectives on the Investigation, Prosecution and Prevention of Art Crime in Asia’, in Saskia Hufnagel and Duncan Chappell (eds), Contemporary Perspectives on the Detection, Investigation and Prosecution of Art Crime: Australasian, European and North American Perspectives (Ashgate, 2014), pp.221-235. Jenkins, C. and Ramanathan, A., 2012. ‘The temple raiders’, on Live Mint (September 12, 2012). http://www.livemint.com/Specials/bir2aNHcarLs6Iw8sWAGTM/The-templeraiders.html Kramrisch, S., 1981. Manifestations of Shiva (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1981), p.150. Mackenzie, S. and Yates, D., 2015. ‘Collectors on illicit collecting: Higher loyalties and other techniques of neutralization in the unlawful collecting of rare and precious orchids and antiquities’, in Theoretical Criminology (Sage, 2015). Mashberg, T., 2015. ‘Museums Begin Returning Artifacts to India in Response to Investigation’, in The New York Times (April 7, 2015). Mashberg, T., and Bearak, M., 2015. ‘The Ultimate Temple Raider?: Inside an Antiquities-Smuggling Operation’, in The New York Times (July 23, 2015). Matthews, A., 2013. ‘The man who sold the world’, in GQ Magazine (December 5, 2013).
Lucie Folan is the National Gallery of Australia’s Curator of Asian art, and a researcher on the NGA Asian art provenance research project. Dr. Natalie Seiz is Assistant Curator of Asian Art at AGNSW where she is carrying out provenance research on the Asian collection. Citation: Lucie Folan & Natalie Seiz, ‘Art crime and its aftermath: Australia’s response to the Subhash Kapoor cases’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 16-23.
Menon, Amarnath K., 2011. ‘Easy pickings: A series of robberies at remote Buddhist sites in Andhra Pradesh exposes the neglect of excavated treasures’, in India Today (30 July 2001). Moynihan, C., 2016. ‘Federal Agents Raid Christie’s, Seizing 2 Ancient Sculptures’, in The New York Times (March 11, 2016). Neal, J.T., 2014. ‘Provenience, Provenance and the UNESCO 1970 Convention: Two Schools of Thought on the Publication of Indeterminate Artifacts. Middle East - Topics & Arguments’, 3, pp.19-28. O’Keefe, P.J., 1997. Trade in Antiquities: Reducing Theft and Destruction (Archetype, 1997). pp.87–88. Selveraj, A., 2012. ‘Antique smuggler Subhash Kapoor to be extradited from Germany’, in Times of India (July 8, 2012). Sivakumar, 2015. ‘Germany returns Durga statue stolen from J&K’, in The Times of India (October 2, 2015). Subrahmanyam, B. and Reddy, E.S., 2008. Buddhist Archaeology in Andhra Pradesh, Department of Archaeology and Museums Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. Subramanian, L., 2016. ‘Gods forsaken’, in The Week (April 3, 2016). http://www. theweek.in/theweek/cover/illegal-trade-of-art-and-artefacts.html Shroff, C. and Shroff, R., 2015. ‘India’s antiquities laws: An antiquated relic?’, in Trusts & Trustees, 21 (1-2), pp.75-85. Thappar, B.K. (ed.), 1979. Indian archaeology 1973–74, a review, Archaeological Survey of India. https://india.gov.in/official-website-archaeological-survey-india
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Makarraṯa: Museums and Yolngu working together across difference
Louise Hamby
T
he relevance of museums to their indigenous stakeholders, and consideration of how their mutual relationships may be improved in the future, are crucial to best and innovative museum practice, a concern of this issue of Museums Galleries Australia Magazine. Yolngu (Aboriginal people from northeast Arnhem Land), from the island of Milingimbi, recently teamed up with researchers on an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant through the Australian National University and Museum Victoria: to host an event with institutions from the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector that have holdings from Milingimbi. This process and ultimate event, entitled Makarraṯa: Bringing the Past into the Future, was designed to reconcile differences and form relationships between museums and community members at Milingimbi, in order to bring about a peaceful understanding concerning the material cultural legacy held by the
institutions concerned. The term makarraṯa has been defined in various ways. I use the more generic definition given by the Yolngu Matha Dictionary — by which this term indicates a peace-making ceremony.
Background to the event The event is part of an ARC Linkage project, The Legacy of 50 Years Collecting at Milingimbi, involving a collaboration between Museum Victoria (with Lindy Allen as the Partner Investigator), and the Australian National University (with myself as Chief Investigator), and the Milingimbi community. Christiane Keller, from the National Museum of Australia, was also a Research Fellow on the project. Underlying our aims of improving the relationships between Yolngu and institutions, we are identifying significant holdings of cultural material from the era of the mission at Milingimbi (1923–1973), and documenting material collected with community members while also working with the holding institutions.
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far left bottom: Louise Hamby and Lucy Malirrimurruwuy Wanapuyngu, with pubic cover Lucy made for the exhibition, Women with Clever Hands. Gapuwiyak, October 2008. Photo: Lindy Allen. far left top: Participants
The Past: Makarraṯa as a peace-making ceremony In order to comprehend the complexity and possible contestations of the contemporary understanding of the event, an examination of the past practice of makarrata in Arnhem Land is useful. A makarraṯa would traditionally occur because of some negative action by a person that required resolution. Some documented reasons for a makarraṯa to be held included murder (George Pascoe 2011: 296; Wilkins 1929: 196), intent to kill, sexual assault (George Pascoe 2011: 298), disputes over women, and general insults that might have occurred (Webb 1944a: 14). The Reverend T.T. Webb, Superintendent at the Milingimbi Mission from 1926–1939, provides an explanation of this type of event. In the Makkaraṯa the offending and the offended parties take up their positions about one hundred yards apart on an open plain. With both these parties will be men of neutral hordes, whose duty it is to prevent the occurrence of further hostile action. The chief offenders are then required to run back and forth across the arena, facing the offended party the while. With the offenders will also run one or two other men from a neutral horde. As the culprits run each man of the offended party steps out and casts his spears at them, while they are required to dodge or to turn aside with the bundle of spears which they carry, but must not throw. When each man has thrown as many spears as he desires, the culprits, still accompanied by their neutral companions, make their way by pantomimic dances to this party, the leader of which then plunges his spear into the leg of the chief offender. By this act the offence is expiated, peace is restored, and hostilities on this particular count will not be reopened. (Webb 1944b: 14–15)
Although Webb indicates his understanding that peace was restored through the ritual event, this was not always the case. William Lloyd Warner, an American anthropologist who researched at Milingimbi from 1927–1929, recorded that the degree of the wounding also held implications. If only a slight wound is made the offenders know they are not forgiven and the truce is only temporary. Sometimes no wound is made at all. This acts as a direct statement of the offended clan's intention to wreak vengeance on the other side.(Warner 1958:165) There have been famous large-scale makarraṯas, like the one documented by Donald Thomson in 1942 on the east coast of Arnhem Land; and there were many that were held over less serious offences. Ella Shepherdson’s diaries specifically mention makarraṯas being held on three days between August and October in 1927 (Shepherdson 1927). These being so frequent probably indicates they were held for less serious offences than murder.
from the 2016 Makarrata at Milingimbi. Row 1 left to right: Cara Pinchbeck, Margret Rarru, Frances Rrikili, Jessica de Largy Healy, Helen Milmindjarrk. Row 2: Ronald Briggs, John Paul Janke, Stuart Porteous, Robin Hirst, Bentley James, Poppy Searle, Joanna Barrkman, Chantal Knowles, Beatrice Voirol, Patrick Greene, Christina Davidson. Row 3: Dorothy Buyuminy, Helen Ganalmirrawuy, Julie Djulibing, Yasunori Hayashi, Vanessa Russ, Robyn Sloggett, Christiane Keller, Lapulung Dhamarrandji, Louise Hamby, Lindy Allen, Zoe Rimmer, Sydney Collins, Rebecca Conway, Brownyn Shepherd, Djambawa Marawili, Rosita Holmes. Row 4: Russell Taylor, Mat Trinca, Margo Smith, Liz Tew, Phil Gordon, Brian Oldman, Marcus Schutenko, Steve Orme, John Carty, Chris Durkin. Photo: Benjamin Warlngundu Ellis Bayliss. this page far left: Ruth Nalmakarra Garrawurra explaining issues to Yolngu and Mat Trinca and other Makarraṯa participants. Photo: John Paul Janke, AIATSIS. left:
Russell Taylor and Keith Lapulung Dhamarrandji looking at the AIATSIS photo books presented to the community. Photo: John Paul Janke, AIATSIS.
Concern has been not so much focused on unethical removal of objects in the first place, but rather how museums are going to work with the material and with people in the community now and in the future
26 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Changing relations around Indigenous and mainstream concepts of ‘right’ conduct
The contemporary concept of a Makarraṯa In contemporary and recent times, the conceptual framework of the makarraṯa has continued to be employed to resolve issues of contention between groups of people. However the term makarraṯa is one that is sometimes contested by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The first well-known instance of outsiders using the term makarraṯa involved the proposed treaty between the Australian Government and the Aboriginal people of Australia almost forty years ago. In 1977, the National Aboriginal Conference was established to provide a forum for Aboriginal views. A committee was formed to consider the options for a treaty. The preferred term, instead of treaty, was makarraṯa (Anderson 2011; Rowse 2000). The actual word was submitted by NAC executive member Peter Minyipirriwuy Dhamarrandji from Elcho Island. However some Aboriginal people at Yirrkala were unhappy with this adaptation to a wider meaning nationally, because they associated makarraṯa with ‘pay-back’ or revenge. The concept of a treaty remains a continuing topic for debate in Australia, and some continue to refer back to the original makarraṯa term, as proposed by the NAC. However whether treaty or makarraṯa, the underlying intent is the same: to reconcile differences (Kenny 2016:20).
Dhakiyarr vs the King A more contemporary example of an event involving makarrata occurs in the film Dhakiyarr vs the King (2005). This film documents the story of Dhakiyarr, who was convicted of killing Constable Albert McColl in 1933. Dhakiyarr was initially sentenced to hang, but the decision was eventually overturned by the High Court and Dhakiyarr was freed. However he disappeared the day he was released and was never found. The film contained a makarraṯa performed on the beach in the same manner as the one photographed by Thomson in 1942. As part of the process of reconciliation, a makarraṯa was held in 2003 at the High Court in Darwin. Dhakiyarr's family was joined in the Supreme Court by the NT Chief Minister, judges, plus 30 members of the McColl family. This makarraṯa brought two laws, cultures and families together. Wuyal Wirrpanda said it was time to ‘break the spear — the spear that flew between my family and the family of McColl’. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/showcases/8478/ prodstory_dhakiyarr.asp
Makarraṯa: Bringing the past into the future The contemporary makarraṯa now discussed further is Makarraṯa: Bringing the Past into the Future. This project grew from different theoretical backgrounds, one Yolngu and one academic, but with a shared objective: to bring about an understanding between Yolngu (the victims of offending actions concerning their heritage) and the institutional holders of their cultural legacy (the accused). According to the framework employed, institutions are placed in the role of the accused, in that they hold the objects, documents, photographs and films that originated with the Yolngu. Concern has been not so much focused on unethical removal of objects in the first place, but rather how museums are going to work with the material and with people in the community now and in the future. The August event had a long gestation period. In November 2013, Lindy Allen and I went to Milingimbi to begin our research facilitated by the ARC grant. At this time we began to canvass the idea of hosting a conference whose guests would be representatives from relevant institutions. In March 2014, Keith Lapulung Dhamarrandji, the Cultural Liaison Officer, and the late Dr Neparranga Gumbula, were convinced that having a meeting of all parties at Milingimbi was a good idea. The concept of bringing Yolngu together with outsiders for cultural purposes was not a new idea for either of them. Lapulung had worked for some years with the
above:
Looking at objects collected from Karel Kupka and Edgar Wells. From left to right: Julie Djulibing, Ruth Nalmakarra, Frances Rrikili, Robin Hirst, Patrick Greene, Helen Milmindjarrk. Photo: Benjamin Warlngundu Ellis Bayliss.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 27
now-deceased Gupapuyngu elder Henry Djerringal: to plan a cultural zone for visitors and Yolngu on the site of the old makarraṯa ground, and to honour the deceased leaders. Dr Gumbula had been working since 2002 in many institutions on his own cultural legacy, before his death in 2015. For Gumbula, a makarraṯa was similar in concept to other Yolngu thinking. He asked, quite directly: ‘Why not use this name?’ However, because of the traditional understanding of makarraṯa, he placed an emphasis on this one as being realised in a ‘new era’. In a similar vein, Lapulung called it a ‘new beginning of life’.
The event The select group of individuals representing twenty institutions eventually arrived to a traditional Milingimbi welcome, followed by what many will remember as an amazing meal prepared by the Crocodile Island Rangers from locally sourced food and using traditional fire pits. The involvement of Rangers in the event is indicative of the holistic nature of art and culture in the community and its interconnecting significance for everyone. Friday was a day for people getting to know each other, and included a makarrata ceremony and talks by Yolngu and representatives of the community. The afternoon was filled with presentations by the guests; many had brought items to share with the community. The photographic books brought by Russell Taylor from collections at AIATSIS, and individual artists’ documentation brought by Margo Smith from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection and Study Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, were very popular. That evening a series of films was presented at the Beach Cinema. Saturday was a day of serious discussions on the makarraṯa ground in the morning and in the Milingimbi School library in the afternoon. A highlight for many was a second showing of objects from collections that were brought variously by Cara Pinchbeck (from the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Beatrice Viorol (from Museum der Kulturen Basel, in Switzerland) and Robin Hirst (from Museum Victoria, Melbourne). Yolngu visitors talked about these items and tried on some of the objects — both on guests and themselves — to demonstrate how they were worn. There was also a closed session held to discuss painted skulls and human remains that are held by institutions that were attending. That evening, a ceremony of song and dance was held to honour the late Dr Gumbula and his work.
Sunday morning was spent discussing the various issues raised during Makarraṯa: Bringing the Past into the Future. It was generally agreed that a way forward needed to proceed in an unhurried timeframe. Participants contributed to the concepts for a Makarraṯa Resolution to be realised. It will include ways to assist Yolngu in the forming, maintaining and interpretation of cultural material for the future, and ways of connecting people further with their cultural heritage held elsewhere.
Conclusion Researching the many collections from Milingimbi and their significance for Yolngu has been the impetus for the development of the event, Makarraṯa: Bringing the Past into the Future, which Joe Gumbula regarded as ‘a transformation of knowledge’. Makarraṯas, no matter how variously realised, have had at their heart some type of peaceful resolution to a problem of disturbed relations between individuals and local groups. The 2016 event was no different in that respect. There are significant variations between a traditional makarraṯa and the one conducted at Milingimbi. The spear brandished by Richard Gaykamangu in the ceremony that took place at Milingimbi represented those objects, collectively, from the past; however, only metaphoric spears were thrown to the crowd of museum and community individuals this time. Lapulung describes what happened in the past, but also applies this to now and the future: There were very real consequences. It was a clearing-up process, witnessed by many, to acknowledge that from misunderstandings and a sense of injustice we can move past alienation, move past forgiveness, to a new point of mutual, deep acceptance and openness. Regardless of the outcome, the separate parties, which might have come from distant places to witness the event, came together to acknowledge completeness and to witness closure and to embrace an entirely fresh beginning. (Dhamarrandji and Porteous 2016: 7) [ ] Dr Louise Hamby is a Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her research is focused on material culture from Arnhem Land, historical and contemporary. Citation: Louise Hamby, ‘Makarraṯa: Museums and Yolngu working together across difference’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol.25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring 2016, pp. 24-27.
28 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
AGWA’s project, Desert River Sea, continues to reshape relationships between a state museum and Indigenous communities
WA state gallery reaches out to the Kimberley: Changing models of community-institutional relationships[1]
Philippa Jahn
T
he contemporary Australian Indigenous art movement, described by art historian Ian McLean as ‘the most fabulous moment in Australian art history’,[2] now has a decades-long history as well as an attendant support industry of organisations and specialists of considerable complexity. In major urban centres the impact of this movement is evident. From universities to state and federal collecting institutions, commercial galleries, private collectors and the general public, awareness of Indigenous art is high, if not always the circumstances of those who make it. Many of
the most treasured artworks originate from well beyond the cities and towns, produced at community art centres that constitute something of a parallel, if interdependent, universe to the mainstream arts industry in thrall to it. Some have observed the stark gap between the voracity of art buyers eager to purchase works by the latest artist du jour uncovered by the market, and the reality of life on the ground for the people and communities where much of this work originates. Many are troubled by this disparity, and the difficulties inherent in any attempt to translate this incandescent sliver of success into health outcomes and socio-economic improvement for
1.
The Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Desert River Sea project was a recent national MAGNA Awards winner – Level 4: Indigenous Project or Keeping Place. Judges’ comments praised the project as ‘Innovative in that it pioneers a new model for state art galleries to work with remote art centres in a sustainable way. It involves having a campus in the regions (Broome in this case) using an approach that sustains, supports and strengthens the artists and administrators as well as fulfilling more coherently the State institution’s mandate…’
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 29
left: Mary Puntji Clement working on a new painting at the Kira Kiro Art Centre Studio. © Art Gallery of Western Australia 2015. above:
The Desert River Sea Broome: Philippa Jahn, Indigenous Community Liaison and Project Coordinator and Geraldine Henrici, Project Support Officer. © Art Gallery of Western Australia 2016.
2.
McLean, I., 2011. ‘The Gift that Time Gave: Myth and History in the Western Desert Painting Movement’, in J. Anderson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Australian Art, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 180–81.
Aboriginal people in those beautiful regions of the north-west, centre, and north-east of the country where life is a challenge on many fronts. There are numerous reasons for these difficulties. They could be summarised however as a tangled combination of geographic distance, cultural and historical ignorance, economic impoverishment, structural racism, and an entrenched belief that the centre of Australian civic life is really only found in the conurbations of the south, from which vantage-points everywhere else is perceived as ‘remote’ (and largely incomprehensible). Visual arts are identified as one of the few arenas where black and white worlds meaningfully intersect, and where Indigenous Australians garner a measure of respect and genuine interest. Arts organisations are well placed to forge more productive procedures for engaging with Indigenous artists on their own terms; developing culturally appropriate ways of working and increasing visibility and broader community understanding by making cultural space for Indigenous viewpoints. The tyranny of geographic distance however is not so easily addressed, particularly in Western Australia, where Perth is some three and a half thousand kilometres by road from Kununurra, the most distant regional town located in the east Kimberley close to the Northern Territory border. The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) therefore took an unusual step when it initiated the Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then and Now project. Designed to support, promote and document Aboriginal art of the state’s north, it was acknowledged from the beginning that it should have a regional base founded on flexibility, resourcefulness
and, most importantly, localised historical and cultural understanding. The Broome base is at the heart of the operation and has the key role of initiating and building on the relationships and informal networks identified as an essential component of the project. Local Bardi/ Nyul Nyul man Chad Creighton was the inaugural coordinator and responsible for the extensive Kimberley consultation phase. The project recognises that the Kimberley encompasses numerous language groups, culturally distinct yet linked by family affiliations and a shared post-contact history; care has been taken that all are represented in each of the core elements of the project. The result is an unusual degree of responsiveness to Aboriginal socio-cultural priorities and economic imperatives, alongside contemporary art practice. So what are the particular advantages of maintaining a project outpost of the state gallery in the far north? From our perspective as the Broome staff of Desert River Sea a number of observations can be made. First, the most important interface between AGWA and artists is provided by the community art centres. The day-to-day functioning of these unique inter-cultural organisations is quite unlike anything found elsewhere. The governance structure complies with national standards, yet decisions are made within this framework according to Aboriginal protocols. In theory art centres are owned and operated by their members, and indeed the strongest centres are very much guided by their Aboriginal directors. In practice, however, they are also generally reliant on staff from elsewhere to coordinate the essential whitefella business such as financial management and city gallery liaison.
Establishing a Kimberley base means that we can develop a consistent presence and trusting relationships with art centre staff and artists
30 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
AGWA’s project, Desert River Sea, continues to reshape relationships between a state museum and Indigenous communities
this page: Artist Nancy Nodea grinding ochre at Warmun Art Centre. © Art Gallery of Western Australia 2014. opposite page top left:
Ringer Soak artist Rosie Lala with Desert River Sea project coordinator Philippa Jahn at Yarliyil Art Centre, Halls Creek. © AGWA 2015.
opposite page top right:
Waringarri Aboriginal Arts artist Ben Ward discussing his artwork. © AGWA 2014. opposite page bottom:
Mary Teresa Taylor and Mary Puntji Clement with a collaborative painting at Kalumburu. © AGWA 2015.
Managing a remote art centre is a challenging and specialised undertaking, made more difficult by chronic understaffing and insufficient funding and infrastructure in many cases. A typical day’s work for staff could include liaising with Centrelink, addressing artists’ medical issues, developing a business plan, selecting works for exhibition, mixing paint, wrestling with satellite internet, preparing for a board meeting, dealing with feral dogs and meeting visiting dignitaries. In such conditions essential elements of art centre operations sometimes must be sidelined. How can artists be adequately promoted and their work researched for archive purposes, for example, or opportunities sought for ongoing arts development in a climate of funding constraint and art market downturn? Desert River Sea has been proactive in assisting in these areas in particular. Establishing a Kimberley base means that we can develop a consistent presence and trusting relationships with art centre staff and artists, something very difficult to achieve using a FIFO model of working. Despite the vast area of the Kimberley, we are still able to visit an art centre at short notice in just the time it takes to drive there (between 2 and 10 hours) and can adapt to art centre schedules rather than impose our own. Sometimes
factors outside everybody’s control do intervene however. We once waited three days for a bushfire to burn out so we could continue a drive to Balgo but in the end had to turn back. The wet season rains then quickly followed, causing this particular visit to be postponed by months. On another occasion, we’d travelled to a distant centre to make short videos on several senior artists, but daily recording plans were frequently impacted by the exuberance of what locals referred to as the ‘town disco’ at a nearby house. We are also meeting people on their home ground, rather than expecting them to come to us. Being welcomed by artists into their own space is a qualitatively different experience to meeting in a formal office in town, and is generally much more productive. During a week-long visit to Kalumburu, for example, we were invited to have dinner with the local Tramulla Strong Women’s group, followed by impromptu dancing around a fire to a fragile recording of local singers made some fifty years before. We were able to provide a few laughs with our ‘white women can’t dance’ moves, without any effort, but this then progressed to a conversation about how to assist with the longed-for digital return of other cultural material long since removed elsewhere. Experience has taught us that no ‘one size fits all’
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 31
3.
Kimberley Kriol, used when referring to non-Aboriginal people (i.e. principally whitefellas).
approach to working with people in the Kimberley is appropriate. Each region has been impacted differently by post-contact history and contemporary circumstances, and within each art centre there are also varying degrees of capacity to engage comfortably with the katiya[3] world. Successful communication requires that we must sometimes quickly adapt our language use and observation of social conventions to different contexts, though errors are generally met graciously. In a broader sense, the Broome base functions as an advocate and cultural interpreter between AGWA in Perth and Kimberley art centres, rendering clearly the hopes and needs of one to the other. If art centres have a closer connection to the gallery, everybody benefits. Aside from an enhanced capacity to update and augment collection documentation, AGWA now has an on-the-ground presence to monitor new art developments and artists are developing their understanding of the value of their own and historic works being held and displayed in this state ‘Keeping Place’. In October 2018 AGWA will be presenting a major exhibition and publication of Kimberley work, and it is hoped that the response to these will generate and sustain broader interest in both historic and contemporary Kimberley art practice for some time to come. The core of this show will be selected works from an upcoming round of collaborative art projects commissioned from the principal Kimberley art centres. While the framework of this initiative will be developed and facilitated by Desert River Sea, the media, form and thematic content of each contribution will be determined via a culturally appropriate process involving senior artists and art centre management. The intention is that this will result in work reflective of the cultural priorities and
32 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
AGWA’s project, Desert River Sea, continues to reshape relationships between a state museum and Indigenous communities
contemporary concerns of each group. The inherently collaborative nature of the commissions, and aspects of the final exhibition itself, reflect the ethos of the project from its inception. All this is not intended to give the impression that regional presence is a magic pathway to project success. There are still obstacles and difficulties common to all cross-cultural endeavours linking city organisations with distant places, and divergent expectations must still be negotiated. The zone of cross-cultural dissonance can be a fruitful one, however, if commitment, care and openness are mutually valued. Directing resources to a regional base indicates sincerity of intent in this regard. It also helps to reverse fixed ideas about what ‘remote’ really means and prompt understanding that from the standpoint of remote communities, it is the ways of the cities that seem unknowable, rather than the other way round. In the case of Desert River Sea, AGWA will, for six years, maintain a presence in a remote area otherwise not able to benefit from an agency intended to represent and serve all of Western Australia. Desert River Sea is funded until the end of 2018. It would be wonderful if the hard work put in so far could be followed by a more permanent presence in the Kimberley, or at least that its outcomes continue to bear fruit for artists and art centres. The project recognises that art practice is closely linked to social, cultural and economic health in Kimberley communities,[4] and by focused support, promotion and documentation of the visual arts hopes to contribute to improvement in those areas. A further consequence is the increased understanding of remote community life and culture to be gained amongst other Australians touched by some aspect of the project. Ultimately the success of any crosscultural endeavour will depend on the strength of relationships formed within it. However in the charge for outcomes based on statistics and reflected in illusory reports, these are not always prioritised as they should be. Certainly, we have been deeply affected by the warmth, generosity and selflessness of the Kimberley artists we have the privilege of working alongside, and know that while some of the most significant results are not always measureable they nevertheless register and are propagated at the level of the personal in profound and enduring ways. [ ]
top:
The Desert River Sea 2016 Visual Arts Leadership Program Participants with AGWA staff. (L to R) Back row: Michael Jalaru Torres, Nancy Daylight, Dir. Of Exhibitions Lynne Hargreaves, Garry Sibosado, Amanda Smith, Betty Bundamurra, Lutisha Woolagoodja, Kirsty Burgu & Cessa Bani. Front row: AGWA Director Stefano Carboni, Lynley Nargoodah, Lillie Spinks, Francine Steele, Anthea Nargoodah, Selena O'Meara, Marika Riley & Rowena Morgan. © Art Gallery of Western Australia 2016. left: Carly Lane, AGWA Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, with DRS Visual Arts Leadership Program participant Michael Jalaru Torres, hanging his photographs for exhibition. © Art Gallery of Western Australia 2016.
Philippa Jahn is Indigenous Community Liaison and Project Coordinator of the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Desert River Sea project.
right: Yawuru elder Jimmy Edgar cooking stingray during Visual Arts leadership program event in Broome. © Michael Jalaru Torres 2015.
http://desertriversea.com.au/ http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/ Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then and Now is supported by Rio Tinto. 4. Citation: Philippa Jahn, ‘WA state gallery (AGWA) reaches out to the Kimberley: Changing models of community-institutional relationships ’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 28-33.
Australia Council, 2015. Arts nation: An overview of Australian Arts, 2015 edition, p. 31. http:// www.australiacouncil.gov. au/workspace/uploads/ files/arts-nation-final-27feb-54f5f492882da.pdf
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 33
34 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
The changing landscape of museums’ engagement with indigenous knowledge and values
Sizzling in the intersections: Hot zones of contact and transculturation
above:
Margo Neale.
right:
Installation view of Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum (National Museum of Australia, Canberra). Photo: George Serras, National Museum of Australia.
Margo Neale
A 1.
Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940; trans. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, 1995).
2.
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).
3.
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes, op.cit.
boriginal art historian Ian Mclean recently referred to how Cuban anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Fernando Ortiz, in the Cuban Counterpoint (1940),[1] coined the term ‘transculturation’ to explain the cross-cultural character of Cuban society, which he argued was ill served by the anthropological term ‘acculturation’, that emphasises the one-way imposition of the coloniser’s culture. In Imperial Eyes (1992), Mary Louise Pratt[2] applied Ortiz’s thesis to colonial travel writing, concluding that inside imperialism’s rigid centre/periphery ideology there is a dissembling ‘contact-zone’ that, despite its ‘radically asymmetrical relations of power’, has numerous ‘interactive, improvisational dimensions’. The colonised might not ‘control what emanates from the dominant culture’, but they can fashion it to their own purposes. Similarly, the dominant culture is shaped by what it encounters from the minority cultures.[3] The escalation in use of terms such as transculturation, collectivism and co-authorship in Indigenous art practice, curatorship and museology, as well as reference to relational agencies, is indicative
of a tectonic shift in thinking where the old world butts up against the new world, generating heat in a third zone. This zone is a place where art, science and museology collude; where the indigenous knowledge holders operate across content and collection areas as well as at corporate levels (though to a lesser extent there); and where the binaries such as ‘them’ and ‘us’, black and white, ancient and contemporary, are under interrogation, while shared ancestries, shared histories and continuities are more common currency. This third zone is also a place where memory of the history of contact does not hold back the future but rather uses it to fuel future advance. I am reminded of a story told to me by Richard Luarkie, a Laguna man from New Mexico. He is a man of many worlds, straddling both the business and cultural sectors as a former Governor of the Pueblo Nation; a member of the Laguna tribe; and currently a Board member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). After years of agitation, the Laguna tribe was offered the return of some of their material by the Smithsonian when Luarkie was a Pueblo Governor. Unexpectedly, the Laguna representatives refused the offer on the grounds that the artefacts were not
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 35
4.
Personal correspondence between the author and Mr Richard Luarkie, 2014.
5.
Ibid.
6.
Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum, was shown at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 27 November 2015 – 28 March 2016.
7.
Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation was shown at the British Museum, London, 23 April – 2 August 2015
sufficiently provenanced, to establish who made them and for what purpose — admitting the possibility that they could have been made by a ‘witchdoctor’ or similar, with malevolent intent. So it was too dangerous for these objects to be allowed back into the community, since they might be cursed and cause sickness. Given that cultural material is viewed largely as ancestors rather than as objects, their influence could be profound, especially after the trauma of their journey through the past 100 years or so, where the circumstances were not known. Their discontent and possible resentment towards the source community for not protecting them from separation and seizure presented too high a risk to the living. ‘Leave them where they are, don’t unsettle them’, said Mr Luarkie, who also is a strong believer in destiny as determined by the Creator. ‘They are where they are supposed to be, this is their destiny … humans should not intervene … this is their life’s journey.’[4] In a similar vein, Richard Luarkie explained that the Laguna is a proud tribe with a strong sense of what self-determination looks like. They buy back their material, like they buy back their land. They are not interested in beating up the colonisers, or banging on museum doors and demanding their objects back, which they see as allowing the past to determine their future. Instead they are forging a new future in which they are in control. Their people cannot wear the same old suit that was worn before; instead they need to refashion it into a new one. On questioning Richard Luarkie about what this new suit might look like, he replied, ‘[O]ne made of moral fibre and not a suit of self-entitlement’; explaining further, he says there are a number of young people today who mistakenly thinking that they are ‘wearing the suit of moral fibre, thus taking the moral high ground … [W]e need to determine a future not burdened by self-entitlement.’[5] As Ian McLean noted at the May 2015 Museums Australia conference in Auckland: ‘Refusing nostalgia for what has been lost or seeking vengeance for past injustice, the notion of transculturation illuminates the forging of new and modern hybrid identities in colonial societies, derived from the interactions between the oppressed and the oppressor.’ Our museum collections have increasingly become the primary interface of transculturation. They are in the dissembling zone, where we have been most able to fashion the protocols and processes of the conventional museum to our own purposes, according to our cultural values. The colonisers plundered
our objects and crammed their storerooms with the spoils of their victories, without realising that the collections they were accumulating were our Trojan horse — our way in! Thus we infiltrated the bastions of the dominant culture; and over centuries these collections, which harboured the seeds of change, are making their presence felt. Unbeknown to the coloniser, we had a profound presence lurking in the guts of museums, with collections that were neither dead nor without influence — as evidenced by the activation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material from the British Museum in the pivotal exhibition Encounters: Revealing Stories behind the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects from the British Museum, shown at the National Museum of Australia (2015–2016),[6] preceded by Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation at the British Museum (in 2015).[7] These objects, once released from the bowels of the British Museum (after centuries in some cases), found voice in many unexpected ways, and reconnected with their communities who breathed life back into them. This was only their first outing, so control of such collections — at least structurally and organisationally — still remains with the institutions who struggle with the concepts of ownership and custodianship. But in their coming to grips with these concepts, they are being shaped by the minority indigenous cultures. The busy intersection between museums and art galleries, as an example of transculturation, was certainly in evidence at the Encounters exhibition. In fact it was palpable on site, in media coverage, and at the exhibition conference concerning New Encounters: Revealing stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects from the British Museum, held at the NMA in February 2015. The imperialist traditions of a white colonial past, embodied in the artefacts from the British museum holdings, came into contest with a post-colonial black presence through unmediated artistic responses by contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to the artefacts in the adjoining, contemporary exhibition, entitled Unsettled: Stories within. The heat thus generated seeped beyond the frame into the psyche of the National Museum of Australia, extending into many of its operational processes and practices, such as the promotion of more diverse and intense consultation, including a greater understanding of the relational rather than the transactional mode of consultation. Ongoing engagement with communities — through scholarships, curatorial training programs,
36 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
The changing landscape of museums’ engagement with indigenous knowledge and values
The assertion of Indigenous agency in all of the forms related here has been cataclysmic in the past few years, after two centuries of apparent dormancy
and community curatoriums such as that which has driven the NMA’s Seven Sisters exhibition from the outset — have diversified the engagement terrain.[8] Eddies of content and discontent embroiled all stakeholders at the March 2016 conference at the NMA, New Encounters: Communities, Collections and Museums: between unresolved colonial pasts, the activation of new agencies, and redefinition of colonial collections in contemporary times. It was a site of manifold ‘encounters’, including a clash of worldviews; the collapse of centuries of interaction between the oppressed and the oppressor compressed into a new historical moment; and an engagement that now far transcended the original Encounters exhibition, as NMA Director Mat Trinca pointed out. Speaking personally: I saw in the gestation of this exhibition the death throes of the old order, with all the pain and angst this inevitably entails, and the creation of new ways of thinking. It was and continues to be an exhibition experience that rattles the spears.[9] After shedding the dust of centuries and letting the lion out of the cage, as it were, so many from both sides of the frontier found that so much was so new that they were often challenged in new and disturbing, but ultimately productive, ways. Such was the legacy of these colonial collections, which became the theme of the conference before the exhibition closed, in March 2016. This hot zone of contact, institutionally created with the inclusion of the partner exhibition (featuring contemporary artists), Unsettled: Stories Within — a zone of conflicting motivations and of predictable as well as unpredictable engagements — demonstrated Mary Louise Pratt’s observation, that ‘inside imperialism’s rigid centre/periphery ideology is a dissembling “contact-zone” which overrides asymmetrical power relations and indeed feeds on them to source its power’.[10] Similar issues emerged in the 2010 presentation of the Vatican’s collection of 100-year-old Indigenous artefacts, curated by the present author on the
occasion of the canonisation of Mary McKillop. Titled Rituals of Life, the exhibition that represented this dormant collection insisted that its presence be known, and that it be reconnected with community. These collections found their way into the Vatican vaults from communities by a different route to that of the British Museum holdings: They were gifted by Aboriginal Catholics to their ‘Papa’ in Rome, as symbols of homage and pride, for an epic exhibition of Indigenous collections drawn from across Oceania, the Americas, Africa and Asia, and held at the Vatican in 1925. The idea of repatriation of these collections — unlike the case of the British Museum collections — is anathema to the source communities, since their intended destination was known. Nevertheless these objects, too, lay dormant for most of a century, awaiting their day of reconnection. Today they hold a permanent place in the public exhibition areas of the Vatican, visited by millions of people each year. As one Tiwi elder noted: ‘The whole world will know about my culture there; but if the Tiwi poles stay on the Tiwi Islands no-one would know about them and Tiwi culture.’ It is because of these collections that we have become stakeholders. And in turn we have been staking our claim to museums. These collections, and their Indigenous stakeholders, have changed the way museums work. Museums now defer to cultural protocols regarding access and use of Indigenous collections in a way not imagined a few decades ago — at least in Australia. Despite the long-standing principle that public collections remain accessible to all publics, Australian institutions in the 1990s acknowledged Aboriginal cultural sensitivities, and introduced radical changes to impose restrictions on collections that were both secret/sacred, and genderspecific. There was also widespread repatriation of collections of human remains and secret-sacred material in Australian museums (from the 1980s onwards), and a responsibility undertaken generally
8.
With support from the Duke of Edinburgh Foundation, the NMA has undertaken a highly competitive scholarship program involving experience at both the British Museum and the NMA. Another legacy of the Encounters exhibition is providing curatorial training for some Nyoongar people from Albany, WA who are directly connected to objects in the British Museum exhibition. Some 20 community members or traditional owners of Seven Sister (star constellation) sites across Martu, APY, and NPY lands are developing a major exhibition on this theme in collaboration with curators at the NMA.
9.
Rattling spears is an Aboriginal practice that denotes tension, and unsettledness. It conveys a warning, which is also akin to what is generally understood as ‘sabre-rattling’. It is the title of a new book on the history of Aboriginal art by Ian Mclean, Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art (Reaktion Books, July 2016).
10.
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes, op.cit.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 37
left: Dr Richard West Jr, CEO, Autry Museum of the American West; Founding Director, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian presenting at New Encounters: communities, collections and museums conference, 16 March 2016 (Canberra). Photo: George Serras, National Museum of Australia.
to consider the request for return of material of high cultural significance. Australia led the way in these initiatives by museums in the 1980s. Unlike the United States, where repatriation is legislated, Australian museums collectively established frameworks to guide new practices and reformed relationships.[11] No self-respecting institution today would be without an Indigenous rights and engagement policy, where copyright to stories of significance does not expire in 50 years (as is the case with non-Indigenous material) but rather exist in perpetuity: in recognition of collective rather than individual ownership; and arising through increased understanding of the diversity of Indigenous knowledge systems. Welcome to, and acknowledgement of, Country is now standard practice nationally. The responsibility to undertake extensive community engagement with appropriate people, or to locate the descendants in the case of the deceased, is now embedded in protocols, regardless of how difficult it may become to enact these matters in law. Museums have also been fashioned by pressure from the periphery in relation to the nature of access to collections. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples have a need to engage with our collections in multiple ways — beyond preservation for posterity, and for studying and viewing. As ‘custodians’ rather than simply as ‘owners’, museums are under pressure to keep artefacts 'alive’ as understood in Indigenous terms, which no doubt found voice in the NMA’s motto of ‘A place where our stories live’. While there have been many recent exhibitions and programs involving extended engagement with Indigenous people, the dawn ceremony held at the opening of the National Museum of Australia in 2001 was a pivotal moment in expressing the Indigenous view that cultural material is primarily meant to be used and not preserved in aspic.[12] Under pressure from the Wik people of Aurukun, the Museum later felt obliged to relax its usual and deeply embedded conservation practices to allow a number of belongings from the 1967 Aurukun collection (which was on display at the time in the Gallery of First Australians) to be exposed to what they normally consider hazardous conditions. According to the Wik dancers who performed at the dawn ceremony, these objects needed to be reconnected to community, to get their life and story
11.
See the first Australian policy for relations between museums and Indigenous people, adopted November 1993: Previous Possessions, New Obligations. This was followed in 2005 with a co-consulted, revised policy, Continuous Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities: Principles and guidelines for Australian museums working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage, which remains the national policy framing museums’ practices in Australia today. Available online at http:// www.museumsaustralia.org. au/userfiles/file/Policies/ ccor_final_feb_05.pdf
12.
After a collection of cultural material at Fitzroy Crossing was destroyed through floods the white fellas were distraught, but the Aboriginal response was ‘We can make more.’
38 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
The changing landscape of museums’ engagement with indigenous knowledge and values
left: Dr Michael Mel dons a series of breastplates which question racial stereotypes in his performance at the National Museum of Australia (June 2007). Photo Lannon Harley, National Museum of Australia.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 39
back through song in a ceremonial context at the site of their keeping place. This ceremony ritually established shared custodianship between the Museum and the community, which was long overdue in their view. After protracted negotiations through the senior Indigenous curator, these belongings were danced and sung back into life in the dewy dawn conditions on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra (in March 2001). This collection now has an ongoing story, which is part of its life journey, as one would expect of people who undergo episodes of revitalisation. The ceremonial reawakening also established a precedent and set the stage for new learnings. The value of having an Aboriginal Director (Dawn Casey) at the helm at the time cannot be underestimated in the success of this renewed interaction of people and their artefacts. I would describe the later artistic performances by Michael and Anna Mel, from the highlands of Papua New Guinea, as another form of indigenous interaction with collections, activating the intersections — or in Pratt’s terms, an interactive, improvisational contact zone. In this case, through the employment of self-liberating strategies, the Mels interrogated the processes that define them as ‘other’ and ‘lesser’, and as objects of material culture — or like dismembered bodies estranged from their cultural origins — in a splendid theatre of cultural transaction. At the 1996 Asia-Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, the Mels performed Touch a Native, insisting that the audience touch them: as if they too were objects, and thus also challenging embedded notions of blackness. At the National Museum of Australia in 2003, Michael Mel accessed the Papua New Guinea collection, which truly has lain dormant and invisible in our collection story for decades. He rescued these objects from their resting places in obscurity to be reanimated in the main entrance hall in his performance — and again, after considerable brokerage and negotiation beforehand. Michael entombed himself bodily in a box, demonstrating the objectification of the native body along with its
objects. He then engaged the audience in the release of ‘the captives’, thus exorcising the derogatory terms that also enslave. This engagement also recalled the traditional museum practice of entombing the native as a fixed, western construct — an artefact or relic — as both self-justification for the march of progress and as a trophy. In this context, Michael’s performance functioned as a right-of-reply; as an oppositional dialogue in museological practice. In a telling ethnographic reversal, the observed became the observer, or the voyeur the subject. The passive became active, and the glass case became a mirror. The assertion of Indigenous agency in all of the forms related here has been cataclysmic in the past few years, after two centuries of apparent dormancy. That now catch-all term, agency, needs differentiation. The various terms that have arisen in recent times to describe contemporary cultural exchange — such as cross-cultural, intercultural, intracultural, multicultural, acculturation and transculturation; along with related terms such as transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity — underline the extent to which such exchange underpins contemporary identities and asserts particular values. What they all have in common is a relationship to culture, and crossing; but where they differ, significantly, is in their genesis. Cross-cultural is a term that arose from the multiculturalism debates of the 1980s, which we resisted being shoehorned into for governmental convenience. We were not migrants. In contrast, transculturation, as Ortiz and others have seized upon, shifts the relationship to postcolonialism, or the fully decolonising process now sought.
No self-respecting institution today would be without an Indigenous rights and engagement policy, where copyright to stories of significance does not expire in 50 years
Margo Neale is Senior Indigenous Curator and Indigenous Advisor to the Director, NMA, and Adjunct Professor at the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, ANU. She is from the Kulin Nation with Wiradjuri and Gumbayngirr clan connections. Citation: Margo Neale, ‘Sizzling in the intersections: Hot zones of contact and transculturation’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 34-39.
40 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Improving membership engagement across the museum sector
When museum members become good friends
Lynda Kelly and Deanna Varga
I
top:
Lynda Kelly.
above: right:
Deanna Varga.
ANMM Members. Photo: ANMM, Sydney.
n response to management concerns about the members program, during 2015 the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) embarked on a large study of members, both current and lapsed, in order to identify any problems or issues and take remedial action were necessary. This article reports on findings from the study, as well as key points from the literature around membership programs in cultural institutions. It has long been recognised that members are an important part of any cultural and not-for-profit organisation, since they are loyal supporters of the institution – financially through member fees, donations and bequests; and also as advocates, often deeply committed and having a long-term relationship with the institution. However, there is a relative dearth of publications or researched information about membership schemes around the world (Slater, 2003), which is somewhat curious given that most institutions have had some form of membership scheme, often spanning long time periods. For example, in the UK the first recorded friends group dates from 1909 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (Slater, 2004). Alix Slater also noted the steady increase in membership organisations in the UK since the 1970s, with around 3.5 million memberships held in the UK in 2004. In 2003 Debi Hayes and Alix Slater developed three typologies of membership organisations: a ‘Social Club Group’ managed by a small group of individuals with no formal constitution; a ‘Public Members Scheme’ operating as a semi-professional organisation; and an ‘Integrated Membership Scheme’ managed by the core management team of an institution. Hayes and Slater also identified the challenges associated with servicing different types of members within the one structural model, with an integrated membership scheme being the most common form of programs in place across the UK. Nina Simon , from a US vantage-point, has discussed the importance of graduating members to more committed levels of association — such as donor member, bequest source, or ‘influencer’ status — stating that ‘[M]useums can make the relationship between members and donors clearer by giving members an option to elect (partially) what their membership fee supports’. Simon perceives this potential as not only transferring the ‘value’ of admission from experience-cost into an exercise in donation, but also as ‘generating data about new members interests, which can then be cultivated
with targeted marketing of programs and giving campaigns’. (Simon, 2007) Taking a specific case study from Texas: in an attempt to redefine a ‘typical’ art gallery membership scheme, the Dallas Museum of Art’s DMA Friends program focused less on member benefits per se and more on visitor engagement. The Dallas Friends program also provided ways for the museum to show appreciation and recognition of visitor efforts, using gamification (application of game-design principles) to reward their commitment to the gallery by repeat visits, and strengthening their involvement in various programs and activities (Stein and Wyman, 2013). This is an interesting model, spanning both intelligence gathering and managing of an individual’s engagement with an institution, while still being in testing stage – both in the technology underlying the program and its implementation and take-up. In a recent study of memberships across 118 cultural organisations in the UK (ranging across museums,
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 41
left: HMB Endeavour celebrates Australia Day 2016. Photo: Nicholas Brown.
zoos and orchestras), Colleen Dilenschneider found that people purchase memberships for six primary benefits: ‘Free admission; belonging to the organisation; supporting the organisation; contributing to mission impact; exclusive access to events; and member discounts.’ (Dilenschneider, 2016). The research results divided members into two types — ‘transaction-based’ members and ‘missionbased’ members — with each group not only valuing different aspects of their membership but being quite divergent in how they perceived the worth of their membership. Mission-based members valued their membership more, were willing to pay more for their membership, and were more likely to renew their membership than transaction-based members, who rated free entry and discounts as key motivators for joining a scheme.
Case study: The Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney The Australian National Maritime Museum has had an active membership program since the museum’s inception in 1987. However, during the past three years the museum was continually receiving negative feedback from members about the services and programs on offer, which also reached the awareness of senior staff and the Board. In response, the museum undertook a review of the membership program:
consisting of a competitor analysis; member survey (n=511); internal stakeholder interviews; phone and onsite interviews with members and potential members; and research into international best practice. The survey, in particular, was very revealing, finding a clear division of membership between Family members and Knowledge Seeker members (culturally active adults with a keen interest in maritime heritage) — each with different expectations, needs, and varying levels of satisfaction with the museum’s membership program. Although the two main reasons for joining were similar — to support the museum, and having a keen interest in the subject matter — family members rated free entry to the museum as a more important benefit for them. This is similar in results to earlier studies undertaken at the Australian Museum in Sydney, where the majority of members joined to support the museum, gain free entry, and receive the magazine. (Kelly, 2009). Some other key survey findings for the ANMM included the following: • Members were very satisfied with the office services, and saw membership as good value for money — and these were seen as the most important aspects of their membership. • The museum’s quarterly magazine Signals rated highly as of good quality, yet was not seen as important a benefit as ‘value for money’ and good
42 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Improving membership engagement across the museum sector
service from the Members Office. • There were many aspects of membership that were not well known — such as reciprocal rights with other organisations; the Members Lounge; or discounts at The Store, food outlets and venue hire. • The majority of long-term members didn’t want special recognition, or special events/activities tailored to reward their loyalty. • ‘Value for money’ proved extremely important to Family members, as well as to female members. • The Members Lounge, and the range of member events, were of more importance to Long-term and Concession members (noting the Members Lounge wasn’t well-known as a benefit). • 33% of respondents had attended a Members event in the past 12 months; 60% had not (these were primarily family members, or generally less-than2-years-members, and aged less than 40 years or out of port); meanwhile 7% couldn’t remember. Attendees at Member events tended to be older, long-term members and Knowledge Seekers. A further study of members is currently being undertaken at ANMM to unpack these findings further, specifically to see whether the museum has the right mix and number of member events. • Only 8% of members were interested in donating or making a bequest — these were primarily older males and Knowledge Seekers. • Members are regular museum visitors, bringing their children and grandchildren with them — for example, 84% had visited the museum in the past 12 months. • While members are active users of social media, particularly Facebook (54%), they don’t tend to follow the museum’s social media sites — meanwhile the museum recognised that more can be done in this area.
What did the museum do with the results? Given that senior management were keenly interested in the findings and actions arising, we first responded to the ‘loudest’ issues, with actions that were seemingly simple in execution yet made an enormous difference to member satisfaction. For example, a handset was located in the Members area, which meant that any staff and volunteers in the vicinity could answer the phone. The museum’s Customer Relationship Management system was reviewed, and continues to be reviewed, to identify improvements, with a full-time extra resource person provided who understood members allocated to the section — who also became a weekend presence for members. A dedicated role focusing
on member events was created — this person being tasked with preparing an annual events calendar, incorporating a mix of traditional and loved events, along with different kinds of events and programs for newer, family members. Finally, the front-of-house team were briefed and made aware of the importance of members to the museum, and given a set of KPIs around monthly membership sales targets. Other outcomes included a three-year plan for members’ engagement with the museum, with signature events clearly identified; and a realisation that the public program area would need to continue managing family events, which was an area previously causing some internal confusion and overlap. The results of the 2007 ANMM review were used to make substantial changes to how the membership program operated, and in consequence the museum’s membership base substantially increased. At the time of the study the museum had around 2,700 memberships, with approximately 50% of those being families and the remainder being Knowledge Seekers, and with an overall average retention rate of around 70%. The museum now has 4,235 members, with an increasing proportion of families and Knowledge Seekers, and members comprising around 8% of total visitors to the museum’s Darling Harbour site. One side benefit of the study was that members are now routinely included in any audience research and evaluation studies (which they enjoy immensely and these are usually over-subscribed), as well as in any specific investigation into member events. While the study found that overall, most members were highly satisfied with their membership, the museum has resolved to continuously improve services and programs offered to members, and to attract new and more diverse members from the
above:
ANMM Members. Photo: ANMM, Sydney.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 43
The results of the 2015 ANMM review were used to make substantial changes to how the membership program operated
community. Finally, a strategy is being implemented on how members can progressively move through and better integrate with the museum’s Foundation and Volunteers programs, including conducting a study to investigate why people don’t join the museum as members. This study has entailed two years of hard work, but the benefits of finding out who our members are, how best to meet their needs, and including them in our research, will continue to bear fruit both in clarifying our understanding of satisfaction for current members and in attracting and retaining new members into the future. Acknowledgement We recognise the input of Jane Turner, who worked as a consultant on the membership review, as well as our members who generously participated in the research and continue to support the museum. Dr Lynda Kelly is Head of Learning, and Deanna Varga, Assistant Director, Commercial and Visitor Services, at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney. Citation: Lynda Kelly and Deanna Varga, ‘When museum members become good friends’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 40-43.
References Dilenschneider, C. (2016). Mission Motivated vs Transaction Motivated Members: What Your Cultural Organisation Needs to Know. Know Your Own Bone blogpost: http://colleendilen.com/2016/07/06/mission-motivated-vs-transactionmotivated-members-what-your-cultural-organization-needs-to-know-data/ Hayes, D. & Slater, A. (2003). From “social club” to “integrated membership scheme”: developing your membership scheme strategically. International Journal of NonProfit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 8 (1), pp. 59–71. Kelly, L. (2009). Australian Museum Members Survey Results. Australian Museum blogpost: http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/ Museullaneous/Australian-Museum-Members-Survey-Results Simon, N. (2007). Rethinking Membership: What Does it Mean to Belong to a Museum? Musuem 2.0 blogpost: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com. au/2007/11/rethinking-membership-what-does-it-mean.html Slater, A. (2003). Users or supporters? Understanding motivations and behaviors of museum members. Curator: The Museum Journal, 46 (2), pp. 182-207. Slater, A. (2004). Revisiting membership scheme typologies in museums and galleries, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 9 (3), pp. 238–260. Stein, R. & Wyman, B. (2013). Nurturing Engagement: How Technology and Business Model Alignment can Transform Visitor Participation in the Museum. In Museums and the Web 2013, N. Proctor & R. Cherry (eds). Silver Spring, MD: Museums and the Web. http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/nurturing-engagement/
44 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
An Indigenous project reviewing a 19th century 'museum' and its legacy interculturally
More than a ghostly outline: The multifaceted art of Jonathan Jones[1]
Jonathan Jones barrangal dyara (skin and bones), 2016 Kaldor Public Art Project 32 Gypsum, kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra), 8-channel soundscape of the Sydney Language and Gamilaraay, Gumbaynggirr, Gunditjmara, Ngarrindjeri, Paakantji, Wiradjuri and Woiwurrung languages, dimensions and durations variable Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney 17 September – 3 October 2016
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 45
Wally Caruana To see the ghostly outline of an old landscape beneath the superficial covering of the contemporary is to be made vividly aware of the endurance of core myths.
above:
Wally Caruana.
left: Jonathan Jones’ barrangal dyara (skin and bones) marks the footprint of the 19th Century Garden Palace building at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, for the 32nd Kaldor Public Art Project, 17 September – 3 October, 2016. Photo: Peter Greig.
1. In a previous edition of this magazine I wrote about Jonathan Jones’s practice as an artist, curator, researcher and art historian, and his interrogation of the role of the museum in contemporary Australian society. I undertook to review some of the artist’s recent works in a subsequent article, however the breadth and richness of his barrangal dyara (skin and bones) deserves all the attention of this brief text. See Museums Australia Magazine Vol. 24(3), pp. 18-21. 2. Simon Schama, Landscape & Memory, London: Fontana Press, 1996, p.16. 3. A much earlier John Kaldor Art Project, An Australian Accent: Mike Parr, Imants Tillers, Ken Unsworth, was prepared specifically for showing at PS1, New York (AprilJune 1984). It was then exhibited later in 1984 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. On return to Australia, An Australian Accent was shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 4. Jonathan Jones in barrangal dyara (skin and bones), Project brochure (14 pp.), Sydney: Kaldor Public Art Projects, September 2016, p.3. 5. Peter Kohane, ‘James Barnet’s gateway to Sydney’, in Jonathan Jones, barrangal dyara (skin and bones), op. cit., p.118. 6. The artefacts were mostly drawn from the Australian Museum’s collections. 7. Ilaria Vanni Accarigi, ‘The Ethnological Court at the Garden Palace,’ in Jones, op. cit.,, p.137. 8. Jonathan Jones in barrangal dyara (skin and bones), op.cit., p.3. 9. Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011, p.5.
S
o writes Simon Schama in the introduction to Landscape & Memory.[2] Jonathan Jones’s barrangal dyara (skin and bones), 2016, a project of extraordinary scope and ambition that culminated in a fortnight’s showing in Sydney’s Botanic Garden and surrounds, unearthed more than a ghostly outline, and made viewers ‘vividly aware’ of Aboriginal presence in the heart of Sydney. barrangal dyara (skin and bones), 2016, is a landmark in Jones’s life as an artist, incorporating each of the four strands of his methodological approach to practice: a curator’s eye; consultation and collaboration with local Aboriginal communities; the creation of site-specific art; and Jones’s own hands-on research of museum collections of south-eastern Aboriginal artefacts. In sum, this was a project about a short-lived and largely forgotten museum, about loss of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and of regeneration and survival.
‘A very good idea’ Jones’s project was underwritten by the generous philanthropy of John Kaldor who, for more than fortyfive years, has been at the forefront of connecting Australians with international contemporary art by sponsoring some of the world’s leading artists to work in Australia under the aegis of Kaldor Public Art Projects. Kaldor’s expansive vision allows artists to work beyond the inhibitions and scope of both public art museums and private galleries. Kaldor’s first Art Project, for example – Christo and Jean-Claude’s wrapping of part of the Little Bay coastline south of Sydney in 1969 (Wrapped Coast) – caught the public’s attention and created a long resonance in cultural memory. The most recent project was selected by an international curatorial panel, and for 2016, Kaldor determined that this nationally realised project would, for the first time, be devoted to a single Australian artist.[3] Jones is also the first Aboriginal artist to undertake a Kaldor Art Project. The key criterion was straightforward enough: artists had to come up with ‘a very good idea’. Put simply, the subject of Jones’s ‘very good idea’ was the reimagining of the shortlived ‘museum’ installed in the Garden Palace building erected in Sydney’s botanic gardens, which burnt to the ground in 1882 with all its contents, including several thousand Indigenous artefacts, destroyed.
The idea stemmed from Jones’s realisation that much of his and his kinspeople’s south-eastern cultural heritage, as then collected for public display, had disappeared from sight for eternity — literally gone up in flames. The title of the recent project is also pertinent. barrangal dyara refers to the traditional description of Country and people’s connection to it as expressed in terms of the human body and kinship – the skin and bones that constitute Country. Jones’s Project ‘peels back the “skin” of the site to reveal the “bones” of the Garden Palace’.[4]
Setting the scene The Garden Palace was designed by the NSW Colonial Architect, James Barnet (1827–1904), as a temporary building to house the 1879–80 Sydney International Exhibition, which, typical of the genre, displayed a vast array of the mineral, agricultural, technological and industrial wealth of the Australian colonies. The building ‘dominated the Sydney skyline … for a visitor approaching the city, the Garden Palace served as a gateway’,[5] potentially as much an icon of the city as the Harbour Bridge or Opera House became in the following century. The Exhibition itself proved so popular that a train line was extended from the city to the site, as a million people visited the building. The exhibition celebrated the modernity of Sydney and the colonies, but illustrated social progress in the Darwinian sense by comparison with the displays in the Ethnographical Court that housed Indigenous cultural material consisting mainly of weapons and tools made by men.[6] This floor-to-ceiling display of the manufactures of so-called nomadic stoneage hunters and gatherers implied no ties to land, underscoring the notion of terra nullius, and thus ’dispossession was legitimised and materialised’.[7]
The shape(s) of barrangal dyara The children’s activity book written for the Art Project describes Jones’s materials simply as: ‘… language, shields and kangaroo grass’. Jones was inspired to bring together all these elements to ‘…reimagine [the] building, and to reimagine the history that we’ve lost’.[8] In barrangal dyara, a meadow of kangaroo grass was planted beneath the site of the Garden Palace’s great dome (then one of the largest in the world). Kangaroo grass evokes the landscape pre-1788: a cultivated resource that is evidence of Aboriginal land management; a landscape that early explorers, settlers and colonial artists described as being akin to an Englishman’s country estate.[9]
46 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
An Indigenous project reviewing a 19th century 'museum' and its legacy interculturally
The most striking visual element of the recent Project was the 15,000 blank shields that Jones had had manufactured in gypsum and laid on the ground to outline the footprint of the Garden Palace (covering an area of some 20,000 square metres), and to suggest the debris in the wake of the fire. The shields were fashioned in the four distinct regional styles of southeastern Australia: from Sydney, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Their undecorated surfaces intimated the loss of the wealth of clan designs that constitute the graphic visual language of the south-east: the patterns of individual and social identity, kinship, symbols of authority, of totemic association and of the landscape. Designs etched into the wooden surfaces of shields would have been inlaid with gypsum. These designs, in turn, are the subject of Jones’s ongoing research into the visual heritage of his ancestors and related peoples of this corner of the continent, which, in contrast to the graphic lexica of the rest of Aboriginal Australia, are generally little known.
Sound, language and the spoken word A key component of Jones’s project concerned sound and language. The significance of traditional languages, and language maintenance as a cultural marker, is to Jones central to forging Aboriginal identity in the twenty-first century and beyond. A soundscape of spoken words and phrases in eight Aboriginal languages of the south-east emanated from a multitude of speakers set throughout the site. Languages mingled with the sounds of the botanic gardens, the harbour and the city, to create an eerie evocation of what once was, what is now, and what can be. The recordings were made by Jones in collaboration with each of the eight communities represented in the Art Project, and deal with many
This was a project about a short-lived and largely forgotten museum, about loss of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and of regeneration and survival
aspects of Aboriginal life that were excluded from the 1879 Exhibition, especially relating to women’s and children’s objects, and to Aboriginal modes of land tenure. Performances by Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Gondwana Choirs (on the 22nd of September, the anniversary of the fire), together with a set of sonic responses to the fire by young composers from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, were part of an extensive public program of lunchtime talks, conversations on Aboriginal knowledge systems, ways of seeing and knowing, art forums, story-telling, family and holiday programs, and related exhibitions and programs realised on-site and at associated institutions. These broad-ranging programs, at once pedagogical and inspirational, stimulated the public to engage with the project on many levels. Several of the presenters, both Koori and non-Aboriginal, had participated in a series of earlier symposia, appropriately termed Spot Fires, that led up to the final public project in the Botanic Gardens.[10]
bottom:
Installation of kangaroo grass as part of barrangal dyara at Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. Bottom right photo courtesy of Peter Greig and Kaldor Public Art Projects.
10. The Spot Fire symposia were developed in collaboration with Ross Gibson, the Centenary Professor of Creative & Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. These were titled and realised at various nearby institutions: Landscape and language, held at the State Library of New South Wales; Spectacle, manifestation, performance, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales; and Loss and resilience, at the Australian Museum. 11. Jonathan Jones, in barrangal dyara (skin and bones), op. cit., p.2.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 47
Fire Fire is the recurring theme that permeates barrangal dyara. For millennia it has been the main tool used by Aboriginal people to manage the land, to clear pastures or regenerate natural species; and it is used ritually to cleanse, whether in mortuary ceremonies or to welcome a foreigner to one’s land. Jones suggests that the Garden Palace fire was more than a physical and historic event. It was also metaphorical and cultural, an image of cleansing the ground for the beginning of a new and inclusive society. As Jones puts it: [P]erhaps the trauma of losing the Garden Palace and its contents is so profound that it has forced its erasure from our collective consciousness – a moment, like others in our nation’s history, that we are fearful to engage with; or perhaps the fire was a kind of cultural burn, regenerating the site for future generations. In a way, the landscape might have understood that this imperial vision was inappropriate for Sydney and that the cultural objects held inside were collected so contentiously, so the fire cleansed the site to make way for a more complex cultural vision.[11] barrangal dyara (skin and bones), 2016, was breathtaking in impact in terms of Jonathan Jones’s vision. Its scope, its physical and conceptual presence, the multivalent approaches to the subject, and the cast of cultural leaders and practitioners, community members, historians, theorists, artists, writers and performers that Jones was able bring together for this project constituted a vast work of art about fire and forgetting, about destruction, regeneration and memory, about cultural resilience and endurance. The ghostly outline has been filled in. The catalogue of the project, Jonathan Jones, barrangal dyara (skin and bones), is published by Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney, 2016, and distributed by Thames & Hudson. []
Wally Caruana is an independent curator, art historian, valuer and consultant specialising in Indigenous Australian art. From 1984 to 2001 he was curator of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection at the National Gallery of Australia. He is the author of Aboriginal Art, published by Thames and Hudson in the World of Art series, now in its third edition. Citation: Wally Caruana, ‘More than a ghostly outline: The multifacted art of Jonathan Jones’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 44-47.
above:
Detail view of shields as part of barrangal dyara at Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.
48 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Exploring new options for broader social participation in museums
Music and humour in the socially engaged museum
above:
Christen Bell.
right:
David Hyams (right) on banjo mandolin performing with Megan Travers (middle) on guitar, Chris Horgan on fife, and Mark Peacock (left) on guitar, at History House in May 2014. Photo courtesy City of Armadale – History House.
far right:
Peter Rowsthorn asking for a little help during a tour of History House in 2015. Photo courtesy City of Armadale – History House.
Christen Bell
I
n a world where museums compete with other leisure activities and increasingly with the diversity of social media, how can a small, outer-suburban social history museum encourage new audiences to experience its collection? Our answer was to be creative. Our goal was to create unique experiences that would attract new audiences to our museum, and to provide experiences that would be social, memorable, and have audiences leaving with a good feeling about the museum, its collection, and — most importantly — the community that they had joined during their visit. So who are we? History House is a social history museum run by the City of Armadale in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Perth. Our mission is pretty standard — to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret the moveable heritage of the City of Armadale. The City of Armadale has a strong Nyoongar history, and a European history that dates back to 1830 (one year after the founding of the Swan Colony). Armadale is a place of contrasts: from the Swan plain that has transformed from farmland to outer metropolitan suburbia during the past 50 years, to the hills and valleys of the Darling Range, which hides
small communities and orchards and is dominated by water catchment areas and regional and national parks. It’s a place of old and new. From the early settlement of Kelmscott to the brand new suburbs of Harrisdale and Piara Waters, with residents from a wide variety of education, age, cultures and socio economic backgrounds. So how were we creative? History House successfully applied for two Connect Community Collections Grants through the Western Australian Government’s Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA). The DCA grant was designed to encourage collecting organisations to engage with artists who would work with the community to reinterpret parts of the collection. These grants allowed History House to engage a musician in residence in 2014, and a comedian in residence in 2015. The 2014 program was inspired by the research for a new temporary exhibition called Playing Tonight, which explored the history of performance in the City. The exhibition explored how community members used to play at local dances; the creation of amateur theatre and choral groups; and included the successful professional singers who have emerged from the district. The research into the exhibition posed these
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 49
questions: How can we bring the instruments in the collection alive? And how can we turn the exhibition into a creative experience? We were able to answer these questions by engaging David Hyams, a professional musician with extensive experience in working with community groups, to run two song-writing workshops. The workshops were designed to provide tips and techniques to help local musicians write and structure a song; and to find people interested in working further on these songs, to be performed finally in a small concert at the museum. From the workshops, a small and dedicated group of community members worked together to each produce a song inspired by an item or a story found in the museum. This process culminated in a concert where each song was performed while being accompanied by one of two instruments from the collection being played by a professional musician. This was the first time in 60 or 70 years that some of the instruments had been heard in public. The concert also included the story behind each instrument, as well as the inspiration for each of the songs that were being performed. It proved a very emotional event for all involved. Many of the performers had never previously performed in front of an audience. For friends and family in the audience, this was also a new experience
— seeing their loved ones for the first time as public performers. For the museum staff, the outcome was the culmination of many weekends of work, listening to the progress of the songs and watching people develop during the workshops. And yes: We allowed the instruments from our collection to be played! A musical instrument can be an interesting item to look at. It can also carry an interesting story, such as the violin owned by Mabel Parker that was played at a farewell concert in Roleystone for several young men who had enlisted in World War I. But to hear the same violin’s sound when played by a musician helps an audience enter that world — much like when the engine of a vintage car is started, or you can see and hear an old piece of machinery working. There was a memorable presentation at the 2010 Museums Australia Conference in Melbourne by Guy Hansen and David Hallam, titled Restoring the Royal Daimler: A case study in using significance assessment. During their exploration of this historic vehicle in the National Museum of Australia’s collection, the concept of the functional significance of objects was raised, and although that occasion focused on vehicles, its principles quite clearly related also to musical instruments. In an earlier paper, titled Preserving significance:
50 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Exploring new options for broader social participation in museums
Why the journey mattered more than the car, which was part of a presentation at the Big Stuff: Care of Large Technology Objects workshop in 2010 at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Hallam and Thurrowgood discussed balancing various ways to break the public perception of ‘dead collections “rotting” in the stores’, with preservation as the main goal. They explored the question: If an object was functional when it arrived in the museum, should it not remain functional while in our care?[1] With these earlier presentations and questions in mind, the History House project at Armadale was well prepared to explore wider options between the poles of preservation and ‘living use’ of instruments that were made to be played and experienced in a social context. Before any questions of playing were determined, the curator and David Hyams examined the instruments and divided them into three categories: playable, requiring service, and unplayable. Instruments that were playable or required a simple service were determined as eligible for inclusion in the project. The professional musicians engaged were then instructed by the curator on the instruments’ safe handling, the primary instruction being: Clean your hands before you can play them. Through this project the museum has gained in both understanding and establishment of protocols for maintenance of the instruments’ functional significance henceforward. The museum will make sure the balance between hearing the instruments played live and preserving them into the future is maintained by keeping a strict record of when they are played; and only permitting the instruments to be played at a maximum once per year. For the rest of the time, the Musician in Residence project included funding for each of the playable instruments to be professionally recorded. These high-quality recordings can now be used in future interpretation of the instruments. An example of such interpretation and audience access would be a very simple QR code system, where visitors could use the QR link to hear the instrument being played on their smart phone. This approach, balancing interpretation, access and preservation, can ensure in future that (where feasible) the functional significance of the museum instruments collection is maintained; meanwhile the instruments remains living objects of communication that people can experience personally while their preservation is safeguarded for future generations to enjoy. Further exploring new ways to attract people who had never been to the museum before, the History House was also looking in 2015 at ways of getting different ‘voices’ into the museum.
Since History House has just two curatorial staff, most of the exhibitions and programs are developed by the same people. To broaden our style and tone, we came up with the idea of a series of museum tours run by a comedian. Fortunately, nationally renowned actor and comedian, Peter Rowsthorn (Kath & Kim, Paper Planes, Thank God You’re here, Can We Help and Who Do You Think you Are), lived nearby and had links to the region through his wife’s family. Once again we applied for DCA funding to allow us to look at hosting the sort of event that is often available only through larger, state-based museums. So why a comedian in the museum? Laughter is universal; it’s a language, a physical response, an emotion, and it’s communal. Using laughter in a museum opens a way of bringing audiences together with a broader range of experiences engaged: to help visitors make both emotional and physical connections to the museum and the collections it cares for. Television has been mixing comedy and history successfully in recent years, with shows including Horrible Histories for children (and adults), and Drunk Histories for adults. The Melbourne Museum in 2008 proved that comedy works effectively when it launched the Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour — providing an after-hours tour of the museum designed to link science and comedy, which was also a part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for four years.[2] For our context, too, this approach opened up new options for engagement. Mix comedy, the uniqueness of a museum venue, and a nationally known comedian and you’re likely to grab people’s attention in new
above:
The Koltz violin owned and played by Mabel Parker of Roleystone in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy City of Armadale – History House.
1.
2.
Thurrowgood, D. & Hallam, D National Museum of Australia, 2004. Preserving significance: Why the journey matters more than the car. Paper presented at Big Stuff: Care of Large Technology Objects, ed. Alison Wain, Australian War Memorial, Canberra Australia. [ONLINE] Available at https://www. awm.gov.au/sites/default/ files/media/conference/ bigstuff/papers/operating/ Preserving%20significance%20 -%20Thurrowgood%20 and%20Hallam.pdf McKenzie, Ben, 2010. Museum Comedy [ONLINE] Available at http://museumcomedy.com/
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 51
ways — and hopefully introduce non-traditional museum visitors to History House. We believed that collaborating with a comedian could provide a very different, yet still highly informative and respectful voice in the museum. They would have the ability to play with and adapt the stories in the museum, and present them in a different way for the audience to enjoy. We chose a ‘museum tour’ as the format, since it’s such a well-known and traditional form of interpretation within the museum world. As outlined by Nina Simon, in her book The Participatory Museum, tours, performances and demonstrations are a ‘reliable way to encourage visitors to have a social experience’ in a museum.[3] Simon demonstrates that tours allow presenters to personalise the museum visit, and can encourage participants to be a part of the general social experience by sharing their individual experiences. Meanwhile by being ‘provocative’ (a comedian telling local stories can be provocative in a community museum, where some of the guests may be related to the people in the stories), Simon believes you can help to create a unique personal experience in a safe social environment.
With these earlier presentations and questions in mind, the History House project at Armadale was well prepared to explore wider options
3.
Simon, Nina, 2010. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.
The goal of the History House tours was to explore the funnier side of the history of Armadale City by including some historical fact coupled with what we like to call ‘local legend has it’ elaborations: weaving in a few personal stories from Peter, particularity those relating to his wife’s family, as well as allowing people on the tour to share some of their own stories. For two months in advance, the curator and Peter Rowsthorn worked together compiling stories (factual and ‘local legend’), while Peter also spent time looking around the museum, seeking inspiration and putting his performance together. History House advertised four tours with Peter Rowsthorn, which were realised over three months. We limited each tour to 25 people, to ensure the event would have an intimate feel. We also organised for one
of the tours to be professionally filmed as a record of the event, and to create a promotional video (which can be seen at http://library.armadale.wa.gov.au/ history-house ). All the tours sold out and attracted a good mixture of people. Peter Rowsthorn was a great tour guide, taking people on a funny and informative journey through the museum. He used many of the museum’s objects to cause the audience to consider how different people and their lives must have been during the district’s early settlement days. Peter’s conjuring of the disparate facts surrounding old objects interwoven with his comical take on their use remains in the minds of those who attended. His unique reading of historic local newspaper articles — such as entries and prizes from an early Kelmscott Agricultural Society Show — again brought those days to life; factual detail was delivered in a most entertaining way. Peter also encouraged his audience to be a part of the performance, encouraging audience members to tell their own stories – for example, the couple who, on seeing the burnt remains of the Buckingham Bridge, shared with the group their experiences during the 2011 Roleystone Kelmscott Bushfire. He also generously spent time speaking to his audience after the show; and the response from those audience members interviewed for the promotional video is a testament to the success of this animated style of interpretation of a district’s history. History House continues to explore ways to include different events and voices within the museum, to attract new audiences and encourage old ones to return. Meanwhile grant programs by organisations such as DCA allow small museums such as History House to think inventively and put on events normally only associated with larger institutions. By mixing popular art forms, including music and comedy, with the uniqueness and unusualness of a museum, we have been able to attract people who don’t normally see museums as entertaining places. Many of these new participants on leaving find they have discovered something new, experienced something different, and probably now think of museums as places of unexpected engagement and pleasure. Christen Bell is the curator of History House Museum and the Bert Tyler Vintage Machinery Museum at the City of Armadale. Citation: Christen Bell, ‘Music and humour in the socially engaged museum’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, SpringSummer 2016, pp. 48-51.
52 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Popular music as heritage within museum culture
Turning Music Culture into Museum Programs
top:
Helen Waller.
above:
David Waller.
right:
Installation view of The Making of Midnight Oil (Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 2014). far right: What A Life! Rock photography by Tony Mott (State Library of NSW, 2015–2016); exhibition designer Jemima Woo installing the exhibition. Photo: Joy Lai and SLNSW.
1.
Bennett, Andy and Susanne Janssen, 2016. ‘Popular Music, Cultural Memory, and Heritage’, Popular Music and Society, 39: 1-7.
2.
Brandellero, Amanda and Susanne Janssen, 2014. ‘Popular music as cultural heritage: Scoping out the field of practice’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20: 3, 224-240.
3.
Brandellero, Amanda, Susanne Janssen, Sara Cohen and Les Roberts, 2014. ‘Popular music heritage, cultural memory and cultural identity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20: 3, 219-223.
4.
Leonard, Marion, 2007. ‘Constructing histories through material culture: Popular music, museums and collecting,' Popular Music History, 2(2): 147-167.
5.
https://maas.museum/ powerhouse-museum/
Helen J. Waller & David S. Waller
M
usic can have a powerful effect on people, whether it is generating emotions in the present or evoking memories of the past. With singers and bands of past years hitting the road again, including Midnight Oil, the phenomenon of ‘heritage rock’ concerts seems to be growing. It also appears that there is an increasing interest in hosting music-related exhibitions in museums, galleries, and library spaces. As part of a museum’s professional practice, it is important to curate exhibitions that can contribute a better understanding of topics, issues, people, cultures, and history, as well as enhancing the visitor’s experience. Pop culture, and particularly music, has been a theme for several exhibitions over the last few years that have provided both education and entertainment to visitors who may not usually attend events at cultural institutions, including younger people. While old rock and pop songs might be entertaining to listen to, the music is also an important aspect of social and cultural history, which can generate a broad interest and thereby attract a larger museum audience. This can be seen in several recent exhibitions, especially including projects realised at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences’ Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and the Arts Centre Melbourne — the latter having long been developing a collection devoted to the performing arts.
The ‘heritagisation’ of pop culture While listening to music from your youth can generate memories of both good and bad times, or mark the identification of personal or social events,
the idea that music you grew up with might now be considered ‘heritage’ can be startling. Yet as we get older, the music of our youth acquires socio-cultural significance and inevitably opens up heritage values. For some people the idea of heritage suggests relics or dusty exhibits in museums that they only visited as a school child, and remote stories of people they’ve never heard of. However, music is credited with the capacity to represent ‘an aspect of national cultural identity and its place within the collective memory of local popular music audiences’;[1] and there is a demonstrably growing interest in including popular culture and music within the scope of cultural heritage practice. Therefore, music-themed programs can have a rightful and resonant place in the museum space. This phenomenon is part of a larger trend that involves the ‘heritagisation’ of twentieth-century cultural expressions and history, often informed by nostalgia as the previous century recedes.[2] The ‘heritagisation’, or ‘museumification’, of popular culture is a process involving many different activities: whether it be the collecting, archiving, commercialising, conserving, digitising, remembering, giving formal recognition to, or displaying of a plethora of tangible and intangible cultural material.[3] These activities are carried out variously by professionals, collectors, interest groups, public/private organisations, and fans. A feature of exhibitions drawing on these processes is ‘displaying the everyday’ — incorporating objects related to music creation, performance, and ‘fan practices’.[4] This can include musical instruments, clothes, props, posters, photographs, and event tickets. There may also be video clips or documentaries presenting contemporary records of various styles of music, highlighting background stories and contexts.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 53
Objects that were known, or even formerly owned, by community members and concertgoers can now be seen on display in a museum.
The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney The NSW Powerhouse Museum[5] has in recent years presented several exhibitions based on pop culture music themes. These have included: Spinning around: 50 years of Festival Records (2001-2), presenting the story of Australia’s oldest independent record company, Festival Records, and documenting changes in the music industry and society in the previous half-century. The exhibition included original costumes, rare recordings and film or video footage, album covers and gold records. Visitors could
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Popular music as heritage within museum culture
left: The Wiggles exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. right:
Suit, worn by Johnny O'Keefe, cotton/fabric/velvet, [Australia], 1956-1958. Part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences' collection.
also play musical instruments, burn CDs of favourite songs, or try the role of a music producer by having a turn on a sound-mixing desk.[6] Kylie: An exhibition (2005–6), also at the Powerhouse, contained more than 30 costumes, photographs, costume designs, and video performances conveying Kylie Minogue’s career.[7] Meanwhile, ABBAWORLD (2010–11), an exhibition celebrating all that is associated with ABBA — which had already been presented in Sweden, London and Melbourne — displayed over 20 original costumes, along with photographs, items of concert footage, interviews, and album artwork. Visitors could engage in interactive experiences by virtually performing on stage with the singers, dancing in an ABBA video, recording with the band, or being photographed and having their images superimposed onto an ABBA album.[8] The 80s are back (2010–11), was an exhibition in which the Powerhouse presented a range of themes exploring the 1980s — such as music, films, television, video games, design, fashion, toys, fads, the AIDS crisis, partying, and social subcultures.[9] Meanwhile The Beatles in Australia (2013–14) revisited the national impact of Beatlemania with a focus on the tour of June 1964, and showed clothes, pictures, moving-image footage, souvenirs, and merchandise
— some of which had been sourced from fans and collectors. The Wiggles, by contrast, is a permanent Powerhouse exhibition, which presents music, instruments and original skivvies, as well as providing abundant interactive engagement for children — with digital games, quizzes, craft activities, and offering a chance to perform virtually with The Wiggles.[10]
Other examples There are also further examples of music-related exhibitions developed in recent years. The Making of Midnight Oil (launched 2014 and about to conclude its national tour in 2017) was first developed at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum. The exhibition presents the historical, social and cultural significance of the band, Midnight Oil, from its local to global impacts. The objects for the exhibition were sourced from the private collection of Midnight Oil drummer, Rob Hirst, and incorporated donations from fans, along with loans from public institutions such as the National Film and Sound Archive. Music, Melbourne and Me: 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne's Popular Music Culture (2013 –14) celebrated Australia’s largest independent record company, Mushroom Records, at the RMIT Gallery. It
6.
https://www. powerhousemuseum.com/ previous/spinningaround.php
7.
http://www.powerhousemuseum. com/previous/kylie.php
8.
http://www.powerhousemuseum. com/abbaworld/
9.
http://www.powerhousemuseum. com/the80sareback/.
10.
https://maas.museum/ event/the-wiggles/
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 55
There has lately been a growing interest in including popular culture and music as part of cultural heritage practice
11.
http://www1.rmit.edu. au/browse/Our%20 Organisation%2FRMIT%20Gall ery%2FExhibitions%2F2013% 2FMusic,%20Melbourne%20 and%20Me%3A%2040%20 years%20of%20Mushroom%20 and%20Melbourne's%20Popular%20Music%20Culture/
12.
http://www.cmag.com.au/ exhibitions/wendy-saddingtonunderground-icon
13.
http://www2.sl.nsw. gov.au/archive/events/ exhibitions/2015/what_a_life/
displayed music, posters, costumes and memorabilia, and included materials from the performing arts collection of Arts Centre Melbourne.[11] Other music-based exhibitions by the Arts Centre Melbourne have included: Nick Cave: The Exhibition (2007); Peter Allen: The Exhibition (2008-2009); Rock Chicks: Australian Women in Music (2010–2011); Kylie 25 (2012); A Sunbury Day Out (2012); and Kylie on Stage (2016–17). Turning elsewhere, Wendy Saddington: Underground icon (2015–16) was an exhibition presented at the Canberra Museum and Gallery of photographs, posters, newspaper articles and memorabilia about the singer Wendy Saddington. The contents were drawn from the personal archive of the singer’s friend, artist Peter Maloney.[12] What A Life! Rock photography by Tony Mott (2015– 2016) was the title of an exhibition of photographs taken by renowned rock photographer, Tony Mott, which was displayed at the State Library of NSW. The exhibition included photographs of local singers such as Chrissy Amphlett, Peter Garrett, and Tex Perkins, along with international figures such as Bjork, Madonna and The Rolling Stones.[13] Other music-related exhibitions have included: David Bowie is (2015), exhibited at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne,
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Popular music as heritage within museum culture
which was mounted for an international tour by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and incorporated more than 50 costumes, original set designs, album artworks, photographs, interviews and concert footage.[14] Meanwhile the New Zealand band, Split Enz — with a strong identity in Australia — was the focus of the Performing Arts Collection’s exhibition, in Melbourne, Sew this is the Enz (1986), and the Arts Centre Melbourne's virtual exhibition Drawn, Worn, Reborn (2003). Meanwhile a further exhibition celebrating Split Enz, True Colours (1998– 1999), was presented at the Te Awamutu Museum in New Zealand. These many and diverse exhibitions have transformed the value of objects from items of everyday and personal use to museum objects that were catalogued and viewed by a broad public. The various elements and contents deployed aim to engage diverse visitors, evoke memories of past experience, and create new shared memories and experiences with younger generations.
An issue of independence
above:
Installation view featuring Australian band, The Cockroaches, as part of the exhibition The 80s are back at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (2010-2011).
14.
https://www.acmi.net. au/exhibitions/pastexhibitions/2015/bowie/
While there can be some significant benefits for a museum to hold an exhibition with music- or pop culture-based themes — including generating publicity for the institution, raising awareness among the non-museum visitors, and increasing revenue via ticket sales and merchandise, there can also be important issues of principle and fair conduct to consider. Professional practice protocols urge museums to not simply be a tool of market forces, or be subordinate to large commercial interests as they promote their agenda in deciding what is to be presented to the public. The mixing of museum credibility and heritage preservation standards with corporate marketing and commercial monetary interests presents real ethical concerns for the museums sector. While an exhibition might be appealing to the public, as museums seek to engage new audiences and be more socially inclusive in their programming and coverage, a perception could be aroused that ‘this is just a money-marking venture’. Furthermore, when a large amount of exhibition material is sourced from particular organisations, private collections, or friends of the principal subjects, there are potential issues
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to consider around objectivity and independence of judgment in decision-making when it comes to what and how objects are presented. This can raise a complex issue of weighing up potential financial and reputational benefits of a project against the possible compromise of independence and credibility.
Conclusion
15.
Filmer, Natatie, 2015. ‘Push on to build museum to celebrate Sunbury’s famous cricket and rock music heritage’, The Herald Sun, 1 September.
16.
Masanauskas, John, 2016. ‘Flinders St Station targeted for Melbourne rock hall of fame’, The Herald Sun, 23 June.
It appears that exhibitions devoted to pop music genres have strongly established their popularity with visitors at a number of museums and galleries in recent years. However, the interest in such exhibitions has also raised calls for entire museums to be devoted to musical genres, and the impact of historic events such as the Sunbury Rock Festivals held at Sunbury, Victoria (1972–75),[15] as well as claims for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to be created and permanently based in Melbourne.[16] All of the exhibitions and developments surveyed here now confirm the ‘heritagisation of pop culture’ as an established phenomenon. For museums and galleries, this can signal opportunities to curate exhibitions on popular music-related themes, exploring related social issues that are still alive in the historical memory of today’s visitors. Music can open up many genres relating to the songs, costumes, musical instruments, performance, posters, and fans involved in these stories, as well as the changing socio-cultural and political norms that contextualise music’s development. Furthermore, the everchanging technologies associated with music, in addition to the interactive digital and non-digitalbased exhibit activities that museums naturally encompass as a skillset, can be used to greatly enhance visitors’ experience. However, there is also concern about commercial influence and possible loss of independence and objectivity to weigh up in the planning stages. Finally, there are abundant opportunities to expand the museum’s reach to a large audience of fan-visitors who may rarely visit a cultural institution. Such contemporary exhibitions can be financially rewarding in ticket sales and associated merchandise, and this could also represent many introductions to the wider programming of a museum, potentially resulting in further visits in the future. []
Helen J. Waller is a postgraduate student (at the University of Sydney) and David S. Waller is at UTS Business School (University of Technology Sydney).
Citation: Helen J. Waller & David S. Waller, ‘Turning Music Culture into Museum Programs’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 52-57.
58 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Book Review: Museum collections reinterpreted and represented Hannah Paddon, Redisplaying Museum Collections: Contemporary Display and Interpretation in British Museums (Ashgate Publishing, 2014). ISBN: 978-1409447078. Hardcover, 184 pages, RRP £67.99.
H
1.
Stephen T. Asma, Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums, Oxford University Press, UK, 2003.
2.
Bernice Murphy (ed.) ‘Wild and contemporary — Melbourne Museum’s progressive redevelopment of its long term displays – Australian natural history collections revitalised for new audiences’, Museums Australia Magazine, vol. 19, no. 1, Museums Australia, Canberra, 2010, 13–16.
3.
Andrew Simpson, ‘Reorienting the Australian Museum’, reCollections 11(1), National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2016. Online at http:// recollections.nma.gov.au/ issues/volume_11_number_1/ commentary/reorienting_ the_australian_museum
annah Paddon has provided a close analysis of a small part of a much larger phenomenon. How do collecting organisations go about reinterpreting their holdings and changing how things are displayed? Objects that make up museum collections have an unstated contract with the general public. It is based on the assumption if not of perpetuity then at least of substantial longevity. Meanwhile the idea of permanence — the aspiration that the stuff of museum collections will always be available to us and future generations — has become overtaken by the postmodern world of constant reinterpretation, multiple vantage-points, and a lack of anchoring universal truths. Museums aspire to connect their collections with more diverse communities, and advancing technology provides a plethora of new opportunities for audience discourse. However it is especially through exhibition programs that museums provide the public with direct collection engagement, even though this may harness only a very small fraction of an institution’s collection at any one time. This book by Hannah Paddon explores three museum redisplay projects in the UK facilitated through the Heritage Lottery Fund. However there’s a bigger global picture opened up in this exploration. On a visit to Shanghai in 2010, armed with a Lonely Planet Guide, I sought out the city’s natural history museum. This is the home of some of the specimens that made up the famous Dinosaurs from China exhibition that toured the world in the 1980s, and did much to raise global awareness of that ancient nation’s palaeontological treasures — an early exercise in soft power, utilising natural history as a vehicle of cultural relations. The museum in Shanghai wasn’t easy to find. Inside and outside, the building appeared old, dark and forbidding. Uniformed attendants suspiciously watched the few hardy visitors who braved the interior. Displays were dusty, didactic and dull. The internal lift was prone to breakdowns. In 2016, on a subsequent visit, I encountered a new Shanghai Natural History Museum, which is an institution transformed. It is set in open parkland dotted with extraordinary sculptural works. The interior of the striking architect-designed building, inspired by the shape of a nautilus, is light, airy and welcoming. The exhibition halls utilise the latest immersive technological effects. There is a bewildering array of natural history material on display, including animatronic dinosaurs with
cross-sectional cut-a-ways, enabling visitors to watch internal musculature at work while the beasts roar, stomp, and appropriately manifest an aggressive prehistoric disposition. Locals and international tourists eagerly queue for entry beneath a large digital counter that logs how many hundreds of thousands of visitors have engaged with the museum’s exhibitions so far this year. This makeover phenomenon is part of a global movement to reconceptualise how natural history is absorbed through the museum experience. Moreover this is part of a new natural history exhibition paradigm replacing that of the past millennium. An early example of a tendency towards biological aesthetics was provided by the dramatic Great Gallery of Evolution at the (1994-reopened) Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris.[1] Some would say this new phenomenon reached Australia only as recently as 2010 — with the long-term exhibition, Wild: Amazing Animals in a Changing World,[2] reinterpreting the collection at the Melbourne Museum (Museum Victoria); and more recently, the 2015 Wild Planet display at the Australian Museum.[3] In the UK, the Heritage Lottery Fund helped finance a number of significant redisplay projects during the first decade of the new millennium. The Lottery Fund provided critical opportunities for new ventures because, even in a first-world museum sector, there are always many old collections in old buildings that haven’t seen change in many years. Hannah Paddon’s study, rather than portraying itself as a guide on how to go about the change process itself, documents the process of transformation at three institutions. The book is the result of Paddon’s doctoral thesis that involved interviewing many of those who were involved, especially curators, designers and project managers. By sifting the information and insights gained in her interviews, Paddon forensically examines the immense complexity of each undertaking, in an effort to synthesise some broad insights gained about these mammoth undertakings. The three case-study institutions are introduced early in the book. They are the Great North Museum: Hancock, in Newcastle upon Tyne; the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow; and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. The Great North Museum: Hancock is a facility managed by Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums for Newcastle University. It is a combination of collections: from the locally born taxidermist and ornithologist, John Hancock, the Museum of Antiquities, and the Shefton Museum (Greek art and archaeology). The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is described as a ‘museum of museums’ — even before its documented transformation. Of the three case studies examined, this one probably attracted the most attention in the museum world — interpreted by
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 59
some colleagues as a representing a paradigm shift in the museum concept.[4] The Royal Albert Memorial Museum is viewed meanwhile as the ‘archetypal Victorian’ institution, encompassing multiple institutions including the city library. In many ways, the makeover of all three museums provides examples of ‘convergence’ — a term that used to be popular in the lexicon of Australian local government cultural provision a decade ago, but seems to have vanished from their vocabulary more recently. Paddon’s book, however, does not treat the three transformations as a series of separate chronological narratives. Insights from each case study are interwoven throughout this investigation as a way of eliciting both commonalities and differences. Apart from complexity of internal processes and the multiple stakeholders involved, each project was also driven by an acute awareness that the Heritage Lottery Fund was providing enough financial grunt for this to be a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to fundamentally rethink and change exhibition practices. This, in itself, makes Paddon’s documentation and analysis an interesting and important read. Imagine what you could do in your own cultural institution with a large wodge of guaranteed financial support? The first section of the book concentrates on the process of museum redisplay. The catalysing effect of the Heritage Lottery Fund is discussed and the three case study institutions are introduced, including useful historical background on their organisational and institutional complexities prior to their transformative projects. The final chapter in this section shines a light on how people work together, how they articulate and communicate project goals, and how decisions are taken. The second part of the book is where all the insights from the author’s many hours of interviews with all the players in the redisplay scenarios comes to the fore. The reader is taken through a diverse array of conceptual frameworks, with an occasional focus on specific issues or characteristics of the process, as a way of distilling some wisdom directly from the experience of the participants. What comes through clearly in this section is both the complexity of the process and how decisions taken early in the planning process may have unforeseen and problematic repercussions later on. Also explored and elaborated in these pages is the continuing disempowerment of the curator as arbiter of collection use and public engagement; and the increased importance of the audience and how the museum’s own initiatives and philosophy have been impacted by government policies of the day. There is even exploration of the challenges and opportunities in working with heritage architecture, the need to design for flexibility, the difficulty in
resolving conflicting interests, and finally the innate, conservative tendency of many organisations in resisting change. While the majority of this second part of the book provides a mixture of qualitative, sociological and management analysis of the changing nature of museum work, for me the most interesting chapter was a historic overview of biological displays. This provided both good analysis and some compactly delivered history. We start in Graeco-Roman times with the birth of observational science, then work our way through the Renaissance and the Linnaean revolution in taxonomic systems, leading to the period when biological material on display was increasingly eschewed by museums and their management (Shanghai 2010), and finally bringing us to the current situation, where natural history is being enthusiastically rediscovered by museums (Shanghai 2016). This is valuable context for understanding the three Heritage Lottery Fund redisplay innovations documented as case studies in Paddon’s book. All three projects had a significant natural history component. Meanwhile the shift from a naturalistic to a symbolic framework in exhibition methodology is identified as the key driver of change. This book is a strong reminder that museums can be potent creative institutions, always seeking new ways of effectively engaging with audiences, and through the most primary of museum functions – namely, the work of presenting exhibitions and displays. While the changes and what they mean will provide topics of much future discourse, this book is about the struggle for relevance and the nature of change. Everyone is confronted by the imperatives and pace of change. In an organisational setting, this means different behaviours, new working relationships, new expectations, and even new thinking about the impact of what is created. An Australian example of a similar project is at the starting line. This one, like the Great North in the UK, is university-based, but funded by philanthropy rather than a government heritage scheme. Those involved in the project to combine the MacLeay, Nicholson and Art collections at Sydney University should closely study this book as they embark on their quest to create a new cultural destination for the city of Sydney. Reviewer: Dr Andrew Simpson is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University. He is the current Chair of CAUMAC (Council of Australian University Museums and Collections) and the Executive Officer for the NSW branch of Museums Galleries Australia. [] 4. Citation: Andrew Simpson (review article), ‘Hannah Paddon, Redisplaying Museum Collections: Contemporary Display and Interpretation in British Museums (Ashgate Publishing, 2014)’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol 25(1), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 58-59.
Elaine Heumann Gurian, ‘Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum’, Curator: The Museum Journal, vol. 50, WileyBlackwell, USA, 2007, 358–361.
60 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016
Professor Norman Palmer QC CBE: A tribute
Erica Persak
T above:
Norman Palmer.
he Australian museum profession has lost one of its most committed and generous colleagues with the recent passing of the UK Institute of Art & Law’s Academic Principal, Norman Palmer QC (Hon) CBE. Previously an irrepressibly active man and robust traveller, he died (on 3 October 2016) of recently diagnosed but rapidly advanced motor neurone disease. In recent years, Norman was a regular visitor to Australia, where he taught summer courses at the University of Tasmania. He often returned to Australia at other times to work with the Australian Registrars Committee, in partnership with the Institute of Art and Law, UK, and he lectured to museum professionals in an intense course for the Diploma in Law and Collections Management (Dip LCM). He also advised government officials, museums and legal professionals on cultural property law, including work for the Australian Government in developing legislation realised finally in the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Act, passed in 2013. Norman loved visiting many parts of Australia, and while here he regularly took the opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends in the museum and legal profession. He was generous with his time and always willing to share his knowledge and expertise. When working as an advisor on cultural property restitution for the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, he provided valuable advice on legal and moral issues associated with Nazi-looted art. This was at a time when Australian museums were beginning to research provenance information in response to international third party title claims. Norman continued to act as an advisor to the National Gallery until 2007, and proved to be an invaluable expert in assisting the Gallery to negotiate contracts for several complex international loans. I met Norman in the 1990s, while working at the National Gallery of Australia. He readily devoted time to meet with curators, directors, government officials and registrars to discuss cultural heritage issues, and
he readily advised art museum colleagues in several states, as well as some private collectors. We all looked forward to his visits to the Gallery in Canberra, and enjoyed his readiness to sit and discuss international programs and evolving issues associated with cultural property legislation. Norman Palmer’s lectures were enjoyed by all who attended, and the animated and responsive style of his talks captivated audiences with the breath of his knowledge and the range of case studies he had at his finger-tips. He was naturally a good story teller. After Norman gave a presentation, there would invariably be a line of people waiting to speak with him and ask further questions. The Australian museum profession is indebted to Norman Palmer, and he has left a profound legacy also for Indigenous Australian communities. It was his resourceful work in chairing the Human Remains Working Group in the UK that eventually helped steer changes in law — through the Human Tissue Act of 2004 — that allowed progressive repatriations of ancestral remains to indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere. Professor Norman Palmer is remembered by so many as a very dear friend and colleague, both in Australia and internationally. His wide-ranging expertise, conviviality and resourceful counsel on complex issues for museums will be sadly missed. He is buried in Crickadarn, the Welsh village close to his former rural home. A full eulogy can be found on the website of the Institute of Art and Law — at <www.ial. uk.com/> [] Erica Persak came to know Norman Palmer through her various posts in the registration field in Australia: as former Assistant Registrar, Central Catalogue, National Gallery of Australia; Registrar, Art Gallery of Western Australia; Registrar, National Museum of Australia; Registrar of Collections, National Gallery of Australia; and Assistant Director, National Gallery of Australia. She is now Executive Administrator, Kerry Stokes Collection, in Perth, Western Australia.
Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 25(1) – Spring-Summer 2016 61
Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney AO CMG (1925-2016)
J
ohn Mulvaney was the Foundation Professor of Prehistory within the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University. His Prehistory of Australia (first published 1969; later in successive editions) consolidated this discipline and the field he had virtually established in Australia since the 1950s. When his rich life ended recently, John Mulvaney’s work, advocacy and ideas had touched so many fields of Australian history and heritage. This especially included championing the importance of Indigenous history, heritage, and sacred sites; and he was well known for steadfastly defending and campaigning for protection of the natural environment. Professor Mulvaney also had far-reaching impact across the field of Australian museums, training, and conservation of cultural heritage, having been a leading contributor to the
Commonwealth’s Pigott Inquiry and final Report on the museums sector (tabled 1975). An overview of John Mulvaney’s work and legacy across so many fields of Australian public and intellectual life (including the museums sector) will be published in the next issue of Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, in 2017. In the present issue, Museums Galleries Australia’s National Council and colleagues simply signal a timely tribute to Professor Mulvaney’s life and manifold legacies. Colleagues send condolences to John Mulvaney’s widow, Elizabeth Morrison, and family — and especially to Richard Mulvaney (a son in a large, closely-knit family). Richard is Director of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, and has served for many years on the National Council of Museums Australia. [Ed.] []
above:
John Mulvaney.
MUSEUMS AUSTRALASIA MULTIMEDIA & PUBLICATION DESIGN AWARDS
CALL FOR ENTRIES OPEN 1 FEBRUARY 2016 | WWW.MAPDA.ORG.AU
Exhibition or Gallery Fitout (Permanent) Exhibition (Temporary/Travelling) Interpretation, Learning and Audience Engagement Members only Free to enter Online entry
CALL FOR ENTRIES OPEN 13 FEBRUARY 2016 WWW.MUSEUMSAUSTRALIA.ORG.AU
Australia in the Great War, Australian War Memorial, Canberra ACT Australia in the Great War is the new permanent exhibition in the First World War Galleries at the Australian War Memorial. It is the first major refurbishment of the galleries in over 40 years and one of the key contributions to commemorating the centenary of the conflict. Principal exhibition designers Cunningham Martyn Design, developed probably the most challenging gallery re-configuration project Designcraft have ever delivered. The complex Joinery and Showcase package pushed our fabrication ability and facility to the limit. The result is a world class gallery experience. Designcraft are proud of our association with this flagship Australian project. Exhibition design: Cunningham Martyn Design.
furniture joinery showcases 8 Tralee Street Hume ACT 2620 02 6290 4900 info@designcraft.net.au www.designcraft.net.au
Photography by John Gollings.
www.tashcosystems.com.au tashco@tashcosystems.com.au
Galleries of Remembrance The Shrine of Remembrance Photographer Vlad Bunyevich.
The National Anzac Centre Albany WA Photographer Lee Grifď&#x192;&#x17E;th.
Galleries of Remembrance The Shrine of Remembrance Photographer Vlad Bunyevich.
Showcasing Australia For The Past 40 Years