Museums Galleries Australia Magazine Vol 26(2) Autumn-Winter 2018

vol 26 (2) autumn­-winter 2018 $15.00

Museums Galleries Australia

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.

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Join us at the very heart of the nation in Alice Springs (Mparntwe) for the

2019 MUSEUMS GALLERIES AUSTRALIA NATIONAL CONFERENCE Combining elements of our most recent conferences that focused on Museums and Galleries in their Cultural Landscapes (Brisbane 2017) and Museums and Galleries as Agents of Change (Melbourne 2018), in 2019 we travel to the geographical centre of the nation to tackle some of the biggest thematic areas that occupy much of our national conversation. Museums and Galleries are situated at the very centre of that conversation in relation to our place within our communities and the way we are deeply implicated in both a local and national understanding of Australia’s past, present and shared future.

And while focusing on our people, places and practices, there will be opportunity to consider purpose, relevance, diversity, equality, national identity, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agency, our various publics and the nature of co-creation, generational transfer of knowledge and much more. Delegates will also be able to explore the majesty and wonder of the Central Australian landscape (with cultural tours and opportunities for day/weekend trips to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and other incredible places) and the people, communities, museums and galleries that call the desert home. Plan to stay a few extra days to enjoy all that’s on offer in the NT! As a very special bonus, delegates will experience the vitality of Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art. A four-hour Desert Mob Art Fair on the closing afternoon of the conference will see hundreds of Aboriginal artists and artworkers making their way to Alice Springs from remote Aboriginal communities and art centres across the NT, SA and WA with thousands of artworks for sale and the opportunity to become immersed in not only the art but also among the artists who share their culture through their art to keep their communities strong.

• For sponsorship and exhibition opportunities email: mga@conlog.com.au • Call for abstracts and registration opens in late 2018 • To stay updated, express your interest online at www.mga2019.org.au

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Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 7

Contents

In this issue President's Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Museums Galleries Australia National Council 2017—2019 president

From the National Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MAPDA awards for outstanding achievement in design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Dr Robin Hirst PSM (Director, Hirst Projects, Melbourne)

vice-president

Simon Elliott

(Deputy Director, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane)

treasurer

How to win a MAPDA for catalogue design . . . . . . 17 MAGNA 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Margaret Lovell (Contract Project Manager Canberra)

secretary

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

Indigenous 10-Year Roadmap for Museums Galleries Australia: 2018 update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

members

Digital Access to Collections: a GLAM Peak project for sharing Australia’s regional heritage . 26

Dr Mark Crees (Director, Araluen Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs)

Introducing the Women of Museums Australia (WoMA) Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 How it really was: Collecting the story of the Roe 8 protest in WA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Reinvigoration through exhibition renewal . . . . . 38 Permaculture and the practice of restorative museology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Paul Bowers (Director, Exhibitions & Collections, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne)

Suzanne Davies ([retired] Director, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne) Dr Lynda Kelly (LyndaKellyNetworks, NSW) Craig Middleton (Curator, Centre of Democracy, Adelaide) Debbie Sommers (Volunteer, Port Macquarie Historical Society, Port Macquarie) ex officio member

Alec Coles OBE Chair, ICOM Australia; CEO, Western Australian Museum public officer

Louise Douglas, Canberra

Shake the Foundations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Towards an online museum of languages: Digitising records of the world’s 7,000 languages .52

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

ACT Rowan Henderson (Senior Curator, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra) NSW Rebecca Pinchin (Collection Manager, National Trust of Australia NSW)

COVER IMAGE: (detail) Kungkarrangkalnga-ya Parrpakanu (Seven Sisters are Flying), Tjanpi Desert Weavers, as seen in the dome in the Songlines exhibition at National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Photo: George Serras, NMA.

NT Dr Ilka Schacht (Curatorial Manager, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin)

QLD Emma Bain (Director (Exhibitions & Programs), Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland) SA Pauline Cockrill (Community History Officer, History Trust SA, Adelaide) © 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 24, Deakin West ACT 2600 Editorial: (02) 6230 0346 Advertising: 02) 6230 0346 Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice L. Murphy Cover design: Selena Kearney Content layout: Stephanie Hamilton Printer: Adams Print, Melbourne

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine is published biannually (from Volume 25 onwards) and online 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.

Museums Galleries Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation: Australian Government Ministry for the Arts; Australian Library and Information Association; Museums Victoria (Melbourne Museum); and Western Australian Museum.

Print Post Publication No: 100003705 ISSN 2207-1806

TAS Janet Carding (Director, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart) VIC Lauren Ellis (Programs Manager, Museums Victoria, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Program & Communications Manager, International Art Space, Perth)

8 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

President's Message

W above:

Dr Robin Hirst.

riting this in the days following the National Conference held in Melbourne in June, I feel buoyed by the whole experience. I’m encouraged by the collective strength of those who attended, and I’m impressed with the way the sector is variously leading, adapting and responding in the currently complex social and political environments we all face in different ways.

Conferences like ours are vital. The opportunities they provide vary for delegates coming from such diverse backgrounds. The museums and galleries sector is a very broad church, and our national conferences provide a way that we can embrace our differences and learn from each other.

I have had different motivations for attending conferences throughout my own career in museums and galleries. Initially it was to learn all I could from the experts. Then I understood that I too had something to say. Now I understand the need to make and strengthen connections with fellow professionals as a reinforcement of our work. Building a network of colleagues who can inform, share differences, and alert us to new issues and possibilities is critical in our fast-changing world.

The Melbourne conference was sold out. Judging by the level of conversations at the breaks, the responses to each presenter and the questions asked during each session, the program had good reach and was enjoyed and appreciated by delegates. The conference market is changing, with external for-profit providers now becoming significant players. Our annual conference remains important to our sector. It is developed by and for our membership, moves around our huge country (and opens up to our Pacific region, with our more regular interaction over a decade or more with New Zealand/Aotearoa). Meanwhile the conference’s format of different strands and concurrent sessions allows many to contribute and be heard. It is another way we can develop our future leaders.

Beginning with the Brisbane conference in 2017, we established a Members Forum within the annual conference program — to provide a dedicated space to allow members in attendance to voice their opinions on a variety of issues. As a result of the Brisbane Forum, the incoming MGA Council decided to conduct a strategic review, and to consult the membership and stakeholders about changes they consider important for our association to address. It was a pleasure to present to the Melbourne Forum the results of the association’s Strategic Review, which had already been endorsed by the Council on the eve of the conference. The National Council had also ratified the Strategic Plan 2018–2020, which has drawn on the results of the review.

We will continue this tradition of members

expressing their views at the Alice Springs conference next year — which will take us to the Northern Territory and bring, amongst other discussions, a special regional focus, including on Indigenous peoples and culture, in 2019. Our National Director, Alex Marsden, has provided more details of the Strategic Review in her neighbouring column in this Magazine issue. I can assure you all that the National Council is listening carefully to understand our membership, to capture its diversity, and to make sure we include special encouragement and support for our oncoming younger colleagues. We have special tasks to continue to make the organisation a relevant one for both institutional and individual members, from both large and smaller organisational settings, spread across this huge country and the multiplicity of communities we serve.

The Indigenous resolution at the recent AGM Our Annual General Meeting for 2018 was held, as is our tradition, to coincide with the annual conference. At the meeting on 6 June in Melbourne, the following resolution was adopted by members.

‘Members of Museums Galleries Australia meeting in annual conference on 6 June 2018 in Melbourne express their support for Indigenous Australians in their aspiration for a 'Voice to the Parliament', as proposed by the meeting at Uluru in May 2017 in the Statement from the Heart and endorsed by the Referendum Council, and urge all museums to familiarise themselves with the Statement and its background since establishment of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, and engage their audiences to promote understanding of the Statement.’

In 1993, a forerunner to Museums Galleries Australia (the Council of Australian Museum Associations/CAMA) embraced a co-consulted Indigenous policy, namely Previous Possessions, New Obligations. This became our founding policy even before a broader Ethics policy covering many other issues of good conduct was adopted under the new association’s National Council. So when our organisation was incorporated in January 1994, the special urgency of forging respectful relations with Indigenous peoples, of acknowledging their authority in interpretations of their heritage held in museums, of repatriating ancestral remains and seeking to right the wrongs of collecting in the past, provided an important new framework for the sector at the time. The 1993 policy was subsequently revised, after further national consultation with Indigenous leaders, and replaced by Continuous Cultures, Ongoing

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 9

Responsibilities in 2005, which continues today.

As many members would be aware, we are currently undertaking a consultative process which will result in the development of a 10-year Indigenous Roadmap. This project is an initiative to facilitate discussion on how best to advance the participation and representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in museums and galleries across the country. Self-determination is crucial to the rights of Indigenous people, as expressed in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Articles 3–5.4.

The Indigenous-focused resolution adopted at the recent AGM in Melbourne is consistent with the underlying principles that have been embodied in our previous policies. And it is particularly timely. I urge all members to read the background paper on the Uluru Statement from the Heart, provided as information for the recent resolution, and to discuss this with colleagues. (The resolution and background paper have now been uploaded to MA’s national website, which provides a convenient go-to summary of recent events for all members to consult about the issues raised.)

I warmly congratulate all those who entered the MAPDA and MAGNA Awards this year. We had some very worthy winners, who are featured in this issue of the Magazine. I would like to say that the overall 2018 winner in the MAGNA Awards, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters — the remarkable project and exhibition achieved recently by the National Museum of Australia — ­ showed the extraordinary results that can come from truly deep engagement with Aboriginal communities. The Songlines project demonstrated what can be gained through handing the authority of interpretation to rightful custodians, including the knowledge they have nurtured for millennia in their stories of the environment, the diversity of the earth’s resources, and the astronomical dramas that fill the night skies and still guide vast journeys across our huge continent.

In conclusion, what I found so encouraging during the recent conference was the way many speakers were prepared to share what didn’t quite go to plan in their work, alongside that which did. Many speakers were posing questions, not answering them. I took this honesty and vulnerability as a very positive sign of a sector that is confident, not only to share what it knows, but to be honest about what it is struggling with. To me, that is a mark of success.

I look forward to meeting many of you again, in Alice Springs, next year. [ ] Dr Robin Hirst PSM National President, Museums Galleries Australia

10 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

From the National Director

T above:

Alex Marsden.

he first 6 months of each year is always a hugely busy time of planning for the year, punctuated by express-train deadlines of projects to be completed by the end of June, and organising the plethora of moving parts that is MGA’s National Conference.

Many thanks to the incredible number of people who were instrumental in making the 2018 National Conference held in June in Melbourne work so well — I really got the sense of MGA as a living network of committed contributors to the common good.

I wish everyone who wanted to could have been able to come to the conference, the RR&C day, the National Network meetings, Awards night, and the Members’ Forum, but I understand the challenges for many. I am pleased that we were able to offer more than 50 bursaries, and we are working to secure more for next year. The plenary speakers were recorded, and the recordings are now available through our website. I hope these recordings, along with some papers, articles and project update reports published in this edition of the National Magazine, provide for all some useful ideas and the affirmation that you are part of the MGA community.

Our Strategic Review of the organisation is now largely complete, with a report including data and analysis from our research and consultation now publicly available.

Majority opinion on the name and brand of the organisation, expressed both by members and by stakeholders, was that ‘galleries’ should be included in the name, but that the interim business name of Museums Galleries Australia needed revision to fix issues of brand confusion. Returning to the former name of Museums Australia would be counterproductive as it does not include galleries and would also appear as a retreat from both inclusiveness and modernisation. Finally, it was clear that members value the relationships and networking provided by being part of a national association, and there was significant support for reintroducing the concept of an association or network into the name.

Therefore, National Council is proposing (for consultation) the updated name Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMAGA). Following the President’s presentation at the Members’ Forum after the AGM in Melbourne, where no concerns were raised, the next steps have been to discuss the review further with branches and key stakeholders, and to continue work on specifications for the name change and branding. National Council intends to put the new name to a vote through a formal resolution put to members later this year.

The National Office will also prepare guidance and a toolkit on final name change, including a style guide and usage rules for all branches and networks, so that we have a coherent identity nation-wide. In the meantime, feel free to give us any feedback on any part of the Strategic Review’s outcome report.

Needless to say, our program of activities, events and advocacy at national, state and territory branch and network levels proceeds apace while this review work is being carried out.

At the Members’ Forum on 6 June, in addition to reporting on MGA’s strategic review, the President outlined the focus for National Council’s Strategic Plan for 2018–2020. The plan recognises some important insights from the recent review and sets a number of priorities for the organisation as a whole to work on over the next 2-to-3 years.

Adopted by National Council 3 June 2018

Vision Inspiring Australia’s cultural life through a thriving and valued museums and galleries sector.

Mission Support, promote and advocate for our members to strengthen Australia’s museums and galleries sector.

What We Do As a national membership association we provide advice, representation, support and services to enable organisations and individuals to thrive; and as a peak body we advocate on behalf of the sector to communicate the value of museums and galleries, raise professional standards, inform policy, and promote ethical practice.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 11

The online Membership survey revealed that there is much agreement about the main priorities that MGA should be focusing on in the future, with the top four priorities being to: • Increase advocacy for museums and galleries; • Deliver a larger range of training and skills development via different channels; • Make the National Conferences more accessible; and • Provide more advice on funding and other opportunities.

All these objectives are now in train. Meanwhile the foundational focus is you — the membership, both individuals and organisations. The plan will be available soon on our national website.

The need for more advocacy also loomed large in the consultation carried out by state and territory branch committees, and in many of the discussions I have held over the last year. There is great concern about a lack of public/government/mainstream media appreciation and understanding of what museums and galleries offer. There is also much anxiety about decreased operational funding for many institutions, despite the welcome news of capital spending on new buildings by several state governments. In this light, we submitted a response in May to the Commonwealth Parliament’s Inquiry into Canberra’s national institutions, in which we concluded that: • The national cultural institutions in Canberra play a vital role for Australia and are delivering in the main on core national responsibilities to high standards, despite deep funding cuts over many years.

• However, the current story is one of significant unrealised potential.

• Current research is revealing the deep value of arts, culture and heritage to society and the economy in an increasing number of ways, including business innovation, tourism generation, and health and wellbeing outcomes.

• The Commonwealth needs to develop a more coherent and long-term policy framework for arts, culture and heritage that includes greater levels of support for the national cultural institutions.

This submission is also available on our national website.

Finally, the President has written about the Resolution in support of Indigenous Australians that was passed by members at the recent AGM. The Resolution is particularly timely for the association, given the work underway on developing the 10-year Indigenous Roadmap, reported on previously in the Magazine — and updated in the present issue. The Roadmap project is going exceedingly well, with strong responses and recognition of its importance, and growing excitement and commitment to its realisation. We have extended the time-frame for completion from June to October this year, to meet the desire for increased consultations – as more workshops and discussions were held; and more groups, particularly Indigenous cultural workers, were seeking further input. It is critical to the success of the Roadmap that these voices are heard, respected and included while the suite of recommendations is being developed.

We are currently also seeking some funding to employ an Indigenous Engagement Officer over the next three years, to help give life to the Indigenous Roadmap through communications, advice and guidance to museums, galleries and communities.

So, a lot is going on. It is a time of challenges and opportunities for the national association and the sector we serve. As always, please feel free to contact me with your views at any time. [ ] Alex Marsden National Director, Museums Galleries Australia

12 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Museums Australasia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards 2018

MAPDA awards for outstanding achievement in design

AF T

T RS

TAR R ER

S

HI

the display specialists

21 YEARS OF MAPDA 2019 was the 21st anniversary of the Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards.

To commemorate this milestone, we gathered every Best in Show winning entry from the past 14 years and had a special exhibition at the Museums Galleries Australia National Conference in Melbourne.

We would like to thank all the institutions and individuals who tracked down copies of these past winners to loan us for the exhibition. See the website for a full list of past winners at www.mapda.org.au

MAPDA 2018 at a glance: • 74 organisations from Australia and New Zealand • 54 Level A • 2 Level B • 157 entries • 80 shortlisted entries • 19 winning entries • 28 commended entries • Best in Show: Publication: Book Club (Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery) Multimedia: Tjungunutja (Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory) • Judges’ Special Award: Little Books of Art (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu) • Sponsored by Australian Book Connection (www.bookconn.com.au) and Showfront (www.showfront.com.au) • Judges: Suzie Campbell (arts marketing consultant) Brendan O'Donnell (Corvus Creative and artist) Rick Cochrane (Bytes + Colours and artist) Brett Wiencke (National Portrait Gallery) Jude Savage (Art Gallery of WA) Jonny Brownbill (Museums Victoria) Selena Kearney (Nomat)

O

ver the past couple of years we have been testing new categories in the MAPDAs. Last year we tried Exhibition Label, which was quite popular, though logistically problematic when it came to actually receiving the entries.

This year we included App, to reflect the new ways institutions are engaging with audiences. This new category was hugely popular and we will likely keep it going forward. When the Awards were reviewed several years ago, we changed a few categories and removed others due to poor entry numbers. One that was removed was Information Brochure. Due to popular demand, we will re-introduce this category for 2019 as a test, but we will be removing Poster. We have struggled for a number of years to get entries for the Poster category – with little success. We know there are still incredible posters being produced for exhibitions and encourage you all to keep using this foundation method of visual communication when considering your advertising and engagement. And you never know, it might be back in the future.

An exciting trend is a resurgence in magazines.

It is heartening to see so many institutions who had previously discontinued their magazines now publishing once again. You may notice that the winners in the magazine category are familar. Both Bulletin and Portrait feature regularly in the finalist list, as both publications continue to re-invent, innovate and adapt.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 13

The Awards were presented at a ceremony at the Meat Market in Melbourne as part of the MGA2018 National Conference. Photographs from the Awards can be found on our Facebook.

Following the list of finalists below, we feature an article from the 2018 judges on how to win a MAPDA for catalogue design. Check it out.

MAPDA will return in 2019, with a call for entries on 1 February. []

APP LEVEL A Highly Commended Jervis Bay Maritime Museum App Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, Huskisson Daniel Pesu, Zac Stanford, Tom Masterson, Gregoire Katz

Winner Royal Botanic Garden Sydney App Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Sydney Ram Bhat (Royal Botanic Garden Sydney)

LEVEL B Highly Commended Headhunt!

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Jake MacMullin (Stripy Sock) and Alice Carroll

BOOK LEVEL A Highly Commended Art Gallery of Ballarat: Stories from the Collection Art Gallery of Ballarat Ben Cox (Art Gallery of Ballarat)

Unconstrained Passions. The Architect's Hoouse as Museum Lyon Housemuseum, Melbourne Yanni Florence (Lyon Housemuseum)

Winner and Judges' Special Award Little Books of Art (pictured) Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, NZ Aaron Beehre (Ilam Press)

LEVEL B

CHILDREN'S BOOK LEVEL A Winner Lionel’s Place | story book (pictured) Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Maitland Clare Hodgins (Maitland Regional Art Gallery)

LEVEL B Highly Commended Where's Dot? Museums Victoria Publishing, Melbourne Jacob Tolo (Museums Victoria)

EXHIBITION BRANDING PACKAGE LEVEL A

Highly Commended Underworld: Mugshots from the Roaring Twenties Sydney Living Museums, Sydney

Highly Commended The Corsini Collection: A Window on Renaissance Florence Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, NZ

Bruce Smythe (Sydney Living Museums)

Imogen Greenfield (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki)

14 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Museums Australasia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards 2018

ON For Ron fundraising campaign Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, NZ McCarthy and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE (MAJOR) LEVEL A

Lionel’s Place | Lionel Lindsay from the MRAG Collection Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Maitland

Highly Commended Gordon Walters: New Vision Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, NZ

Clare Hodgins (Maitland Regional Art Gallery)

Neil Pardington (Neil Pardington Design)

Winner Centre of Democracy Centre of Democracy, Adelaide

Closer: Portraits of Survival Sydney Jewish Museum, Sydney

Jesse Hanlon & Nicki Duance (Arketype)

LEVEL B Highly Commended NGURRA Branding Package South Australian Museum, Adelaide Mia Prerad/Jeremy Green (South Australian Museum)

Rembrandt and the Dutch golden age: masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Paul Clark (Alphabet Studio)

Winner Romancing the Skull (pictured) Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat Ben Cox (Art Gallery of Ballarat)

Open Spatial Workshop: Converging in Time Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, Melbourne Designed by Paul Mylecharane and Žiga Testen, Concept

by Open Spatial Workshop (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester, Scott Mitchell)

Analiese Cairis (Art Gallery of New South Wales)

LEVEL B

Ground Up Exhibition Museums Victoria, Melbourne

Highly Commended Del Kathryn Barton: The Highway is a Disco National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Jacob Tolo / Scott Parker (MV Studio)

Winner Pipilotti Rist: Sip my Ocean Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney Alex Torcutti (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia)

Jackie Robinson (National Gallery of Victoria)

NGV Triennial 2017 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Dirk Hiscock (National Gallery of Victoria)

Bill Henson National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Thomas Deverall (National Gallery of Victoria)

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 15

This catalogue is gold. Very clever format for presenting lots of information and a diverse range of content. The typography is exquisite, well-resolved, with great leading. Beautifully executed.

Judges' comments for Book Club

Winner Dempsey's People: A folio of British street portraits 1824-1844 National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Brett Wiencke (National Portrait Gallery)

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE (SMALL)

INSTITUTION WEBSITE LEVEL A Highly Commended The new Public Record Office Victoria website (prov.vic.gov.au) Public Record Office Victoria, Melbourne

LEVEL A

Kate Follington, Project Manager (Public Record Office Victoria) and Dave Morony, Designer (Fluid)

Highly Commended BLOOD: Attract & Repel Science Gallery Melbourne, Melbourne

BAMM (www.bamm.org.au) BAMM - Bank Art Museum Moree

Ford + Nicol

Headjam

Board Sheet Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Lake Macquarie

Winner Botanic Gardens and Centennial Parklands (rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au) Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Sydney

Stephen Goddard (Project Two)

Winner and Best in Show (Publication) Book Club (pictured) Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Lake Macquarie

Ram Bhat (Royal Botanic Garden Sydney)

Stephen Goddard (Project Two)

INVITATION

LEVEL B

LEVEL A

Highly Commended Love is - Australian Wedding Fashion Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney

Highly Commended MAGNT Fundraising Dinner 2017 Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin

Filip Bartkowiak and Lucy McGinley (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences)

Maria Mosquera Design + Illustration and Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

16 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Museums Australasia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards 2018

Winner and Best in Show (Multimedia) Tjungunutja film Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory David Nixon (Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory)

LEVEL B Winner ACMI Code Breakers Steph Plays ACMI, Melbourne Field Carr & Rob Cordiner (ACMI Design)

PROGRAM WEBSITE MAGAZINE LEVEL A Highly Commended Muse University of Sydney (Sydney University Museums) Brand and Marketing Services (Marketing and Communications) (University of Sydney) Winners JAM Magazine JamFactory, Adelaide Sophie Guiney (JamFactory) Bulletin (B.187, B.188, B.189, B.190) (pictured) Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu Aaron Beehre; Editorial design: Ilam School of Fine Arts Graphic Design Department

LEVEL B

LEVEL A Highly Commended National Quilt Register (www.nationalquiltregister.org.au) National Wool Museum, Geelong Nathan George (Pixeld)

Winner City Collection website (citycollection.melbourne.vic.gov.au) City Gallery, Melbourne Laura Cornhill (Studio Binocular)

LEVEL B Highly Commended Collections Care Manual (manual.museum.wa.gov.au) Western Australian Museum, Perth Digital Services Team (Western Australian Museum)

Highly Commended MAAS Magazine - Winter & Summer Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney

Winners Songlines: tracking the Seven Sisters interactive (songlines.nma.gov.au) National Museum of Australia, Canberra

Filip Bartkowiak (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences)

Jasmin Wong, Andy McCray, Nick Binnington (Icelab)

Winner Portrait, issues 56 to 58 National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (starstruck.gov.au) National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra

Brett Wiencke (National Portrait Gallery)

SOAP Creative

MULTIMEDIA LEVEL A Highly Commended TiNA 2017 Promotional Video.

Octapod - TiNA (This is Not Art), Newcastle Headjam

POSTER LEVEL A Winner 16 Days of Activism Free to be Every Me Warrnambool Art Gallery Sinéad Murphy (Lovelock Studio)

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 17

The challenges of good catalogue design for museum exhibitions

How to win a MAPDA for catalogue design

Suzie Campbell with Brendan O'Donnell, Brett Wiencke, Jude Savage and Rick Cochrane

I

f you too were disappointed when it turned out the reports of the death of Facebook were greatly exaggerated then you, like us, probably get a thrill when a fine publication is available at the conclusion of a satisfying exhibition experience.

The MAPDAs, awarded for museums’ and galleries’ print and digital design work put out in 2017, were judged in April. So, while we waited for the announcement of the winners at the annual National Conference in June — for the highly commended, all the category winners, who got the gong for ‘Best in Show’ — and anticipated what the best of 2017 in design would look like, there were some wider conundrums.

Let’s consider: ‘Who does the graphic designer design for?’ How about imagining we're the graphic designer of that ‘servant of many masters’, the exhibition catalogue.

First of all there’s the curator. They’ll want to present their research (read: hard work and brilliant insights); and don’t forget, this could be their magnum opus — years in the making on a treasured subject. They’ve written the lead essay (as big as a small thesis), and they’ve probably commissioned a couple of essays from other notables in the field.

When requesting loans, they’ve told the lenders from international collections that there’s going to be a major publication accompanying the show, and that their work will feature in a full-page, full-colour plate, with an extended caption.

Now the head of commercial operations is on the phone wanting to try for pre-sales (‘Can we get an image of the cover up on the website?’). ‘Hot cakes’

is the usual metaphor for how our catalogue needs to sell. In fact, they’ve already forecast the total sales essential to the success of the show, which — coupled with tickets – is now the keystone of the whole exhibition budget. That profit margin has predetermined the unit cost of our catalogue well in advance — so, best to tell the offshore printer to sharpen their pencil. But hey, no pressure!

Our museum’s director is writing her foreword and asking us at the same time when our catalogue will be back from the printer. She can’t wait to send complimentary copies out to her rival directors — it’s a form of sanctioned skiting in the gallery game.

The presenting partner also gets a foreword, and a swag of free copies for their office’s many coffee tables. Their Business Development department has stitched up that deal — but they’re not sure who'll be writing the sponsor's bit yet — stay tuned.

The museum’s marketing department wants to send copies of our catalogue out with the comp tickets to get the exhibition reviewed. (Don’t get our design hopes too high, though — we know the reviewer won’t even mention our catalogue’s design in the article.)

The library wants exchange and deposit copies to mail out — and we need to remember that a big catalogue costs more to post.

And we haven’t even mentioned the visitor to the exhibition yet, or what their purchase rate is likely to be. Let’s ask ourselves again, ‘Who are we designing for?’

It turns out, we’re not really designing for anyone specifically. We’re packaging content, conveying the message, choosing the means for the meaning. We’re arranging type, form, and image. We’re trained to deploy the language of design in the service of communication, and we well know our institution’s vernacular. We are designing for meaning. And, if we get it right, no-one will notice in the end. Great design remains hidden in plain sight.

So, the next time a curator or director or marketing wonk says they want to see three ideas for poster designs, or three concepts for a room brochure, or three versions of that invitation, we'll be firm and say, ‘No’.

Why? Firstly, we're not working for Don Draper.

And secondly, there is only one great design response, not several versions of pretty good. We are professionals, and along the way we’ve made hundreds of choices, and iterated, presented, and scrunched up and thrown into the bin all those halfgood ideas.

That’s how we worked out the right one. And that's the one we’ll present — and that's the one that just might win ‘Best in show’ at the next MAPDAs. See you there. [ ] Text citation: MAPDA Judges, ‘How to win a MAPDA for catalogue design’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn–Winter 2018, p. 17.

left:

2017 Best in Show winning Exhibition Catalogue from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s Gottfried Lindauer's New Zealand — The Māori Portraits (a collaborative design between Neil Pardington (Base Two) and Auckland University Press.

18 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Museums & Galleries National Awards 2018

MAGNA 2018

The MAGNAs are sponsored by:

T

he Museums & Galleries National Awards, or MAGNAs, were first awarded in 2011, and have gone from strength to strength. The MAGNAs recognise excellent work nationally in the categories of exhibition, public programs and Indigenous projects. The MAGNAs are open to all Australian cultural collecting institutions who are members of Museums Galleries Australia.

These awards set out to encourage the continuous improvement and development of Australian museums and galleries; to inspire and recognise best practice and innovation in the collecting sector; and to enhance the profile of museums and galleries in local and wider communities. The awards were presented at a ceremony, hosted by comedian Andrew McClelland, at the Meat Market in Melbourne, as part of the MGA2018 National Conference.

NATIONAL WINNER

top:

Margo Neale accepting the award on behalf of the National Museum of Australia for Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, which was awarded National Winner at the 2018 MAGNAs. Photo: Joel Checkley, Tiny Empire Collective.

The National Winner is selected from all the winning entries from each level of each category. The 2018 National Winner went to the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, for Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. Songlines took visitors on a journey across the Australian desert in an Aboriginal-led exhibition about the epic Seven Sisters Dreaming.

The exhibition included stunning artworks, a stateof-the-art digital dome and a vibrant art centre. The project was the first of its kind, attempting to tell in an exhibition space an Indigenous founding narrative by using Indigenous ways of passing on knowledge.

The project was initiated in 2010 by Anangu Elders from the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands in central Australia and led by senior Seven

Sisters custodians from across the Central and Western deserts. The elders were compelled by an urgent need to track the songlines, and preserve the knowledge of their communities.

The exhibition itself was hugely popular. Visitor feedback indicates the exhibition’s power to transform people’s thinking, and supports its claim as a pioneering exhibition about foundational Australian history. The Songlines project demonstrated what can be gained through handing the authority of interpretation to those who best understand what they need to convey.

INTERPRETATION, LEARNING & AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT Level 1 Highly Commended Canberra Museum and Gallery The Art Box National Wool Museum + Barking Spider Visual Theatre In the Shadows of Giants South Australian Museum, Adelaide Young Explorers Early Years Learning Program Winner Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Sidney Nolan Unmasked Level 2 Highly Commended Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney War & Peace in the Pacific 75

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 19

Winner National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Headhunt!

Level 4 Highly Commended Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston The First Tasmanians: Our Story

INDIGENOUS PROJECT OR KEEPING PLACE Level 1 Winner John Curtin Gallery, Perth Virtual Field Trips through the Carrolup Collection Level 2

PERMANENT EXHIBITION OR GALLERY FITOUT

Winner Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney Gapu-Monuk Saltwater: Journey to Sea Country

Level 1

Level 3

Highly Commended Holdfast Bay History Centre, City of Holdfast Bay, SA Cabinet of Curiosities

Winner Queensland Museum, Brisbane unsettle

Level 2

Level 4

Highly Commended Migration Museum, Adelaide Superdiversity: Migration in the twenty-first century

Highly Commended Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston The First Tasmanians: Our Story

Law Society of Western Australia, Perth Small Court House, Big Stories

Winner Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Tjungunutja: from having come together

Winner Australian War Memorial, Canberra Art of nation Level 3 Highly Commended Sydney Jewish Museum The Holocaust and Human Rights Winner Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House PlayUP – the right to have an opinion and be heard Level 4 Highly Commended Arts Centre Melbourne Australian Music Vault Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston The First Tasmanians: Our Story Winner Museums Victoria, Melbourne Ground Up: Building Big Ideas, Together

left: Alethea Beetson from Digi Youth Arts accepted the award for unsettle and called for a moment of silence for their ‘ancestors currently being held in museums and institutions in Australia and all around the world’. Photo: Joel Checkley, Tiny Empire Collective.

20 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Museums & Galleries National Awards 2018

right:

Valerie Napaljarri Martin from PAW Media who produced the original Bush Mechanics series and worked with National Motor Museum on the development of the exhibition travelled from Yuendumu, NT, to accept the award for Level 3 Temporary or Travelling Exhibition. Photo: Joel Checkley, Tiny Empire Collective. bottom:

In 2015 the National Museum of Australia collaborated with Tjanpi Desert Weavers to create a significant and unique work inspired by the Seven Sisters songlines. More than 400 Aboriginal women of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council, from across some 350,000 square kilometres of the Central and Western desert region, work with Tjanpi Desert Weavers, usually making baskets and smaller sculptural works. They are also known for their life-sized sculptural groups and installations.

The Tjanpi Desert Weavers created these sculptures with artists from Papulankutja, in the Blackstone Ranges between the Western and Great Victoria deserts. During a two-week camp at Kuru Ala, a remote Seven Sisters site in Western Australia, 14 Tjanpi weavers wove the Seven Sisters into life. They then moved to a campsite just outside Papulankutja to finish the Tjanpi Sisters. Each figure was made by two artists.

For many of the figures, a senior artist paired with a younger emerging artist so that the act of creation was also one of passing on skills to a future generation of Tjanpi artists. Photo: Annieka Skinner, Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

SUSTAINABILITY Level 2 Highly Commended Museums Victoria, Melbourne Collection Risk Assessment and Management Initiative Level 4 Winner The Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Ballarat Sustainability Initiatives Program

TEMPORARY OR TRAVELLING EXHIBITION Level 1 Highly Commended Hurstville Museum & Gallery, Hurstville All things great and small Winner Islamic Museum of Australia, Melbourne Between Inscription & Gesture Level 2 Highly Commended Maitland Regional Art Gallery Lionel's Place Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney Tokkotai | Contemporary Australian and Japanese Artists on War and the Battle of Sydney Harbour Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart The Derwent

Winner Immigration Museum, Melbourne They Cannot Take the Sky: Stories From Detention Level 3 Highly Commended Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart The Remarkable Tasmanian Devil Winner National Motor Museum, Birdwood SA Bush Mechanics: the exhibition Level 4 Highly Commended South Australian Museum, Adelaide Yidaki: didjeridu and the sound of Australia Winner National Museum of Australia, Canberra Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters [ ]

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 21

Building Indigenous employment, safe spaces, and reciprocal, respectful relationships with communities

Indigenous 10-Year Roadmap for Museums Galleries Australia: 2018 update

Terri Janke and Sarah Grant

1. Introduction

top:

Terri Janke.

above:

Sarah Grant.

Photos: Jamie James, James Photographic Services.

T

erri Janke and Company have been commissioned by Museums Galleries Australia to undertake the MGA Indigenous Roadmap Project. The Project is an eighteen-month assignment that has been looking at how Indigenous people are represented in museums and galleries, and how they are engaged in the sector.

This understanding will help in developing a 10-year Roadmap for the future. The aim is to get to a place where there is a seamless recognition of Indigenous participation at all levels of museum and gallery practice, and that this extends across the sector nationally.

The Roadmap project was funded by a Catalyst grant from the Commonwealth government, and we are working with an Indigenous Advisory Group as guides to shape our progress. All can find out about what we are doing by going to the project website — www.mgaindigenousroadmap.com.au.

2. The consultation process Extensive consultation is key to this project. We have met with many people around the country, including bodies such as the Council of Australian Museum Directors (CAMD) and Indigenous advisory committees of cultural institutions. We have also heard from experts from abroad. Meanwhile we have conducted 12 public workshops including in Perth, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart, to achieve broad feedback.

We have prepared an extensive literature review as background, and conducted a survey and audit of major institutions. The results are all available on the MGA website.

The results from these varied consultations have been used as the foundations for the Roadmap. The present article discusses some findings and alludes to likely recommendations. Any further thoughts on the findings to date would be well received by Terri Janke and Company. Contacts are welcome at <sarah@ terrijanke.com.au>, if readers have any additional thoughts or recommendations.

3. Where are we now?

An urgent question from the start of our project has been: How do things stand right now?

It soon became clear that there is a serious disjunct between how museums and galleries represent their Indigenous engagement and how Indigenous people themselves want to be represented and engaged. At the heart of this situation are different value systems: one is based on a knowledge system that values objects, and the other is based on the living culture, the relationships, the processes.

Many people have said that Australian museums started out well in the 1990s in their approach to improving Indigenous participation and engagement in museums. There has been some exceptionally good work that has come about due to the policies Previous Possessions, New Obligations (PPNO) of 1993, and the consultatively revised version, Continuing Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities (CCOR) of 2005. The positive progress has included significant permanent and temporary exhibitions which have set high standards for presenting Indigenous viewpoints.

However, many people felt that the increased participation and engagement has been sporadic or piecemeal. There is a sense that the general momentum and effort of the 1990s has subsided, leaving only a handful of committed players today.

When Indigenous people in the sector were consulted, they spoke about how the changes are not sufficiently systemic. They are not working right across institutions or the sector, but often consist of limited actions, cultural safety and tokenism.

For non-Indigenous professionals working in the sector, many were supportive of Indigenous viewpoints and were champions for change — they were doing their bit in their own areas. Others consulted noted resistance to the affirmative action changes, which are often misunderstood. There is a recognised need for new sets of skills required for Indigenous engagement, but these are not being taught at universities. There is also a fear — often stemming from lack of knowledge — of doing the wrong thing with the wrong people; a fear of seeking consent or consulting in inappropriate ways. The complex protocols, and the difficult social, cultural and political landscapes involved often exacerbate this dilemma. A lack of general knowledge about the processes, contacts, or protocols appropriate to consultation — particularly in smaller institutions — is also a factor.

22 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Building Indigenous employment, safe spaces, and reciprocal, respectful relationships with communities

Cultural material is incredibly important to Indigenous communities, and demonstrating understanding and respecting its value should be central to museums’ and galleries’ policies and programs Returning to the varied experiences of Indigenous communities: many spoke about museums and galleries as colonial institutions. They wanted to know what’s inside collections, how they can get access to them, how they might repatriate ancestral remains and important objects, and generally see collections interpreted with their own stories and understandings. Returning material to country for purposes of cultural revitalisation was a key aspiration. However, conditions for such return can be strict on the one hand and lack uniformity on the other.

Lack of access to funding for in situ collections on country is another barrier. Digitisation presents an opportunity for reconnecting cultural knowledge and authority to objects, country, ancestors and their descendant communities today. However, there is a lack of institutional coordination around digitisation.

Meanwhile, it may be useful to develop a set of protocols for putting information up online — and for taking it down when required.

So where are we now? What representation and engagement do we currently have in operation?

3.1. Representation On the issue of representation, the Roadmap audit asked the question: How would you rate Australian museums and galleries in the way that they represent Indigenous material (culture, history and art)?

Encouragingly, 40% of respondents said museums and galleries are doing ‘Good to Excellent’ work. Yet, disturbingly, just under a quarter of respondents felt museums and galleries’ performance is ‘Poor’ in this area.

Representation of Indigenous history must also embrace a recognition that this is a history that is often hard to tell — filled as it was with experience of massacres, stolen generations, abusive policy and general violence. However, museums and galleries should be encouraged to embrace these histories, recognising the need for such traumatic stories to be told in order for reconciliation and healing to take place.

There is a general need for us to amplify the

Indigenous stories within stories being told of ‘national’ history. The way we can do this in museums is by effective engagement with Indigenous communities, transforming the way we do things from an objects-based focus to a relationships-based focus.

3.2. Engagement How do museums engage with Indigenous people?

26% of museums and galleries rate their engagement with Indigenous people as ‘Excellent’, with 51% saying ‘Fair’ and 22% ‘Poor’. Museums engage Indigenous people in various ways: by having RAPS, outreach projects, employment programs, internships, and Indigenous advisory groups. However, in the recent audit, 85% of Indigenous people said that they wanted a deeper engagement. Meanwhile, the consultations across the country have provided strong indications of what this deeper engagement would mean.

3.3. Employment Increasing Indigenous employment has been a central concern of many policy documents across the sector over the last 25 years. It is worrying, then, that employment still remains at the forefront of so many museum and gallery people’s concerns. Our surveys suggest that people are right to be concerned: 59% of respondents to our Audit report noted that they had no Indigenous staff at all, while 79% of museums and galleries recorded having no Indigenous staff at an executive level.

Further to this, grievances were voiced among Indigenous people around working environments.

The staff that are in museums and galleries don’t always feel supported. Cultural safety is a big issue for many. They have unique roles, as being part of the Indigenous community while also working for museums and galleries — and for many Indigenous people outside museums this opens up a long history of distrust. Indigenous people working in museums and galleries have strong emotional connections with community, and there are fundamental social and cultural reasons why they work in the sector: for cultural maintenance; for righting the wrongs of the past; and for enabling cultural connections and Indigenous voices to be heard in the stories conveyed by museums to wider audiences.

4. Limitations of the current approach Currently, the Indigenous engagement that is occurring is on a surface level. There is a heavy reliance on individuals, who are not supported adequately in a museum context. Meanwhile engagement often occurs transactionally — when the museum or gallery has an idea or a particular issue raising engagement — rather than institutionally embraced on a continuing policy basis. Engagement

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 23

can never make real progress if it is simply reactive.

To gain significant ground, we need to transform the sector into engaging Indigenous people across the whole sector nationally, and throughout organisations in all these contexts.

Employment as a way of engagement has been the significant approach adopted by museums. Yet many limitations of this approach include the sector’s frequent reliance on employment of an individual Indigenous person — when tasks are multi-sided and often require contact with a wide range of Indigenous people outside an institution, with varying protocols around community relationships. Relying on single individuals in an ‘engagement’ role often means they are overworked and feel undue pressures to represent the entire Indigenous community. Meanwhile, Indigenous staff members often have questions posed to them by co-workers and senior staff of a museum that mean they might actually have to say ‘no’ to an idea, and this can be stressful.

Consistently, Indigenous feedback has indicated that museums and galleries need to do more to create employment opportunities that are tailored to Indigenous workers and their varied connections, rather than requiring Indigenous workers to mould themselves to fit institutional goals that may not be people-centred. Progress in Indigenous employment might involve the following opportunities: employing workers on country; having shorter employment rotations; employing Indigenous teams; and facilitating community-initiated projects. Where Indigenous people have been employed with a wider understanding in place, it is clear that this has had positive impacts — both for museums and for Indigenous people.

There has also been a strong emphasis during Roadmap consultations on needs both to create longterm employment opportunities, and to facilitate pathways to higher-level positions in museums and

galleries. Training — through universities, internships or mentoring programs — has been highlighted as an area that could lead to greater Indigenous employment in the sector.

Concerning collaboration: there is concern expressed that attempts at collaboration still have a tendency to be ‘tick the box’ and transactional.

This type of ‘collaboration’ is not only shallow in its understanding; it is actually harmful to the development of genuine relationships between museums and galleries and Indigenous communities.

What is needed first is meaningful engagement for any collaboration to be achieved successfully.

Concerning volunteers: a strong reliance has been placed on the volunteer model when seeking the collaborative involvement of Indigenous communities, which indicates that the skills of Indigenous people beyond museums are not really valued. There needs to be a shift in understanding around ‘expertise’.

Indigenous participation in projects should involve real benefit-sharing, and involvement should be recognised and paid.

5. Where are we going?

From the consultations conducted so far, we have developed 5 stand-out points that we think will lead the final Roadmap. These are in early-draft stage and feedback is still valued.

The key points to date include: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Creating culturally safe spaces Two-way caretaking of Indigenous treasures Embedding Indigenous concepts into museums and galleries Indigenous opportunities, and Connecting with communities.

24 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Building Indigenous employment, safe spaces, and reciprocal, respectful relationships with communities

5.1. Creating culturally safe spaces Cultural safety was recognized as perhaps one of the most significant areas in relation to Indigenous engagement. Most people felt that many other benefits would stem from the creation of culturally safe spaces: for example, cultural safety contributes to building a culturally competent sector; it contributes to the creation of an environment that supports ongoing Indigenous employment and engagement; and it recognises the value of Indigenous representation/engagement in the sector.

Cultural safety should also act to create a welcoming safe space not just for employees, but for

Indigenous engagement can occur through funding opportunities, exhibitions, celebrations, RAPs, and policies visitors to the museum and gallery as well. There was a recognition that these two objectives were interconnected, and that by supporting and creating a culturally safe work environment, visitors and communities — seeing themselves represented and respected in the museum/gallery context — would produce a sense of both welcome and cultural safety.

After all, employees are also part of the broader community.

Concerning relevance and respect in collaboration: genuine collaboration should involve consultation as the ‘first step, when a project is still just an idea, and must be followed by appropriate and meaningful engagement’. It should be responsive to the needs of particular communities, with the establishment of a genuine relationship as the ultimate ‘aim’ of any undertaking. In order to achieve this respectfully, collaboration may need to be flexible and prioritise relationship-building over project deadlines and corporate time-frames. Collaborations should also be equally beneficial for both museums/galleries and Indigenous communities — not viewing the Indigenous collaborators as ‘temporary’ partners or subservient to museum objectives.

This also emphasises the idea that there should be a mutual exchange of information within genuine partnerships, which might lead to ongoing, further opportunities for the parties involved in future. As Sophia Sambono has noted, ‘We certainly can’t continue to keep talking without reciprocity,

expecting cultural knowledge and input without giving back tangible benefits.’

Representation should facilitate ongoing community consultation and encourage Indigenous communities to approach museums and galleries with their own ideas for the history/stories that they want to tell. Such an approach moves far beyond the anthropological tendency of the sector’s past, which was always to present Indigenous culture from an outsider’s perspective.

5.2. Two-way caretaking of Indigenous treasures Some of the key concerns that were raised in consultation related to museums and galleries often not knowing what objects were held in their collections; or if they did, not knowing the provenance or significance of the objects they had acquired. It was also noted that there was limited access for Indigenous people to collections generally; that digitisation of collections faced some issues of adequate consultation with regard to whether Indigenous communities wanted their cultural heritage online for external consultation; and that it still remains the case that it is difficult for Indigenous communities to find out more information on collection items held in museums, about which only limited (or no) information may be available at all.

Many of the consultations held have suggested the need for both a National Indigenous Keeping Place and a National Indigenous Resting Place. Repatriation would generally be made easier with these places in existence. Meanwhile, funding and training could be provided so that smaller Indigenous keeping places would know where to seek support for repatriation claims, and obtain advice on looking after materials held appropriately.

5.3. Embedding Indigenous concepts into museums and galleries All museums and galleries need to work towards creating an environment where Indigenous engagement is at the centre of their commitments.

Indigenous engagement can occur through funding opportunities, exhibitions, celebrations, Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs), and policies.

Policies should also be implemented to ensure that all people entering museums and galleries feel safe about what they will experience. There is a lot of cultural material in museums and galleries that needs to be managed and displayed carefully, so that no ‘danger’ of wrongfully displayed material need be feared.

Museums and galleries should strongly consider implementing reconciliation action plans (RAPs).

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 25

RAPs are extremely efficient drivers of change. Not only are they there to support reconciliation but they help the cultural commitment in the workplace evolve into a more inclusive and understanding place for all.

The culture of funding opportunities needs to be changed. There are aspects of funding that mean that there are deadlines in place for exhibitions and collaborations to be realised. However, on any project involving Indigenous peoples, there is a likely working through material that is extremely important to them, and timelines are often difficult as issues might arise in communities that need more time for appropriate outcomes to be reached.

5.4. Indigenous opportunity Indigenous opportunity focuses on ensuring Indigenous people feel supported in the jobs they undertake, and that they are employed throughout the whole organisation: as greeters, tour guides, accountants, consultants, curators, and at executive levels.

Indigenous procurement could be improved, spreading opportunities more widely in an organisation, and this would help strengthen relationships with local Indigenous communities as well as providing more employment outside museums and galleries.

5.5. Connecting with communities Connecting with communities appropriately helps ensure that there is respect, relationship building, and cultural understanding offered by museums and galleries when contact is opened up outside of an institutional setting. Cultural material is incredibly important to Indigenous communities, and demonstrating understanding and respecting its value should be central to museums’ and galleries’ policies and programs.

Educational opportunities beyond museums need to be developed to facilitate more informed work with Indigenous cultural material. University and TAFE courses generally teach people how to have appropriate knowledge to work effectively in a chosen environment. Museum and gallery courses should be no different. Ignoring adequate training in approaches to Indigenous cultural material can only leave graduates without the tools to effectively work in their chosen field of employment. Developing such courses that will bridge current gaps is important in building a better-trained workforce for museums and galleries, and the sector itself should be effective advocates for better training needs.

6. The eventual Roadmap: what it might look like The 10 Year Indigenous Roadmap aims to provide a clear and ongoing strategy for the museums and galleries sector: setting out how to implement and achieve the goals that Indigenous people ­— and in many instances museums themselves — have expressed to be of paramount importance for the sector’s good development.

Rather than simply stating broad aspirations, the final Roadmap will set out a 10-year plan for the sector, and it will provide a vision for what achievement of the key goals would look like.

Ultimately, the Indigenous Roadmap will build on the early Indigenous policy documents by bringing many issues back into new life and renewed purpose.

It will offer a pathway to address how the museums and galleries sector can work successfully with Indigenous people towards the deeper engagement and representation that will guide a stronger and truly reciprocal cultural vision for all to enjoy. [ ] Terri Janke is Solicitor Director of Terri Janke and Company and Sarah Grant is a Paralegal at Terri Janke and Company.

Further information can be found on the Indigenous Roadmap website at <www.mgaindigenous.com.au>; and on Terri Janke and Company at <sarah@terrijanke.com.au> Text citation: Terri Janke and Sarah Grant, ‘Indigenous 10-Year Roadmap for Museums Galleries Australia: 2018 Update’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn–Winter 2018, pp. 21–25.

26 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Regional and community-based collections facing the challenges of digital access

Digital Access to Collections: a GLAM Peak project for sharing Australia’s regional heritage

above:

L-R: Lucinda Davison (GLAM Peak Digital Access to Collections Training Co-ordinator) and Wendy Quihampton (GLAM Peak Digital Access to Collections Project Manager).

right:

Postcards and transparencies to be handled with care. Collection materials courtesy of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. Photo: Wendy Quihampton.

Wendy Quihampton

Stage 1

he key aim of GLAM Peak currently is digital access to the full range of collection items and objects cared for in all cultural and collecting organisations nationally.

GLAM Peak is the peak representative body linking galleries, libraries, archives, museums and historical societies across Australia. It undertakes collaborative work to achieve common goals for this sector. Enabling digital access to the distributed national collections of Australia, interconnecting the collection items of all the smallest collecting organisations with the largest, will expose a wealth of inspiration and knowledge to everyone regardless of location — providing a key resource to generate new exploration, creativity and innovation.

GLAM Peak commenced work to progress digital access to collections nationally with funding received in May 2016 from the Commonwealth government through the Catalyst Arts and Culture Fund. This initiative delivered a draft national framework, detailing principles and strategies to achieve digital access to the rich and diverse collections content held in Australia. A prototype digitising toolkit, supported by case studies, was also developed to support capacity building in the sector, particularly for smaller organisations that may have limited resources.

T

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 27

Stage 2 Additional funding from the Catalyst Fund was sought in 2017. That funding, together with substantial support and in-kind resourcing by GLAM Peak bodies and technology partners, ensured the GLAM Peak Digital Access to Collections initiative has continued through 2017–2018. The second stage of the project has focused on delivering against some of the recommendations identified in the first stage: supporting the messaging of regional collaboration and aggregation of collections; face-to-face training and advisory services to regional areas on standards and approaches to digitisation; and providing goodpractice examples of digital access.

The emphasis for Stage 2 of the Digital Access to Collections project has been on the development of training content and support materials for a two-day workshop on digitisation and the provision of digital access. The workshop content targeted small- to medium-sized collecting organisations, with the aim of increasing their knowledge and confidence to progress their digitising projects. The workshops — ten in all — were delivered in regional areas. This was in acknowledgement of the challenges in regional Australia for smaller cultural organisations: often having limited recourse to advice and expertise, lacking organisational resources on hand, and with limited or no funding for their operations.

The capacity of the Access project to take the training, advice and specialist expertise to regional areas was greatly increased by the attendance of the project’s Technology Partners, who joined the workshops to share their expert advice both formally and informally. The partners included collection management system providers, digitising specialists, web aggregators and providers of online sharing platforms; and their presence was invaluable since this was often the first contact for many participants to vendor expertise. Case studies presented from local organisations yielded further insights into best practice, and in many cases provided participants with a local avenue for assistance.

Participants and their organisations were also aided by the grants programs that accompanied every regional workshop. Financial assistance was available to help meet the costs of accommodation or travel; or to purchase equipment, software or storage an organisation might need to further their digitisation projects.

Following is a snapshot of how the workshops have been received, as of June 2018: • 343 participants attended 10 workshops, though 371 enrolled; • 233 collecting organisations were represented, of which 64% were non-metropolitan; • participants indicated their prior knowledge of digitisation as: 47% ‘Beginner’, 43% ‘Moderate’, and 10% ‘Experienced’; • participating organisations identified themselves

as 25% historical societies, 16% museums, 14% universities and schools, 12% libraries, 3% galleries and 3% archives, with 27% ‘other’ (identified through conversation as mostly archives or libraries of larger organisations and private collections); • 70 grants were awarded, following 83 applications, with 37 grants used to purchase equipment, software or storage, and 34 grants covering travel and accommodation expenses.

A further Technology Grants program will distribute the remaining grant funding.

At the beginning of each workshop, participants were asked to share both what they wanted to learn, and what was worrying them about digitisation capabilities. These questions were answered through group work, such that the responses received were the priorities identified by the various groups.

Unsurprisingly, there was a great deal of overlap between the responses to the two questions, and participants wanted to learn more about the areas that concerned them. Additionally, areas of targeted interest raised through the initial questions were regularly part of discussions pursued across the two days of every workshop.

As anticipated, there were recurrent, fundamental concerns aired across all workshops. Most common were the following requests: for best practice guidelines in implementing digitisation and access; for information on the equipment, hardware and software that would best serve users in different situations; for information on which storage and back-up technologies would be most useful; and what metadata and digital file standards should be implemented.

At a further level of capability-needs raised in the workshops, common concerns again emerged across different regional locations. These were identified as: • developing a better understanding of copyright and privacy implications affecting collections’ use; • achieving a better take on the many different ways to provide digital access, including use of social media; • having a framework for how to future-proof the digital work produced in collections care; and • being able to manage the constant changes in technology shaping digital access.

As such issues had shaped the standard content of the workshops, requests for these target-topics were accommodated throughout each workshop’s delivery.

However, some much broader issues were raised about professional needs across the regional sector, and these had not been anticipated in the workshop contents.

28 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Regional and community-based collections facing the challenges of digital access

above:

Digital Access to Collections workshop in Broome, in June.

Photo: Sisters of St John of God.

Organisational framework challenges Participants expressed strong needs for assistance with managing their collections, their organisations, and their people. The demand for collections management knowledge was predominantly raised by community-based organisations, who expressed fundamental needs for better understanding of how to manage their collections both physically and digitally — and this introduced a wider spectrum of concerns including conservation, preservation, and basic storage requirements for the objects cared for.

With such a broad raft of fundamental issues pressing for attention, there was an articulated lack of confidence in knowing how to prioritise collections for digitisation, especially when participants felt they had limited knowledge of collection development, exhibition, loans and donation policies.

Management support for small organisations Issues about management of organisations were voiced equally by community-based, volunteer organisations and funded organisations. The need to secure management support, whether it be from the parent organisation, a committee of management or board members, was commonly identified, with many participants unsure of how to address this task. Similarly, and most likely linked to the need for support by management, was the task of identifying a source of project funding, or raising increased income, to support digitisation projects.

Broad skills development needs Many participants felt they lacked appropriate skills to write successful grant applications, to appropriately price and charge for their efforts, or to ‘sell their case upwards’ to secure funding internally. Common needs were also voiced to learn more about general business skills such as marketing and promotion, as well as tools for better engagement of community

support and audience development. Interconnected with the need for collection management advice, participants also wanted assistance in understanding the risks in their organisations, including in digitising their collections for wider access, together with help to develop strategies to manage these risks.

People management People management around the use of volunteers and staff was a common concern — and again for both community-based and funded organisations.

Workshop participants wanted to improve their capabilities to manage, communicate with and motivate the volunteers and staff they had, to attract more volunteers, and to ensure volunteers and staff were trained appropriately. There was a widespread desire to be able to achieve better control of the work undertaken, as a reaction to the chaos in which many felt they were currently working in under-resourced contexts. Concern about the sustainability of both their work and their organisations arose in many workshop discussions, including a wish to achieve inter-generational continuity in care of collections, with many not clear on where or how to begin with succession planning.

Once flagged, these needs — for better collection management knowledge, greater organisational resources, and improved coordination of people — went far beyond workshop goals as originally anticipated. There had been an assumption in designing the workshops, now understood to be incorrect, that an organisation considering or working on digitisation and digital access would have the physical management of their collection and organisation in hand.

The case for training and resources for regional museums nationally The presence of participants at every workshop expressing similar needs, at fundamental levels of organisational existence, emphasised the collective

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 29

case for better training and resources – to facilitate basic professional development for regional museums in managing their collections, their organisations, and their staff or volunteers. It was the prevalence of these issues that was unexpected, rather than the issues themselves that were unforeseen.

While such issues had definitely been recognised in advance as key parts of the challenges small- to medium-sized organisations face year-round, it was unexpected they would so insistently become such a focus of conversations at workshops tailored to concentrate on digitisation and the provision of digital access. It became clear as the workshops progressed in widely dispersed locations, however, that the work undertaken to digitise a collection could be lost within a more pervasive and crippling disorder that was identified as besetting many organisations across Australia’s regions.

Some more particular concerns – not necessarily shared While there was consistency in the fears expressed organisationally, many discussions introduced further issues, though with greater differences of emphasis across the spectrum of organisations engaged. A summary can suggest the spread of concerns raised: • Many community-based organisations voiced concern about the work that providing digital access to their collection might create — and almost paradoxically, some questions surfaced about whether there was actually a broader audience for many locally-focused collections (was it really worthwhile trying to make their small collections available to distant audiences?)

• Digital access also generated anxiety for some organisations that the sharing of their collections online would result in losing control over the use of these collections as they could be opened up for abuse.

• For a number of organisations, the provision of public access online appeared to conflict with the income streams currently derived from use of their collections (especially provision of images for publication), and fears were also voiced about loss of control over the digital copies that might be made of collection items.

• For many organisations, the drive and capability to digitise collections came from only one or two people — who felt under pressure to achieve all that had to be undertaken, and were very apprehensive about who would step up if they were not there to continue the work.

• Both community-based organisations and funded bodies alike worried about making mistakes when digitising their collections, resulting in either a need to repeat the work or their efforts becoming digitally obsolete and unusable in the future.

No-one wanted to undertake all the work only to have it ‘lost’ at a later date.

The presence of participants at every workshop expressing similar needs, at fundamental levels of organisational existence, emphasised the collective case for better training and resources

Evaluation of workshop learning With better understanding of what workshop participants wanted to learn, and what concerned them organisationally, it was then interesting to see what they took away from the workshop experience.

After each workshop, participants were invited to complete an anonymous online survey to evaluate all aspects of the workshop attended.

The following data is based on the survey responses to the first 8 workshops. Of the 293 participants across the eight workshops, 195 responded to the online survey — which is a 66.6% response rate, and a solid demonstration of engagement of the participants in the workshops and their willingness to share their experiences.

Participants were asked to rate a number of aspects on a five-point scale of Great, Good, OK, Poor or Bad. An immediate snapshot of participants’ responses is: • 97.7 % rated the workshop overall as Great or Good, while 1.5% rated the work OK • 97.9% rated the training materials as Great or Good, while 1.5% rated them OK

Responses to particular workshop content When asked to consider the content covered, participants were invited to share what they had learned. A large number of responses were very general, with 24% stating they ‘learned a lot about digitisation’ or similar.

Planning was the next most common issue in responses, with 20% focused on the importance of planning and preparation, and in particular the use of the Digital Access Plan template to help document why and how they wanted to proceed.

Developing knowledge of standards — for digitising, file types and metadata, and the need to standardise an organisation’s approach to digitising — was the next most common concern, with a response rate at 12%.

Knowledge of suitable technical equipment and appropriate specifications, recognising the value of providing digital access and having existing work validated by the content in the workshop were each the focus of 6% of responses; meanwhile understanding copyright, privacy and other related access issues garnered 4% of responses.

30 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Regional and community-based collections facing the challenges of digital access

Interestingly, 4% of responses mentioned that a key thing learned was that everyone in the workshop was facing the same issues — which seemed to provide some reassurance, both validating that their core issues were widespread and real, but also affirming that they were not alone and might be able to gain assistance from others facing common problems.

Other learnings that were mentioned a number of times included developing an awareness of the software needed and what was available; and the value of networking with other workshop participants and the Technology Partners.

Wider learning outcomes Participants were asked to name one thing from the workshop that would have an immediate impact on both themselves and on their organisation. Responses were generally less frequent to this question, with just 10% of responses expressing something similar to ‘more knowledge of digitising’.

Planning was again a key takeaway for participants, as the most common response – at 16% of the total.

The next most common outcome responses identified increased knowledge of digitisation standards, and the awareness of the need to standardise an organisation’s approach, and software — both provided at a 14% response-rate. The positive responses concerning software included learning about criteria for selection and the options available, as well as the ability to talk with Technology Partners.

In next place at 10% was a recognition gained that while digitising a collection is a big challenge, organisations needed to get started on digitisation, even if they start small.

Networking received greater acknowledgement, mentioned in 5% of responses, as were the value of providing digital access and the knowledge of the equipment to use and appropriate specifications. Fewer mentions were made of understanding copyright or validation that an organisation was on the right track.

Interestingly, positive outcome references were made to having gained the confidence to move forward after the workshop, and the impact the grants had made with purchasing of equipment or software.

Further evaluation to be undertaken It is difficult to make a valid assessment of the full impact of the workshops on the participants who attended, and the organisations they represent, within only a few months of the workshops’ delivery.

A second round of surveying has commenced, to discover what has transpired since the workshops, but this surveying will need to continue well into the following 12 months in order to gain longer-term insights about learning and sustained impact.

Overviewing the regional museums sector in digital readiness From the workshops participation and responses to date it is clear there have been a number of insistent messages about the stressful state of affairs and resource-difficulties many organisations are facing in regional locations. For a start, where appropriate housing and display of collections cared for are not an umbrella organisation’s main concern — perhaps nursing or medical collections held by state health services; or organisational archives (such as held by schools) — digitisation is not a priority, despite its potential for greater access and links to supportive resources in larger institutions elsewhere.

This predicament places a stressful burden on many who understand the need to digitise and provide digital access to their collection, since their biggest hurdle is often within their own management structure. There may be a lack of recognition of the importance both of safeguarding the collections physically and of the expanded potential of sharing them online — and this predicament actually affects a wide range of organisations, from historical societies and museums through to organisational archives and libraries.

Within the broader cultural sector, community organisations are very much the poor cousins, with a low status in relation to funding and support. This, again, is both a burden and a barrier to organisations wishing to share their collections, since the goodwill and motivation that they might have can be worn down by a grinding scarcity of resources and the isolation in which they try to advance their work.

To address these conditions in part, community organisations need more access to both professional development opportunities and mentoring bodies to provide guidance and reinforcement of their value.

Many would like a stronger voice within the cultural sector — to increase awareness of their existence and their shared concerns, and to be included in a wider discussion of how to develop good practice improvements.

From the second stage of the Digital Access to Collections project, it has become strongly evident that GLAM Peak’s focus to drive the digital access message needs to continue at all levels. The necessity to digitise collections and make them available online needs to be owned comprehensively: from groundlevel organisations up to the state/territory and national institutions that have a direct voice to their governments. Shared access to Australia’s creativity, knowledge and heritage held in dispersed collections requires sustained planning, targeted funding, and nationally networked efforts to achieve effective outcomes.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 31

Within such a framework, the advocacy for small community organisations’ needs and the value to be unlocked within their collections must increase dramatically, to target an increase in funding and collaborative opportunities to access heritage resources nationally online. Both to survive within their local communities and to ensure their collections are captured digitally for sharing across the breadth of the country, the smaller collecting organisations must have continuing pathways to training and advice.

There is an urgent need for these greatly dispersed organisations serving diverse local communities to be heard as a distinct voice within the Australian GLAM sector as a whole. [] As a final note, the success of the Digital Access to Collections workshops has been much dependent on the in-kind support of our Technology Partners: • DAMsmart – www.damsmart.com.au • • • • • • • • • •

atacomIT – www.datacomit.com.au D The Collecting Bug – www.thecollectingbug.com IS Technology – www.istechnology.com.au Maxus Australia – www.maxus.net.au Recollect – www.recollect.net.au Telstra – www.telstra.com.au Trove – trove.nla.gov.au Vernon Systems – vernonsystems.com Victorian Collections – www.victoriancollections.net.au Wikimedia Australia – wikimedia.org.au/wiki/ Wikimedia_Australia

We would also like to thank the following organisations for providing us with venues for the workshops: • • • • • • •

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, TAS. Albury Library Museum, Albury, VIC. Geelong Library and Heritage Centre, Geelong, VIC. Cobb + Co Museum, Toowoomba, QLD. Gordon Stephenson House, Perth, WA. NeW Space, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW. Stratford Library, Cairns Regional Council, Stratford, QLD. • Barossa Council Chambers, Nuriootpa, SA. • Witchetty’s Art Space, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, NT. • Pomegranate House, Broome Heritage Centre, Broome, WA.

Wendy Quihampton has an extensive background working in libraries and with project management. Her career has included 12 years at the State Library Victoria and working as the Program Manager of Re-imagining Libraries for National and State Libraries Australasia, as well as working in public libraries.

Text citation: Wendy Quihampton, ‘Digital Access to Collections: a GLAM Peak project for sharing Australia’s regional heritage’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn–Winter 2018, pp. 26–31.

above:

Using film holders to digitise negatives simplifies the process — collection materials courtesy of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

Photo: Wendy Quihampton.

32 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

A new National Network for MGA

Introducing the Women of Museums Australia (WoMA) Network Sarah Haid

O

ur beginnings were inauspicious: a small group of relative strangers sharing wine in someone’s lounge room; a strategy meeting on the footpath outside an overflowing pub. Yet the Women of Museums Australia (WoMA) Network has grown into a dynamic and influential movement, bringing 21st-century feminism to the fore in our institutional work and cohorts.

above:

Sarah Haid.

far right top:

Members of the WoMA Network meet with Louise Herron AM, CEO of Sydney Opera House. L–R: Ashleigh Harrington, Bethany Falzon, Nina Earl, Cayn Rosmarin, Sarah Reeves, Louise Herron, Sarah Haid, Alexa Magladry and Marsha Canning. far right bottom:

Note from network member.

Who are we?

Our members are women who work in the GLAM sector, students of museums and heritage, and people with an interest in this area. We are affiliated with national, state and local government institutions, community and regional museums, independent galleries, service providers such as law centres, and some consultancies. We have diverse personal and professional backgrounds, but we come together out of a common love for our work in museums, and the shared experience of being female in this sector.

Why a women’s network?

A Women’s Policy for Museum Programs and Practice was adopted by Museums Australia in 2000, but it has now lain like a slumbering blueprint for some time.

The policy grew out of an earlier network, which promoted affirmative action on behalf of women and museums for some years in the 1990s, before deciding it had achieved its aims and winding up. However, that policy was written before we younger professionals entered the sector, and years later it transpired that none of us knew about it or felt supported by it.

The same could be said for comparable policies and processes within our institutions. Protocols around discrimination and harassment seemed more like mythical beasts than tangible tools.

We came together as the WoMA Network because a group of us kept encountering each other — at openings and other events, in the gig-economyesque patchwork of jobs that increasingly forms the fabric of our careers — and the same conversations kept occurring. They were conversations about how stimulating, impactful, satisfying and unique our work is, and how privileged we are to be a part of the sector.

But they also opened up the myriad pressures we feel under, being young and female in museums.

Recurring themes included job insecurity, contract and casualised work; stress and burnout; career progression and succession planning; and concern about whether having a family would be possible if we didn’t bow out for a more secure or better-paid job, as many of our sisters do. One of our members summed up how the WoMA Network arose from this context: When this becomes truly exhausting to think about, I revert to the only way I can think to uplift fellow women. Being radically supportive to my female

colleagues and peers is how I reclaim power and space. Powerful, supportive women make fantastic friends. If a woman I know does great work, has a specific, excellent skill, fantastic personality trait or is wildly creative, then I tell her. This is how I practice my feminism, at work and in my life.

Here’s another member’s take on our concerns and manifesto: Though women form the majority in the museum sector and do much of the substantive work, men still drive the conversation. It’s time to rethink the format; to reshuffle our structures; and to redefine the conditions to allow women to thrive. This is the discussion we need to be having now. But perhaps more importantly, it is time to celebrate women at all levels who do great work. We need to reassess what we value, who we value and how this is recognised.

What do we do?

Our activities as a network are wide-ranging, and members engage in as much or as little as they wish, according to their interests and commitments. Our catch-ups over wine continue, and we provide each other with a huge amount of peer support — which sounds basic but is probably the most important part of what we do. Beyond this fundamental level of engagement, we have pursued the following activities: • Intimate talks with women leaders. Last year, cultural organisation directors Liz Ann Macgregor, Louise Herron, Dolla Merrillees and Kim McKay, as well as Clothilde Bullen, the MCA’s Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions, met with us and spoke about their experiences as leaders in the sector. They candidly answered our questions and inspired us enormously.

• Opportunities for professional development, such as skill-sharing sessions and workshops.

Our members learn from each other, and they also have the chance to practise presentation skills in a safe environment.

• Advocacy. Formally, we have had strategy meetings around the new Museums Galleries Australia gender policy, which is currently being developed. Informally, we talk about issues, press for change in our workplaces and classrooms, and advocate for each other when challenges arise.

• Outings. We attend public discussions, performances and special events together.

Sometimes we make a day of it. Last year we went to a series of openings in western Sydney’s exceptional museums and arts centres, before retiring to Cabramatta to compare notes over a bowl of laksa.

• Projects. We seek out opportunities to participate in exhibitions and events, often in partnership

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 33

with sister organisations such as the Jessie Street National Women’s Library. We are also in the early stages of a research project on the situation of women in the sector — with recent examples before us such as the 2016 Countess Report[1] which revealed continuing systemic disadvantage of women in the Australian art world, the University of Sydney Business School’s Skipping a Beat: Assessing the State of Gender Equality in the Australian Music Industry of 2017,[2] and Andrew Westle’s 2018 report, Turning Pointe: Gender Equality in Australian Dance.[3] • Mentorship. We are working with the University of Sydney and Macquarie University on a program to support students in museum studies programs — we have received support, but we also have so much more to give. Our colleagues and sisters in other states might like to extend these NSW initiatives.

Who’s welcome?

Ultimately, we are working for Australian museums to be richer, safer, fairer places all round. To this end, we are conscious of being properly inclusive ourselves. In our view, the term ‘women' naturally includes anyone who identifies as female, but there is a lot more to the gender picture than that. We know we share challenges in common with our LGBTIQ+ colleagues. We also understand there are particular issues facing women of colour and women with disabilities. We know further that socioeconomic factors and issues of locality in our huge country can create barriers for many practitioners working in or with museums.

WoMA welcomes anyone who is interested in our work and on board with our mission. Drop us a line sometime or come and join us for a drink. Working towards a rich and inclusive sector is something we can all be a part of — the more, the merrier. [ ] Sarah Haid is the founder of the Women of Museums Australia (WoMA) Network. She has a background in human rights law and policy, with experience at the Australian Human Rights Commission, Attorney-General’s Department, North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and the disability peak body of Timor-Leste, Asosiasaun Defisiensia. Today she works on projects at the intersection of social justice and cultural heritage. Sarah can be contacted at: sarah.haid@ woma.net.au.

Text citation: Sarah Haid, ‘Introducing the Women of Museums Australia (WoMA) Network’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn–Winter 2018, pp. 32–33.

1. https://visualarts.net.au/advocacy/ campaigns/gender-equality/countess/ 2. http://sydney.edu.au/business/__ data/assets/pdf_file/0005/315275/ Skipping-a-Beat_FINAL_210717.pdf 3. https://www.delvingintodance. com/turning-pointe/

34 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

The challenges of recording social movements

How it really was: Collecting the story of the Roe 8 protest in WA

aboe:

Jo Darbyshire.

right:

Aboriginal custodian of Beeliar Wetlands, Corina Abraham, at a protest against early drilling processes 15.11.2015.

Photo: Jo Darbyshire.

Jo Darbyshire

T

here is a crucial question I asked myself about the future: Will this story be told one day in a moderated museum way or will it be told ‘how it really was’?

Many hundreds of people in the southern suburbs of Perth have described the experience of the 2017 Roe 8 Highway protest as ‘like being in a war’.

The reality was that for two and a half months in 2017 many ordinary people put their lives on hold, literally working days and nights on the suburban protest. Workers went to the protest site at 6 a.m. before their workday started. Seniors stood together in sand, facing lines of police. Mothers with small children pushed down fences; others cooked meals for tree-sitters. Aboriginal leaders got arrested despite the fear that such actions would particularly impact them; other people who had never been arrested got arrested; and lawyers represented them all for free.

Sixteen-year-old girls locked onto barrels of cement at 3 o’clock in the morning, and police spent all day breaking them free. Vietnam veterans locked onto trees with thumb locks sourced from sex shops in Albany. $50,000 was crowd-funded to mount a High Court appeal, which failed. Artists made banners, which were quickly destroyed by pro-Roe 8 supporters, and ‘trolls’ were battled daily on social media by ‘armchair warriors’. Poets wrote

poems while also recording native animal deaths and confronting the federal Environment minister with their evidence. The minister ignored them.

Many police who lived in the area requested not to be rostered on for protest duty. CWA ladies voted ‘not to make sandwiches’ for the police, and newly arrived Indian workers spent miserable days ‘doing security’ for a landscape they had never seen before.

Life was intense and dirty and heartbreaking.

Protestors expected to lose everything — right up to the moment the state election was called on 11 March 2017. With the electoral result came the end of one of the most important environmental protests in Western Australia’s history. The Roe 8 protest helped unseat the Barnett government, and the landslide victory for Labor was testament to the resilience of ‘people power’.

As the protest finally ended and people began to disperse, the individual stories of the protestexperience, and the ephemeral objects that symbolised the struggle against government policy, were in danger of being lost. In a country where the history of dissent often seems appreciated only in retrospect, who was going to collect the material to tell all the stories associated with the Roe 8 resistance movement?

The word ‘protest’ seems to trigger apprehension across government agencies; and specific protest movements are rarely treated in the programs of our

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 35

museums and galleries until the political events and defiant coalitions they aroused have cooled. Museums today often tag themselves as ‘safe places for unsafe ideas’. However, when it comes to collecting and documenting contemporary stories of protest — especially struggles against government policies — many museums and collecting agencies tend to hesitate or act too slowly.

In the case of the Roe 8 opposition movement a group of protestors — some with museum experience but without institutional support — acted together to try to ensure that authentic objects and first-hand memories of this particular protest would be collected in ways that could be accessed by researchers and museum curators in the future. A Roe 8 Collecting Group was formed. Its purpose was to collect varied material that disrupted any generic view of ‘the protestors’, while instead documenting the many courageous, creative, humorous and opportunistic ways that a great range of people expressed their opposition.

Protests against the Roe 8 highway extension had actually been mounted for many years, but became particularly intense after December 2016, when a final legal challenge in the High Court was unsuccessful for the main protest group, Save Beeliar Wetlands.

Despite a state election being only six weeks away, the Barnett government immediately began clearing the bush around Bibra Lake, against the opposition

of thousands of people from four surrounding local council areas. The government’s belligerence served only to galvanise protestors impacted by the loss of woodlands and wetlands deemed to be more environmentally significant than Perth’s famous Kings Park.

The issues surrounding the protest were complex, and the collecting group was conscious of the diversity of material that needed to be collected. This included obvious items such as banners, posters and protest signs, but also needed to encompass ‘dirty’ and more challenging protest objects used to obstruct bulldozers — such as ‘lock on barrels’ and ‘tree sitting’ memorabilia.

One of the challenges in any contemporary collecting around social movements is to obtain a representation of multiple perspectives. The collecting group for Roe 8 judged that the state government’s official documentation supporting the political plans for the Roe Highway’s extension would be easily accessed afterwards; therefore the group’s focus was on capturing a record of the more ephemeral grassroots activism that also included some of the pro-Roe 8 campaign items.

Gathering newspaper cuttings (pro- and antiRoe 8) and media items collected since 1984, the Roe 8 Collecting Group began collating a threemonth timeline, documenting what happened and when. This material, in its concentration of records,

above left:

Protester Jan Rodda locked on to a bulldozer, mass action 12.1.2017.

Photo: Jo Darbyshire.

above right:

Protester, Jason Parish, from East Fremantle holds up a sign proclaiming his occupation ‘Accountant’ at a mass rally organised to counter WA government allegations that protestors were all unemployed or ‘paid’ dissidents. 12.1.2017.

Photo: Jo Darbyshire.

36 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

The challenges of recording social movements

top:

Fundraising Roe 8 traffic jam, idea shared from WestConnex protest, Sydney. Made by Rethink the Link. Photo: Jo Darbyshire.

bottom:

Artist Mark Smith’s hand-coloured print of the endangered Carnaby's Black Cockatoo, a local species living in the Beeliar wetlands, 2017.

Will this story be told one day in a moderated museum way or will it be told ‘how it really was’? will become invaluable as memories of the protest later fade. It will help to date photographs and to juxtapose the many strands of the resistance actions, with parallel columns documenting mass protests alongside creative works, as well as legal, Aboriginal, and non-violent direct actions.

Community collection day

1.

Stephen Munro, curator at the National Museum of Australia, provided the following statement to Jo Darbyshire on the signficance of the contested Beeliar Wetlands (24 May 2018): ‘The Beeliar Wetlands dispute touches on many of the themes the National Museum of Australia (NMA) is exploring in its planned ‘Environmental History of Australia’ gallery. This gallery intends to foreground the power and agency of the non-human elements of our world, and to highlight how these influence and intersect with human society.

The wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain play a key role in the rich ecological diversity of the southwest. Many of these wetlands, however, have been destroyed through urban development, making the ones that remain even more significant. The fact that thousands of people from all walks of life were drawn to the wetlands to protest against the construction of Roe 8 demonstrates the agency that these wetlands have. This is illustrated especially through the use of species such as Carnaby’s black cockatoo as emblems of the protest movement.

The NMA has benefitted greatly by the efforts of the Roe 8 Collecting Group. Without their determination to document and collect objects associated with the protests, much of this material culture would have been lost. With the collection of objects acquired through the Roe 8 Collecting Group, the NMA is well placed to tell the story of how people from diverse backgrounds came together to help stop the destruction of yet another precious wetland.’

It was crucial to move quickly while social media groups were still active, so we organised a Community Collection Day in July 2017, to collect personal objects and documents. People were asked to fill out donation forms, tell their story about the objects offered, and clear copyright permissions so that these processes were already complete for any collecting institutions that might finally receive the objects.

A simple FileMaker Pro database was designed to document the items as they were received, photographed and wrapped. A steady stream of people came forward over the course of the day, and more than 150 objects were collected. Some Museums Galleries WA members and volunteers were also on hand to give advice and support.

Undeterred by a general sectoral reluctance to address an issue that had become very politicised, Robert Mitchell, from the Australian Army Museum in Fremantle, offered a temporary storage solution.

With this crucial support, it was hoped that within two years items could eventually be dispersed to relevant collecting institutions, as appropriate.

We were soon approached by the National Museum of Australia, which was interested in collecting material about the biodiversity of the south-west corner of Western Australia and the relationships between people and place. After visiting the collection, curator Stephen Munro[1] acquired a diverse range of items including black cockatoo masks, painted red-tailed cockatoo feather flags, a wearable turtle costume, flip boards (one side with photographs of trucks, the other side of bushland) used by protestors on train actions, along with painted palm shields, lock on devices and a jar of Roe 8 Traffic Jam. The history department of the Western Australian Museum has also acquired many objects, especially those relating to people’s experiences — for example, the clothes donated by a young man called Fox, worn by him for ten days during the longest tree-sitting protest of the campaign, and accompanied by two pine cones from the tree itself.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 37

The State Library of Western Australia has expressed interest in collecting documents and printed archival material, including the archives of Rethink the Link, an alliance of groups opposing Roe 8. The Fremantle Local History Library has facilitated oral history interviews with three of the protest leaders — Corina Hayden-Howard (nee Abraham), Kate Kelly and Kim Dravnieks — and will also accept archival material.

Indigenous leaders The politics behind de-registration of the Beeliar wetlands — ‘the most significant historical site (for Noongar people) in the Perth metropolitan region south of the Swan River’,[2] an important Aboriginal heritage site — was insidious and sustained. The WA Department of Aboriginal Affairs systematically sidelined its senior staff and stripped its Aboriginal heritage committee of expert advisors, replacing them with industry-driven ‘suits’.[3] While federal Environment ministers were also complicit, under state minister Peter Collier, DAA’s reputation with WA’s Aboriginal community was severely damaged.

Left to deal with the chaos after the March election was Collier’s successor, Ben Wyatt MLA, a Yamatji man, appointed as the first Indigenous Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in Australia’s history.

One of the many Aboriginal custodians who stood up in protection of the Beeliar wetlands was Corina Abraham, who in June 2016 lodged an appeal against the state government in the WA Supreme Court.

Her counsel was Mabo defence lawyer, now Native Title senior barrister Greg McIntyre SC. Although Corina Abraham lost her case, she remained a staunch campaigner alongside other highly visible leaders including Gail Beck, Dr Noel Nannup, Reverend Sealin Garlett and Ben Taylor. The Aboriginal leaders provided a deep level of knowledge about the area that was gratefully appreciated by the non-Aboriginal protestors.

Unresolved issues Working without any institutional resources or support, it has turned out that there are some crucial issues that the community-collecting group have been unable to resolve. While 3D objects and paper documents were successfully harvested, and repositories found for their long-term safekeeping, we have been unable to tackle effectively the wider diversity of material generated by the Roe 8 campaign.

One of the defining elements of the protest was the use of social media. 7,000 people were members of the www.rethinkthelink.com.au website, and many public actions were shared through the Facebook page Community Noticeboard for Beeliar Wetlands. At this point it is unclear how best to capture these valuable records long-term, or how to document the important roles they played. For instance, a photograph showing cheeky protestors posing with Premier Colin Barnett

at the Rottnest Swim on 25th February — just days before the election — went viral on social media and was then picked up by the conservative newspaper, The West Australian, which published it, sensing the tide had turned and the Barnett government’s days were numbered. The influence of this photograph was phenomenal, yet the story of its impact lives purely in cyberspace.

A broader issue for the collecting group has been how to collect the thousands of digital photographs and videos connected to the protest. Both professional and amateur photographers were involved. Much of the remarkable digital material remains with ordinary members of the public who recorded it, and this will become more difficult to access over time as technology supersedes current platforms. Having even one cultural institution work out a way to allow people to easily upload and capture all this digital material would be visionary in its potential for later historical use.

There are also intriguing questions as to why the Barnett government persisted with such an unpopular project. It is beyond the scope of the collecting group to research what happened behind the scenes politically in dealings with contractors and developers, or how the systematic destruction of government boards and committees charged with protecting the environment and cultural heritage was implemented. Hopefully someone in the future, with tenacious journalistic capabilities, will be able to investigate the many allegations of corruption and other controversial questions of due process in the public interest. Yet how and where might the collecting group, and other first-hand witnesses of the Roe 8 protest, flag the many political manoeuvres of an incumbent government as being important to investigate later?

It may never be possible to fully capture the spirit of the Roe 8 protest in retrospect, or the diversity of the people and interests that took part. Many people in the West felt they had participated in a huge battle, a battle yet to be acknowledged or memorialised. That will be for the future to review, and it is hoped this community archive documenting a time of intense social resistance will help to sustain that task. [ ] Jo Darbyshire is an artist and freelance social history curator based in Fremantle, Western Australia. Many of the projects she has been involved with can be viewed on her website, www.jodarbyshire.com.

Text citation: Jo Darbyshire, ‘How it really was – Collecting the story of the Roe 8 protest in WA’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn–Winter 2018, pp. 34–37.

vol 23 (1) summer 2015 $15.00

Museums Australia

More on collecting political ephemera can be found in a previous magazine: Craig Middleton, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure: Australian political ephemera’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.23 (1&2), Museums Australia, Canberra, Spring & Summer 2014, pp.29—30.

2.

EPA. 2003. Environmental Values Associated with the Alignment of Roe Highway (Stage 8). A Report by the Environmental Protection Authority under Section 16( j) of the Environmental Protection Act 1986. Bulletin 1088. Perth: EPA, 14.

3.

See Stephen Bennett’s essay, ‘Never Again? Aboriginal Heritage Approvals and Roe 8’, in (eds) Andrea Gaynor, Peter Newman and Phillip Jennings, Never Again, Reflections on environmental responsibility after Roe 8, UWA Press, Perth, 2017.

38 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Turning museum futures around in the NT

Reinvigoration through exhibition renewal

above:

Marcus Schutenko.

right:

Indigenous Art Gallery before (left) and after (right).

Marcus Schutenko

U

pon commencing as Director of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in May 2015, I quickly learnt that tourists (75% of our audience) were very satisfied with their experience, but that locals were not. A common comment by locals was that the exhibitions across MAGNT’s various sites don’t change, so they have little reason to make return visits, except when hosting interstate or international friends.

A principal means by which museums communicate with our public today is through exhibitions and the interpretation of themes and topics in spaces.

MAGNT currently comprises seven sites. Four are museums, two are historic sites, and one is a scientific reserve. The present report examines the current rationale and strategy for MAGNT’s transformation of the exhibitions and interpretation across four of our primary sites.

The four sites being transformed are our principal facility in Darwin (which shares its name with the institution, so here is referred to as ‘Bullocky Point’); the Defence of Darwin Experience (DDE); Fannie Bay Gaol (FBG); and the Museum of Central Australia (MCA). FBG and the MCA also have non-interpretive issues (climatic and visibility concerns), which are not discussed here. Also not discussed here are Megafauna Central, which opened in July 2018; Lyons Cottage, which is leased to a not-for-profit organisation and has limited need for interpretation; and the Alcoota Scientific Reserve, which is not open to the public.

MAGNT is almost unique in Australia (along with MONA in Hobart and Canberra’s national collecting institutions), in that the majority of our visitors annually are tourists. The breakdown of visitors is roughly 25% local, 50% interstate and 25% international.

For tourists, who are either visiting for the first time or for the first time in many years, our exhibitions are compelling. Bullocky Point and the Defence of Darwin Experience consistently rate respectively on TripAdvisor as the #1 and #2 things to do when visiting Greater Darwin. Last year they also had strong endorsement in national comparisons: being respectively rated on TripAdvisor as the #5 and #8 best museums to visit in Australia as a whole.

At Bullocky Point we have ten exhibition spaces.

Seven have for many years been reserved for longrunning exhibitions, and three for shorter-life temporary exhibitions. Of the seven galleries showing long-running exhibitions, four are major galleries in size (of between 300 and 2,000 square metres), and three are smaller spaces. The exhibitions in the major galleries were installed respectively in 1981 (with a major refresh in 2005); in 1992, and 1994 (with a major refresh in 2014); and in 2001. The last time MAGNT received funding to redevelop one of our major galleries was for our science gallery at Bullocky Point, entitled Transformations, and realised in 2001.

The exhibitions in the smaller galleries were installed variously in 2006, 2008 and 2015 (this last was a single showcase). At the Museum of Central Australia (MCA) in the heart of Alice Springs, we have two exhibition spaces, where the exhibitions there were installed in 1991 and 1998. MCA also houses the

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 39

unique Strehlow Research Centre, one of Australia's most important collections of film, sound, archival records and museum objects relating to Aboriginal ceremonial life.

The complex of dispersed spaces, facilities and exhibitions installed across all the MAGNT sites, as sketched above, presented significant questions and options to assess in the quest for greater impact with local audiences, along with the positive experience of tourists and one-time visitors.

To address the perception held by locals that ‘MAGNT’s exhibitions never change’, the previous director increased the turnover of exhibitions in the three temporary exhibition spaces at Bullocky Point.

These spaces had previously changed every threeto-eight months, but they began to change every three-to-four months. This accelerated activity gave MAGNT a public opening event almost every month, which is positive in its greater engagement potential.

Unfortunately, the public needed to walk through the galleries that were left unchanged to reach the new exhibitions, and when doing so at greater frequency this reinforced the perception that the majority of the galleries were static and unchanging.

Compounding many issues causing strain for the museum’s leadership meanwhile were our sharply-declining staff numbers, which robbed us of vital capacities for the development of our own exhibitions. Consequently, to make up for reduced internal output, MAGNT was programming more travelling exhibitions from southern states. However, this inevitably led to an increased likelihood of our majority visitors annually (of southern state tourists) having seen our exhibitions previously. Unsurprisingly

meanwhile, the declining staff numbers at MAGNT impacted staff morale severely, as did the reduction in resources allocated to telling our own stories.

Many staff were also concerned that MAGNT had never adequately addressed our founding vision in our exhibitions. As both a museum and an art gallery, we work across Aboriginal culture, the natural sciences, history and art, focusing on Northern and Central Australia and our near neighbours regionally. Being cross-disciplinary is seen as an important point of difference for MAGNT. However, despite the unique potential of multi-disciplinary collections and varied staff expertise that our history involves, MAGNT’s exhibitions have rarely embraced the potentiality of a fully cross-disciplinary vision.

Setting our exhibitions strategy To address all of the above challenges, MAGNT needed to redevelop our long-standing exhibitions to provide recurrent experience of the broad potential of our collections for local visitors and tourists alike. We needed to map out a plan and secure more resources for delivering a comprehensive redevelopment of our exhibitions, as the front-line vehicles of our public impact and reach. In September and October 2015, MAGNT’s management, curatorial and exhibitions teams mapped an eight-year redevelopment plan, taking into account the resources required, and the visitor experiences to be provided at each stage.

The eight-year plan was built around five major deliverables:

40 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Turning museum futures around in the NT

right:

Current state of galleries.

MAGNT • Indigenous Art Gallery • Transformations Gallery • Cycline Tracy Gallery • Maritime Gallery • Ramp Gallery • Seaview Lounge • Link Gallery • Gallery 4 • Ken Waters Gallery • Flinders Gallery

1981/2005 2001 1996/2014 1992 2008 2015 2006

DEFENCE OF DARWIN EXPERIENCE

4 4 7 4 5 3 7

2012

8

1991

1998

1 7

1 = TIRED 10 = FRESH

MCA • Strehlow Gallery • Science Gallery

1 & 2 retiring the long-standing Aboriginal and science exhibitions at Bullocky Point, with both galleries taking on a new interpretive vision; 3 redeveloping the maritime gallery at Bullocky Point; 4 developing a major interpretive outcome at Fannie Bay Gaol; and 5 retiring the long-term Strehlow exhibition at the MCA in Alice Springs, and converting this area instead into a temporary exhibition space.

A significant consideration for the visitor experience was that in 2015, MAGNT’s temporary exhibitions program for the next three years was art-heavy.

While there were some history exhibitions and Aboriginal culture exhibitions proposed, none had yet commenced development. Meanwhile there were no proposed science exhibitions. We therefore could not retire the natural history-based Transformations exhibition from its space until science was wellrepresented in other galleries at Bullocky Point.

However, quality science exhibitions are the most expensive to prepare and present today, and we had yet to secure new funding for any such ventures.

To increase our resources and deliver our renewal vision, our strategy was fourfold: to lengthen the duration of some temporary exhibitions; to convert one of our three temporary exhibition galleries into a long-run exhibition gallery; to reprioritise our budget

around our staged redevelopment goals; and to secure increased funding and more resources for MAGNT overall.

Converting the Flinders Gallery at Bullocky Point from a temporary exhibition space to a long-run exhibition space was sensible for two reasons: the Gallery was a rather cheap extension to Bullocky Point realised in 1992, which did not have the climatic stability of the original galleries; and, being upstairs without a lift, every installation and deinstallation required carrying collections up and down stairs, which is far from good-practice standards for a major museum.

Challenges There were challenges to realising our redevelopment vision anchored in revitalising our long- and short-term exhibitions for our diverse audiences. In April 2015, the then NT Government announced that it would be building a major art museum in Darwin, which would open in May 2017. However, MAGNT had no art curators when this announcement was made, and no funding was allocated to hire staff or commence exhibition planning for this new museum in the May budgets of 2015 or 2016.

A change of Government in September 2016 then saw the art museum project cancelled.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 41

However, within months a new art museum plan was announced, along with the building of a major history museum in Darwin. Yet again, no funding was provided in the May 2017 budget to MAGNT, either to hire staff to deliver these (now two) new museum projects or to commence exhibition planning for the installations and programs needed on opening. Then in April 2018, the NT Government cancelled the history museum plan.

Another challenge was that MAGNT had committed to deliver an exhibition of our outstanding early Papunya paintings by May 2017. The exhibition, which eventually would become Tjungunutja: from having come together, had no funds allocated for its development; neither was there adequate staff appointed to deliver the project. It was agreed that this exhibition should be on display during the 2017 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), when many Aboriginal art lovers descend on Bullocky Point.

Unfortunately, the gallery that shows NATSIAA each year was also the only temporary exhibitions gallery capable of hosting Tjungunutja. This dilemma expedited deinstallation of our already long-running Aboriginal exhibition; yet it had the unanticipated negative consequence of Bullocky Point not reducing MAGNT’s temporary exhibition galleries from three to two, but instead increasing them to four in all.

What has MAGNT achieved, and how have we combated all these challenges?

In late 2015, MAGNT received a one-off funding allocation of $598,000 from the NT Government.

This was followed by a recurrent increase in government-committed funding of $1,000,000 from 2016 onwards. Building on these achievements, we have since secured further funding from a range of other philanthropic and government sources. We re-established a Curator of Aboriginal Art position in October 2015, and a Curator of Australian Art position in March 2016. In March 2016 we also created a position of Assistant Director–Content and Innovation, to oversee implementation of redevelopment planning and delivery. Numerous other staffing positions were also created around this time. MAGNT was at last beginning to feel the new energies of increased capacity, which flows positively into all parts of the organisation, its programming and audience engagement — which should ultimately also benefit its income streams.

All four of the temporary exhibition galleries at Bullocky Point are now typically holding exhibitions of five-to-twelve months duration. Of the three smaller long-running exhibition galleries:

• The Ramp Gallery was partly redeveloped in late 2016, with plans for further redevelopment in 2019 and 2022; • The Seaview Lounge has changed from having a single cabinet to a full exhibition, Feeling for Pattern: 50 Years of Tiwi Pottery, which opened in March 2018; and • The Link Gallery has been combined with the larger Flinders Gallery and had a new exhibition, Unruly Days: Territory Life 1911–1921, open in June 2018.

We have recently commissioned a company to work with us on a reinterpreted Maritime Gallery for 2020.

At the MCA we replaced the Strehlow exhibition after 27 years with A Frontier Journey: photographs by Otto Tschirn 1915–1918, MAGNT’s first fully bilingual exhibition in May 2018. This exhibition, along with Tjungunutja, has seen MAGNT become a national leader in applying best-practice standards in the development of exhibitions in collaboration with Aboriginal communities.

MAGNT is working closely with the Northern Territory Government’s Department of Tourism and Culture — in particular, their Heritage Branch — towards delivering a major interpretive outcome at Fannie Bay Gaol. We have also commenced advocating for a redevelopment of the Defence of Darwin Experience, which opened in 2012, and may benefit from a 2022 reimagining.

MAGNT’s eight-year plan set in 2015, for the complete reinvigoration of our exhibitions, and new interpretation of our spaces, is now largely on track. [ ] Marcus Schutenko is Director of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) based in Darwin.

Text citation: Marcus Schutenko, ‘Reinvigoration through exhibition renewal’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn-Winter 2018, pp. 38–41.

42 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Embedding ecological sustainability and cultural communities in museum practice

Permaculture and the practice of restorative museology

Viviane Gosselin

Y

ou don’t need to be a gardener to find permaculture relevant to your life. As a museum professional, I am inspired by this approach to sustainable community building and living, and I believe it can further the work

top:

Visitors are invited to sit at the table while listening to the story of a Squamish hunting family. The narrator stressing the importance of land, sustainable local hunting to maintain traditional knowledge and values.

above:

Viviane Gosselin. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Blissett. far right:

Crowdsourced map indicating wildlife hotspots in Greater Vancouver, shown in the Engagement Room of Wild Things (2018). Photo courtesy of Rebecca Blissett.

we do.

While I’m certain that many of my Australian counterparts are familiar with this movement that first emerged and gained traction in your midst, a review of the literature suggests that very few colleagues, in or outside Australia, have considered integrating its guiding principles into museums’ core functions — or at least not explicitly so. I am not suggesting that museum scholars have overlooked the role of museums in climate change education;[1] rather, in this short paper I invite and challenge all of us to see how we can use a specific framework to devise a cohesive approach to sustainability education across our institutions.

Permaculture was developed in the mid-1970s by ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren[2] in response to the growing and interrelated crises of soil degradation, pollution and fossil fuel dependence.

Drawing on Indigenous and other traditional

cultures’ sustainable interactions with their natural environment, their approach advocates basing the design of human systems on natural systems.

Permaculture has expanded its original focus on agriculture to embrace all aspects of human life.

Rooted in ecological science and systems thinking, it now provides a design methodology for meeting human needs while also restoring and maintaining the health of natural ecosystems.

This holistic view of human activities and their environments is what makes permaculture thinking so compelling; it profiles the close interrelation between a wide range of issues shaping the museum field.

Embracing diversity in all its dimensions, becoming an inclusive and empathetic institution, Indigenising museum practice, greening exhibit design and architectural practice: all these objectives can be considered from the perspective of a permaculture framework.

Although science education by museums is critical in raising public awareness about climate change and enhancing people’s environmental consciousness, emerging museum initiatives and programs have pursued similar goals by highlighting the cultural, social and emotional dimensions of anthropogenic degradation of our life-sustaining natural systems.[3] While these museological developments are crucial and exciting,

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 43

I find myself wanting an encompassing framework to guide my actions and that of my museum colleagues from all departments, a framework that insists on the importance of considering nature and culture together as interdependent life-supporting systems.

The three core values and twelve principles of permaculture offer just such a guide. Following are the three core values that underpin permaculture and frame all key principles and actions: • Care for the earth (ensure healthy soil, forests and water); • Care for people (look after self, kin and community); • Fair share (limit consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus).

These core values, provide an encompassing ethics framework, and guide the application of twelve practical, elegant principles (see Table 1). They offer both inspiration and a practical road map, yet they are not prescriptive. Instead, as the proponents of permaculture stress, they must always be interpreted according to their context of use.

From the twelve principles we glean the importance of designing systems and concrete outcomes that curb consumerism, promote active observation of nature, honour the spirit of a place, respect and embrace difference in all its forms, and value small and incremental shifts toward sustainability. Attending to these principles makes for agile, responsive, and resilient museums and communities.

Progressive application of these values and principles in key human activities, or action domains, will sustain humanity through a process of energy descent, which requires a declining use of non-renewable energy.[4] Permaculture identifies seven domains of activity for the maintenance of human communities and their sustaining natural systems. These are: Land and Stewardship; Building; Tools and Technology; Education and Culture; Health and Spiritual Well-Being; Finances and Economics; and Land Tenure and Community Governance.[5]

Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives (Museum of Vancouver, 2018) The following section describes a recently-opened exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver (MOV), and uses the permaculture framework to tease out its ability to foster the development of a restorative museology, or museum practices invested in restoring the health, strength and resilience of communities.

With the study of the urban natural environment as a thematic focus for its programming, MOV is committed to fostering ecological literacy. Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives examines the relationship between urbanites and their natural surroundings, with particular attention to personal stories of encounters with nature. These first-person narratives are told through the eyes of nature lovers,

children, urban planners, and Indigenous knowledge holders. The exhibition capitalises on the power of storytelling to evoke the range of emotions associated with meeting nature face-to-face, of creating an intimate and poetic space for thinking about personal connections (and disconnections) with nature in the city.

At the same time, the exhibition underlines the precariousness of these relationships in the context of rapid environmental degradation. Interestingly, Wild Things’ narrative arc shifted during the concept phase of the exhibition’s development, when Indigenous collaborators demanded a change in focus and tone.

From an initial, gentle invitation to visitors to rethink their relationship with nature, exhibition messaging gained a more incisive momentum: challenging individuals to take responsibility for their natural surroundings; highlighting the relationship between environmental degradation and culturally determined world views of nature; and strongly advocating a closer and more holistic view of nature’s role in our lives.

Wild Things is the first MOV exhibition to embody sustainability also in its physical forms and materials.

This means that a significant portion of the exhibition was built from reclaimed construction materials.

Creating an exhibition within such parameters of re-use is the first step toward formalising a policy of extensive upcycling in the fabrication of all MOV exhibitions. This initiative is also supported by a municipal program that aims to create a no-waste city.[6] For our curatorial department and fabrication team, this shift toward a circular economy has required not only the development of more and new ways of sourcing exhibition materials, but also changes fundamental approaches in the design, construction and use of display units across multiple programs.

To reduce our consumption of raw materials, our fabrication team started to work closely with

1. A few references on this topic: Robert R. Janes, Museums Without Borders, Routledge, UK, 2016; Douglas Worts, ‘Planning for cultural relevance: A systems workshop at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’, in Systems Thinking in Museums: Theory and Practice, Yuha Jung & Ann Rowson Love (eds), Rowan & Littlefield, London, pp. 81–93.

See also the excellent advocacy work of the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice, at <https:// coalitionofmuseumsforclimatejustice. wordpress.com>.

2. See introduction in David Holmgren, Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (rev. ed.), Melliodora Publishing, Hepburn, Victoria, 2017.

3. Strong examples are cited in Jennifer Newell, Libby Robin & Kirsten Wehner (eds), Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change, Routledge, UK, 2016; and in Robert R. Janes, Museums Without Borders, Routledge, UK, 2016.

4. On the danger for museums in using marketplace logic to assess success, see Robert R. Janes, ‘Museums and the Responsibility Gap’, in Museums and the Past: Constructing Historical Consciousness, Viviane Gosselin & Phaedra Livingstone (eds), UBC Press, Vancouver, 2016, pp. 223–242.

5. Holmgren 2017. For an abbreviated/ free version, see The essence of permaculture, <https:// permacultureprinciples.com/ resources/free-downloads/>.

6. For more on this initiative, see Vancouver Economic Commission, Vancouver Upcycle Design Project, Vancouver Economic Commission, Vancouver, March 2016, <http:// www.vancouvereconomic.com/ wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ VUD-Action-Plan2.pdf>.

44 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Embedding ecological sustainability and cultural communities in museum practice

table

1. Principles of permaculture (left), as articulated by David Holmgren in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability,[7] and their application in Wild Things (right).

Principles

Application in Wild Things

1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

• A series of tours and workshops on bird watching, foraging, nature drawing, local geology, and outdoor survival skills teach adult and young visitors to observe and interact more fully in local parks.

2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.

• Surplus reclaimed material is stored for building future exhibitions (see Principle 5).

• A short film and live demonstrations show how to build a water garden by collecting and reusing rainwater.

3. Obtain a yield: A yield allows us to get truly useful rewards as part of the work we are doing.

• A large advisory group of Indigenous people, city planners, environmental education scholars, forestry professionals, public health specialists and upcyclers increases and consolidates our network of environmental educators.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.

• Feedback shows that some content contributors were unable to meet the production deadlines, which made them feel inadequate. In response, exhibition planning creates more realistic timelines for deliverables with the same contributors for upcoming exhibitions.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services: We can use nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.

• A significant portion of the exhibition (80%) is built from reclaimed materials from the film and textile industries.

6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, we ensure that nothing goes to waste.

• A deconstruction plan details the future use of various exhibit units after the exhibition ends.

7. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

• Through dialogue and community consultation, two types of experience emerge when assessing people’s relationship with nature in and around the city: visceral/emotional and analytical.

This realisation informs the exhibition design.

8. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, we create relationships between those things and they work together to support each other.

• Rather than creating a discrete section dedicated to Indigenous perspectives on nature, their voices are integrated throughout.

9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones; they make better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes.

• Wild Things builds from and expands on content, aesthetics and interpretive approaches developed in Rewilding Vancouver — a previous exhibition featuring historical ecological concepts.

10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a • After representatives of Indigenous communities identify a need variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the to provide their youth with meaningful work experience, the environment in which it resides. exhibition becomes a training ground for Indigenous youth who then also support program delivery.

• The diversity of the advisory group helps identify blind spots and strengthens the interpretive program.

11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is • Some content gems in the exhibition develop during casual where the most interesting events take place. These are often the rather than formal conversations over coffee with Indigenous most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system. knowledge holders. These insights provide learning for our wider engagement of Indigenous communities.

12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

• MOV becomes a player in the eco-design community (see Principles 5 and 6). In collaboration with local architecture and design schools, MOV is organising a forum on the teaching of eco-design principles in school curricula.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 45

left: Promotional poster for Wild Things entitled Oblivion (2018). Part of a series of images conveying the complex and at times perplexing relationship urbanites have with nature.

Photo courtesy of Chad Manley. below:

Young and old climbing and peeking through holes to look at (taxidermy) bird specimens – current and extirpated species.

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Blissett.

the deconstruction community — businesses and organisations committed to sorting, cleaning up, redistributing and reselling construction materials.

In examining Wild Things from a permaculture framework, we can now squarely locate the project within the domain of Education and Culture: the project supports multiple learnings about people’s own natural environment including their role in restoring it. However, the project can also be viewed as belonging to other domains, namely Tools and Technology, and Building. Viewing Wild Things through the lens of the 12 guiding principles also helps tease out numerous ways the exhibition project fosters sustainable thinking, and this can also help us consider and advance curatorial practice more broadly from a permaculture perspective. The principles can apply to planning, implementation, and assessment of all aspects of museum operations — for example, hiring and training strategies, conservation work, collection planning, gift shop streams, and other activities.

Conclusion The potential of permaculture’s core values, principles and domains to further the museum’s social and environmental justice work is worth investigating.

This brief excursion into its applications suggests that permaculture affords museum professionals a holistic, systematic and pragmatic approach to thinking about our work and wider contribution to civil society. [ ]

Viviane Gosselin is curator of contemporary culture and director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Vancouver, Canada. She presented a plenary session on MOV’s recent program developments at the National Conference of Museums Galleries Australia, in June 2018, in Melbourne, from which the present article has been developed.

Text citation: Viviane Gosselin, ‘Permaculture and the practice of restorative museology’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn-Winter 2018, pp. 42–45.

7. Vancouver Economic Commission, as above.

46 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

Reimagining inclusion/exclusion in museums

Shake the Foundations

Simon Chaplin and Brian Lobel

D above:

Simon Chaplin and Brian Lobel presenting at the Museums Galleries Australia National Conference (4-7 June 2018, Melbourne). Photo: Joel Checkley, Tiny Empire Collective.

uring the Museums Galleries Australia Conference (in Melbourne, in June 2018), we took the opportunity of our Shake The Foundations presentation to reflect on absence: on who is absent, on why they are absent, and on what is at stake when they are absent.

Central to this work was a performance of Austerity Cu ts, a text written by an anonymous disabled writer.

It was originally presented as a performance where the artist was not allowed to be present, visible or credited for their writing. The emphasis was placed on the compulsory absence which affects not only this one particular person but is representative of the treatment of thousands of disabled and sick people in the UK. Austerity Cu ts was developed after an online dialogue with this artist who was unable to participate fully in The Sick of the Fringe — the festival of performance, theatre and art (that Brian co-directs in London), and was originally commissioned by Wellcome Collection (that Simon directs at the Wellcome Trust in London).

In The Sick of the Fringe performance, the artist was unable to participate (or be named as a participant) for a number of reasons — none of which was because of a lack of passion, but all having everything to do with the current Disability Benefits System in the UK and its draconian, privatised and corporatised methods of assessment. These assessments have had and continue to have savage impacts on the lives, mental health, and dignity of disabled people throughout the UK. The creator of Austerity Cu ts insisted that their absence be felt in our written presentation as well, so we mark this gap with the following blank space.

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 47

The theme of comfort and control — and issues about who challenges and who gets to be challenged — is one museums can’t ignore

Simon and Brian come to understandings of audiences and absence from different perspectives.

Brian I developed my perspective as a cancer patient who, from the moment of diagnosis, realised that my life, my concerns, my outlooks were absent from the discourses available to most cancer patients. And perhaps it was because I was already a stroppy artist at 20 years old, but I faced this absence head-on.

After cancer, I was regularly asked if I was feeling ‘back to normal’, as if Normal was a place I could go back to, as if Normal was a destination that, when I finally got there, would mean that all of my problems, worries, fears and pains were gone. In my most generous moods, I understood that people asked this question because they cared how my body was feeling in relation to my treatment and that Normal, to them, meant physically healed. In my least generous moods, I felt that people asked if I was back to Normal in hopes that I would no longer mention my illness. That it was more pleasant for them if we didn’t have to discuss it. That their reality wouldn’t have to stretch to include ill-health, fragility, vulnerability.

I often reference a 2010 New York Times photoessay, ‘Picture Your Life After Cancer’, as a turning-point in my understanding. ‘For the estimated 12 million cancer survivors in the United States’, it reports, ‘some of life’s biggest challenges begin after the treatment ends’. The NYT photo collection is clearly focused on positive outcomes, asserting that, ‘the cancer experience can lead to a shift in priorities, bring new insights or work as a catalyst to quit a job or try something new’. And most of the photographs deliver accordingly, with images of the Eiffel Tower, snow-peaked mountains or cycling races dominating the landscape, and each accompanied by 50–100 words of explanation.

In the blog below the photos, however, readers

are able to submit comments on ‘Picture Your Life After Cancer’. The majority of these comments are devoted to individuals promoting their cancer blogs or expanding, in hundreds if not thousands of words, on the information in their photo-submission. Inside these margins, a singular voice stood out. In the most pithy response to the article, a woman identifying herself only as Claire writes, ‘Cancer ruined my fertility and my sex life. I was 26 when diagnosed. Life sucks now. Not what you were looking for?’ When I saw Claire’s short statement, I felt gut-punched, I felt this woman’s pain, her anger, and I identified with her — not for a ruined sex life (I’m fine), but in being the weird one, the obnoxious one, the contrarian one.

I knew at this moment that I was not the only person who was negatively affected by the world’s hunt for Normal.

After seeing Claire’s statement in ‘Picture Your Life After Cancer’, I committed to collecting the contrary, the angry, the uninspirational voices of health and disability more broadly. The voices so burdened by not only the physical thing of health, but also all of the crap surrounding it. So, I made shows where audience members with stigmatised bodies sat in a spa and talked about feeling beautiful. I made shows where terminally-ill patients sought intimacy advice from sex toy sellers. I made spaces where patients could force their reluctant neighbours into a conversation about their health, or women with breast cancer histories could make online dating profiles that warned lovers about scarred bodies, or army veterans and cancer patients could play videogames against each other in hopes of finally determining who can battle harder. The more I celebrated with how not-normal other people were, the more I felt safe in my own sense of feeling like an outsider.

And now this is my work, and the work (along with my co-director Tracy Gentles’ work) with The Sick of the Fringe: to collect, support and promote the voices in the margins of health and society. The people

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Reimagining inclusion/exclusion in museums

right:

CANCER DEATH MATCH is a war of epic proportions waged by cancer patients and former servicepeople/ex-military. The real enemy in our sights: the ridiculous usage of war imagery used to discuss illness and disease. Come to CANCER DEATH MATCH and shout your loudest YOU CAN BEAT IT, your most gruesome battle language, and demonstrate your aggressive positivity at our players, and then go home, and try to never again use this disastrous language. Beyond belittling the real violence and trauma caused by armed conflict, war metaphors and body-as-battleground language blends victimblaming with often-unrealistic expectations and lazy empathy, and are scientifically proven to be unhelpful and distressing to people with cancer. Illustration

by Jason Elvis Barker. Created for Forest Fringe at Latitude Festival.

whom your organisations might think are beyond the remit, outside the territory. I hope that The Sick of the Fringe is a genuine reflection of our desire to see the potential in every voice. Even the voices that are not here. Yet. Of course, so many of these conversations are unpleasant and difficult and even sometimes disturbing. They sometimes make staff members upset or question their employers or employment; they sometimes demand that extra resources be provided for audience members for post-show care; they sometimes make an organisation take on a political point of view that might make them feel uncomfortable — wading into territory that they hadn’t hoped to be in.

As a curator, though, I am spurred on by remembering that feeling of being a 20-year-old boy with cancer who saw nothing of comfort, nothing that spoke to me and my cynicism and my queerness and my dissatisfaction. In ‘Picture Your Life After Cancer’, underneath Claire’s statement are a number of blog posts that each start with the words: ‘I agree with Claire.’ All of these other people started their engagement with the NYT site by finding a voice that represented them. A voice who was angry, dissatisfied, unhappy, sad. You can almost imagine these people scrolling down the blog, eyes rolling, rage building, until they found a voice of relief. It’s not the happiest of communities to be a part of… but it certainly is a community. And it only takes one bold voice to say: ‘I am here. See me. Hear me. Join me.’

It is these people, and the still-absent, that I’m most inspired by, and for whom I make my work.

Simon As Brian notes, we’ve approached the issue of absence and audience from different points. For me, a starting-point is what we are as an organisation.

Wellcome Collection is a museum and library that seeks to challenge how we think and feel about health. The ‘we’ is important: We are part of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, known mostly for its work supporting biomedical research. Wellcome Collection’s role is not to project Wellcome’s views out to the world, but to invite others in. This means that we spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be inclusive, and about who is absent. In this context, absence isn’t just about who doesn’t come to the venue, but who doesn’t feel that they can come.

For my part, it also makes me think carefully about what it means to be comfortable or uncomfortable in an environment. One of the striking things about being part of The Sick of the Fringe was not the moments when I was swept away by the fun or exuberance of the festival (and there was plenty of fun and exuberance), but the moments of profound discomfort. Sitting listening to Austerity Cu ts was one such moment. Watching artist and activist Busty Beatz lead a weekend of events challenging colonialist narratives in our galleries was another. But one that stayed with me most was part of an event called Weird Séance, a piece of participatory theatre described by its creator, Daniel Oliver, as ‘raucously deconstructionist, roughly layered participatory performances about participatory performance’. The shows embrace Daniel’s dyspraxia, ‘embracing [his]

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 49

lightly off-kilter relationship with co-ordination, social interaction and executive planning’.

Daniel’s show is, at times, very funny. It plays on the idea of participatory performance. It involves people getting swept into the performance. Some of them get really into it. Some of them end up naked. It wasn’t this that made me uncomfortable though. Instead it was when Daniel — who introduces himself to the audience as dyspractic — starts smashing a chair with an axe in the middle of a crowded room. I realised that sudden and intimate displays of physical violence take me well out of my comfort zone, and not just for reasons of health and safety.

The theme of comfort and control — and issues about who challenges and who gets to be challenged — is one museums can’t ignore. Sharp questions spring up: Who doesn’t feel able to be, or is prevented from being, part of our museums, let alone able to offer challenge to what we do? When we create inclusive spaces, how do we avoid them becoming sterile and reductively consensual? And when we do create platforms for provocation and critique, how do we make sure these messages are heard outside the echo-chamber that cultural venues sometimes become? Even more importantly, how do we make sure that some of this listening leads to action?

Like many museums, Wellcome Collection has embraced the model of inclusive museum-making.

Our recent exhibition A Museum of Modern Nature was curated from objects donated by the public through an open call, as well as an artwork created through a community arts project. For This is a Voice, which was developed with and toured to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, we worked with a group of young people with experience of auditory hallucination — voice-hearing — to curate a section of the show. In our Reading Room — a hybrid museum/library/event space — we have Open Platform, a light-touch process that enables people to propose and run their own public events.

The approach of seeking out diverse voices feeds into and informs our collecting too. The acquisition of several thousand works created by patients in the Netherne Psychiatric Hospital under the care of the pioneer art therapist, Edward Adamson, is one of our most significant. It has raised questions — explored through a series of public workshops in our Reading Room — as to how we should approach cataloguing, display and publication of works created in a context in which agency and control were routinely denied to their artist-authors.

This is all great stuff. I am proud of the work we do, of my team and the relationships we build. Yet we can also see how much more we need to do, in terms of creating a more open environment.

above:

Daniel Oliver, Weird Séance, SPILL Festival of Performance 2016. Photo: Guido Mencar.

left:

Watercolour by Helen Greig, painted at Netherne Hospital, 1966. Image credit: Helen Greig/Adamson Collection/ Wellcome Collection.

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Reimagining inclusion/exclusion in museums

Looping back to the start: I realised that what should have been making me uncomfortable in the Weird Séance event wasn’t Daniel’s spontaneous act of destruction, or the fact that an angry woman of colour was live-tweeting on our social media account and encouraging people to eat the head of Henry Wellcome, our founder (albeit in cake form).

It was the need for this to be more than an occasional divergence from the norm. I don’t know what it is like to ALWAYS feel out of place in, or worse still excluded from, a museum. Unlike the artist behind Austerity Cu ts, I don’t know what it is like to be prevented from being present because of regressive laws or policies prevailing. This is what makes me uncomfortable, the whole time.

I’m struck by something written by Danny Birchall, our Digital Manager, about Busty’s decolonisation of Wellcome Collection: Some of us had to check ourselves for how comfortable we were with how uncomfortable it made us feel — it’s better to see this as the beginning of a journey for us into how we think about our collections and displays, rather than the completion of a critique.

One of the ways we can loosen our restraints and let go is by working with trusted intermediaries, who can act as negotiators, translators and, on occasion, transgressors of rules and boundaries. This recognises that ultimately it is hard to push ourselves out of our comfort zones consistently.

Having others who can push, and when necessary speak for those who are prevented from speaking for themselves, is vital. And even then, we will still find ourselves pushing at forms of exclusion that aren’t directly of our making, but which arise from structural inequalities and punitive legislation.

The anger, unhappiness and frustration that Brian talks about within his community isn’t something for us to sample and enjoy. It is something we need to support, to amplify and, ultimately, to find ways to change.

Some final questions (from the author of Austerity Cu ts) How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present fill out a feedback form?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present become a participant?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present buy things from your museum?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present drink soy lattes at your museum?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present become a Board Member?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present become a protestor?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present have their work shown?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present make anything worth sharing?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present ever be more than a box ticked?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present teach others?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present learn from your museum?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present share their experience with you?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present be seen as human in your museum?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present feel human in your museum?

How can anyone who is never able or allowed to be present be compensated for their work on a presentation about your museum? [ ]

Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018 51

Simon Chaplin is a curator and public historian. He is Director of Culture and Society at the Wellcome Trust, and Director of Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that seeks to challenge how we all think and feel about health. He began his museum career at the Science Museum in London and before joining Wellcome was Director of Museums & Special Collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Brian Lobel is a performer, teacher and curator who creates work about bodies and how they are watched, policed, prodded and loved by others. Lobel shows work internationally in a range of contexts, from medical schools to museums, marketplaces to forests, blending provocative humour with insightful reflection. He is a Reader in Theatre at University of Chichester, Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow, Core Artist for Forest Fringe, and Co-Director of The Sick of the Fringe festival.

Text citation: ‘Shake the Foundations with Simon Chaplin and Brian Lobel’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn-Winter 2018, pp. 46–51.

above:

Visitors to the Wellcome Collection's We Are The Latest Models of our Ancestors, commissioned for, and presented at, The Sick of the Fringe, London 2017, were invited to eat founder Henry Wellcome's head. Photo: Manuel Vason.

52 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

The challenges of building a world archive of languages

Towards an online museum of languages: Digitising records of the world’s 7,000 languages

Nick Thieberger

top:

Mould affected tape from the Solomon Islands Museum.

above:

Nick Thieberger.

What happens if you see a hole in the GLAM fabric that needs patching? We were in that position in 2002 as we looked at all the analog tape recordings made by our forebears — linguists, musicologists and ethnographers. No agency in Australia took responsibility for these analog tapes — hundreds of hours of recordings of stories, music, songs, ceremonies, from the Pacific, PNG, and Asia. These tapes were in basements, in filing cabinets, or within the deceased estate materials of former academic researchers who were mostly publicly funded and whose research outputs their universities had ostensibly undertaken to store in the long term.

We had great help from the NFSA and the NLA in determining what metadata and equipment standards were required, and we applied for Australian Research Council (ARC) funding for a year to help us build research infrastructure. With that, we started building an archive, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).

PARADISEC is a completely digital archive that is a collaboration between the University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, and the ANU. We are grateful to national storage and network programs like AARNet, GrangeNet, NCI, RDSI, ANDS, and

Nectar that have supported our work over time. In 16 years the archive has grown to 46 terabytes, and contains material from 1,175 languages, now including more than 8,500 hours of audio recordings. While the initial focus was on the region around Australia, the collection now holds material from anywhere in the world. It is a significant collection that has been entered into the UNESCO Memory of the World register for preservation of intangible cultural heritage.

In the past, recordings were on analog tape, reels or cassettes. These tapes are becoming unplayable as the media deteriorates. A further problem for listening to these tapes is that as older delivery technologies have dropped out there are fewer and fewer playback machines available. We have been working with agencies in the Pacific, the Solomon Islands Museum, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and the Divine Word University in Madang, to digitise their tapes. In each case, the tapes are an important symbol of local oral tradition as well as being a significant record in themselves, but they have often not been listened to for some time since there is no local playback equipment. Once we are able to digitise such tapes we send back a hard disk of the recordings, and also make them available via our online collection — subject to whatever access terms are specified.

While the initial motivation for our archival work

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was digitising analog tapes and building a system for adding new recordings, while cataloging and making them accessible, we soon began including digital records from current researchers. In fact, we are now advocating novel research practices in which recordings are archived as close to the time of their creation as possible, allowing them to have a persistent citation form that can be used in the research process.

Data citation and verification is becoming increasingly important to ensure research integrity.

However, to be citable, research data needs to have persistent identification in an accessible repository.

It also needs to have clear access conditions — so every collection incorporated in PARADISEC now has a deposit form to be filled out by the depositor or their executor. All users of the catalog sign in first to get access to any files, and so accept the access conditions we specify. We licence all metadata using Creative Commons and assert the moral rights of the performers and/or rightful knowledge custodians.

Given that PARADISEC holds records made up to 70 years ago in one or more of over 1,175 languages, we cannot – as managers today – know the sensitive content of some of the recordings. Therefore, we also apply a ‘takedown’ principle, in case a member of a source community finds anything in the collection that should be closed. Our catalog home page has the following wording: The catalog entry for an item is usually written by the depositor, and some are more detailed than others. In the case of collections that we have digitised from deceased researchers, we do the best we can to describe the records, but often there is little information available. By placing these items in the collection we hope that other researchers will enrich the descriptions as they use the material.

We believe the rights in the material presented in this collection have been cleared by the depositors.

Please let us know if you think that is not the case for any particular item.

We have three digitisation units: in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Our online system (a Ruby on Rails application called Nabu) allows upload of the files to a directory where their filenames and formats are checked to ensure they conform to our requirements. Audio files are moved to be processed into Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) and mp3 files; text or image files are moved straight into the collection; and video is sent for transcoding into mp4, mxf, and JPEG2000. We are sent reports on success or failure of the transfers. A nightly backup of all files to QCIF in Brisbane keeps an offsite copy, and we periodically do a disaster recovery from that backup

above:

100 tapes are returned to the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta after being digitised.

left:

Dr Nick Thieberger (R) plays audio of the Koita language near Port Moresby to Koitabuan E’ava Geita (L). The feeling of knowing that your language has been documented or recorded in a structured way, kept safely somewhere in the world, and then hearing it spoken from 50–60 years ago and by people you haven’t seen but whose names you only hear in history, is quite incredible, says Mr Geita. There are only some 2,000 speakers of Koita. Photo: Rachel Nordlinger.

to ensure it is all working. The database is also backed up weekly.

There are three APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) from the catalog. One is the collectionlevel feed primarily for Research Data Australia and the National Library’s TROVE. The second is an OAI-PMH feed that is aimed at the Open Language Archives Community, a service that aggregates records from some 60 language archives worldwide.

The third is a general API using GraphQL. All of these tools and operations, in combination, aim to maximise the discoverability of items in the collection.

In order to explore the contents of the PARADISEC collection, we recently worked on a virtual reality installation we called Glossopticon, which was

54 Museums Galleries Australia Magazine – Vol. 26(2) – Autumn-Winter 2018

The challenges of building a world archive of languages

bottom:

A user experiencing the Glossopticon at the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery in December 2016. Image courtesy Andrew Burrell.

displayed at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in late 2016. We extracted 20-second snippets of audio from within selected items, and then — using the catalog’s metadata, which includes geographic reference — we were able to plot the location of each snippet and present a topographic map of the Pacific with shards of light projecting from the earth to the sky, each of these representing a language.

Flying through this universe of languages permits the user to hear these snippets, getting louder as you approach and fading away as you pass by. Some information about a particular language, number of speakers, and how much associated information is recorded, is also presented. The Glossopticon has attracted a great deal of attention and is now in further development as a framework that can continue to absorb more snippets from researchers,

custodians and archivists.

The value and potential for ongoing enrichment of the PARADISEC archive, by making it as discoverable as possible, was made clear when we had a request some time ago from Diana Looser — then a PhD candidate in Theatre at Cornell University in the USA, who was writing a dissertation on Oceanic theatre and drama. Looser was seeking access to a play that was listed in our catalogue but existed nowhere else that she could find. In his collection TD1, the linguist Tom Dutton had included a tape of playwright Albert Toro’s Sugarcane Days, recorded from Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio Port Moresby in 1979. Looser subsequently transcribed this tape and prepared the only extant version of the original script, which she then redeposited in the PARADISEC collection. This re-use of research material in new

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ways can only be achieved if this material is stored in accessible locations, with licences for use in place and supported by a catalogue that provides sufficient information to allow an item to be located.

PARADISEC is building a museum of languages, and we would like to explore how to build on existing models like Mundolingua (Paris, France) [1] or the National Museum of Ethnology, Minpaku (Osaka, Japan).[2] While our main tasks currently are the accession, description and curation of primary records, we know that these resources include wonderful performances that deserve to reach wider audiences. []

Dr Nick Thieberger is a linguist who works with languages of Vanuatu and Australia and is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Victoria. He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language.

Acknowledgment The Glossopticon project is an ongoing collaboration between PARADISEC and Rachel Hendery and Andrew Burrell, whose work is gratefully acknowledged.

Text citation: Nick Thieberger, ‘Towards an online museum of languages: Digitising records of the world’s 7,000 languages’, Museums Galleries Australia Magazine, Vol. 26(2), Museums Galleries Australia, Canberra, Autumn-Winter 2018, pp. 52–55.

http://www.minpaku.ac.jp/english/ museum/exhibition/main/language http://www.mundolingua.org/

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