MAM Vol 22(3) Autumn 2014

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Islamic Museum of Australia opens in Melbourne

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Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 5

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6 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Contents

In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2013—2015 President’s Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

president

Frank Howarth PSM (Director, Australian Museum, Sydney)

Spotlight on two colleagues honoured by the Order of Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . 8

vice-president

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

Islamic Museum of Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

treasurer

Ediacara Gallery: a new collection display at the South Australian Museum . . . . . . 13

secretary

Suzanne Bravery (Independent museum consultant) Dr Mat Trinca (Acting Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) members

Touring the Cream: Sharing Rockhampton’s remarkable art legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Dr Andrew Simpson (Director, Museum Studies Program, Macquarie University, Sydney) Carol Cartwright (Former Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra)

Rethinking university museums: Material collections and the changing world of higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Padraic Fisher (Director, National Wool Museum, Geelong)

Medical Museion, Copenhagen: A university museum reinventing its contemporary mission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Pierre Arpin (Director, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northen Territory, Darwin)

International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2013 (Washington). . . . . . . 28

Peter Abbott (Manager, Tourism Services, Warrnambool City Council, Victoria)

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

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

Sustainability and Environmental Guidelines for Collections: AICCM’s interim position . . . . 32

Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 COVER IMAGE: Exterior of the Islamic Museum of Australia. Architects: Desypher.

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

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

© Museums Australia and individual authors.

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

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

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

Museums Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation: Australian Government Office for the Arts and Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities; National Museum of Australia; Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum); Western Australian Museum; and Link Digital (Canberra).

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

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

ACT Alex Marsden (Strategic Advisor, Australian Centre for Excellence in Public Sector Design, PMC, Canberra) NSW Dr Andrew Simpson (Director, Museum Studies Program, Macquarie University, Sydney) NT Janie Mason (Charles Darwin University Nursing Museum, Darwin) QLD Edith Cuffe OAM (Director, Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Caboolture) SA Regan Forrest (PhD Candidate, Adelaide) TAS Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) VIC Daniel Wilksch (Coordinator, Digital Projects, Public Record Office Victoria, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Manager, Western Australian Museum, Perth)

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 7

President’s Message

Frank Howarth

O

ne particular article in a recent edition of the online newsletter The Conversation caught my eye. In essence it was about the issue of arts organisations accepting sponsorship from oil companies. The same issue was canvassed in a very recent Review section of the Weekend Australian, which took a wider view than just oil companies, and it argued that British-style protests against such sponsorship are on the rise in Australia. Both articles highlight two themes. One is ethics: what are the ethics of who we do and don’t accept support from? The second is the reality of declining government funding and how we replace that with other sources of support. Both are issues we increasingly need to grapple with.

Another ethics issue has been a hot topic in some media for quite a while, and that is the question of provenance of material acquired by cultural institutions. While the media attention has focussed on a few major institutions, ethical collecting and acquisition is something that confronts all of us.

That war souvenir taken from an enemy soldier by a grandparent: Is it ethical to keep it? Probably yes, if it’s a piece of uniform; but what if it was a diary, or letters from that soldier’s family? I think the ethics of collecting is going to become a bigger issue for all of us, and this is an area where MA can and will do more, in particular looking at how MA’s ethical guidelines stand up in an increasingly digital world.

Over the last few months, I’ve been visiting most State and Territory branches to find out what issues are top of your mind, and both the funding and ethics issues have come up in conversations. But the most frequently mentioned issues have been around how MA directly benefits its members. I’m getting the message loud and clear that we are a professional membership organisation, and members need to see the benefits of that.

The most common member issue raised has been around skills development and training ­­­— not so much at the university level but at the vocational training level – targeted to day-to-day needs of members in all sizes of organisations, and available all across Australia. Such training will need to be at an accessible level in terms of cost and time. While some such training is already carried out in some areas, I don’t believe it’s widely enough available nor of a uniform national standard. MA’s Professional Development Committee will be looking hard at these issues to see what we need in content and delivery mechanisms (web-based? face-to-face?) and who we might partner with to develop and deliver such training?

A number of other issues are commonly being raised. Accreditation of museums and galleries, and

of industry professionals, is a complex issue with no clear consensus as to what to do. One recurring comment is that in some jurisdictions accreditation standards are set at an exemplary level, but are perceived to be so onerous that most organisations don’t apply. I think there might be a problem with that approach. Again, this issue needs more work if we are to have any sort of consistent national approach to training and standards.

Communication between members, and the related issue of MA in the digital age, both came up frequently, and on both fronts we need to do more.

The American Alliance of Museums has set a high standard here and one we might learn from.

On a different note, one of the other very good things that has happened recently is the coming together on several issues of the four museum and gallery peak bodies: Museums Australia, the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD), the Council of Australian Art Museum Directors (CAAMD), and ICOM Australia. Speaking with one voice on key issues has enabled us to engage with the Commonwealth Arts Minister George Brandis, and with his Ministry for the Arts. We have also developed a joint position on the ethics of collection acquisitions and provenance standards. This is now on the MA website as a useful short guideline for all. But there is much more that the four organisations can achieve in working together more closely.

Of course one of our most important communication avenues is the annual MA National Conference, and this year’s meeting in Launceston is shaping up to be excellent. The organising committee have created a very diverse program, guaranteeing rich parallel sessions and strong keynote speakers.

A feature of the 2013 Conference has been taken forward in 2014, and each MA Conference will now have an in-built Mentorship component, ensuring greater contacts, presentations and networking for younger colleagues while building stronger support for their future in the sector.

Planning is well underway for next year’s conference in Sydney, and it too will be very good. Use the conferences to feed your views to MA. Chase down MA Council members and tell us what you expect from your organisation. [ ] Frank Howarth PSM National President, Museums Australia

8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Outstanding museums sector and community service recognised in Australia Day Awards 2014

Spotlight on two colleagues honoured by the Order of Australia

William (Bill) Storer AM

B

orn in Newcastle, for most of his working life a school teacher, then later serving in reserve strands of the Army, it is fair to say that Bill Storer gave little thought to museums or how they went about their business in the first half of his life. This changed sharply after a midcareer turn when he was posted in 1991 as Registrar of the Army Museum of New South Wales, located at Victoria Barracks in Sydney.

This new work setting and need to understand collections caused Bill to undertake museology training. He soon gained a strong interest in the situation of diverse historic heritage collections around Australia, often in out-of-the-way places and facing similar concerns. This entailed small, often volunteermanaged museums facing skills-needs and resource challenges that could be addressed through shared training. Eventually Bill came to be Chair of the MA Community Museums National Network, as well as Chair of Museums Australia (NSW).

An expansive disposition and interest in the historical resources that museums provide to their communities led Bill further into national activities. He chaired the Organising Committee for the National Conference of Museums Australia realised in Newcastle in 2009.

Although held in a regional centre rather than a capital city, the Newcastle Conference proved to be one of the most successful MA Conferences (including financially) for many years. Through Bill’s personal commitment and consultation with elders of the Awabakal Aboriginal community, and subsequent federal advocacy for bursaries, the 2009 conference also realised the largest participation ever by Indigenous participants in an MA National Conference.

Training became the focus of Bill Storer’s later service in the museums sector. More than a decade ago he took note of some community-based training initiatives undertaken in regional Queensland, to help train groups of volunteers looking after collections in far north communities. In recognising these workshop-based activities, and their potential to be translated to a national level, Bill Storer became a steady advocate for developing a Regional and Remote Training program – for regional representatives drawn from all over Australia, and as an adjunct to national conferences.

As a result of his advocacy, the ‘R+R Training programs’ of MA – today incorporating ‘Community Museums’ in the title – became a regular extension of the annual Conferences organised by Museums Australia. This program has also consistently attracted Commonwealth support over a decade – in targeted grant-funding for bursaries to ensure broad regional participation, and often a first-time introduction for such delegates to the sector’s national gatherings.

Along with a changing team of colleagues, Bill has brought together beneficiaries of this volunteer- and community-focused training from far-flung parts of Australia. And he has ensured that larger museums in capital cities open their institutions to provide ‘bestpractice’ workshops for community-based colleagues seeking appropriate skills and knowledge for their local collections care. Bill also ensured community-museums awareness of evolving National Standards for the sector.

Bill served on the National Council of Museums Australia in various capacities for more than eight years, finally as Secretary and Chair of the Governance Committee. When he stepped down from Council in May 2013, the decision was taken to make him an Honorary Life Member of Museums Australia.

Bill Storer gained his highest honour for museumssector service nationally when he was announced as a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list of January 2014.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 9

William (Bill) Patrick Hopkins OAM

B

Bill Hopkins stepped down as President of the Fort Scratchley Historical Society (FSHS) in June 2012, having served in this role for more than 13 years. In addition to collaborative steerage with the Newcastle City Council of a major development and upgrade project for the Fort, under Bill’s leadership the Society membership increased five-fold to currently more than 250, of which more than 80 are active volunteers at the Fort Scratchley site facility.

In conjunction with the Newcastle City Council as owner of the site, the FSHS has the responsibility for the presentation of Fort Scratchley as a prime Newcastle historical and tourist centre. The Society provides tour guides, operates a shop, and manages a museum illustrating the history of the site from both Aboriginal and European perspectives.

When Bill Hopkins was elected FSHS President in 1999, Fort Scratchley was still under control of the Commonwealth Government while being urgently in need of refurbishment. In 2002 the Fort was dedicated to the serving and ex-servicemen and women of Australia by Prime Minister John Howard and started to gain new life. In 2003 a submission to the Commonwealth eventually achieved $9.6 million in funding for a refurbishment program that commenced in 2004 and was completed in 2007.

The Fort reopened to the public in 2008, and was handed over to Newcastle City Council by the Commonwealth, with the Fort Scratchley Historical Society continuing to conduct activities on the site. Since 2008 Bill has overseen planning and opening of the initial rooms of the Fort as a museum. On completion, the museum will illustrate the various phases of the Fort’s history, from early settlement to the opening of the Fort to the public in 1882, and subsequent development to the present day.

Bill’s presidency and advocacy of Fort Scratchley’s place in Newcastle’s history have drawn on his previous experience as a union leader and later Senior Commissioner in the NSW Compensation Court.

In recognition of his long-standing community service, Bill Hopkins was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List, January 2014. [ ]

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Islamic Museum of Australia opens in Melbourne

Islamic Museum of Australia

ABOVE: Helen Light.

Photograph by Ponch Hawkes.

LEFt: Exterior of the Islamic Museum of Australia.

Architects: Desypher. Photo: Courtesy of the IMA.

Helen Light

T

he Islamic Museum of Australia opened to the public on 3 March 2014, after many years of careful planning, detailed consultations, successful fundraising and development of public awareness.

The Museum is in a strikingly beautiful customdesigned building, with specifically blended Islamic and Australian features developed around a warehouse shell. Its outer structure is clad in Australian-made Corten Steel, rusting naturally, which is perforated with holes referencing Indigenous dot paintings.

However the dots actually depict Muslim Australian history when the light shines through their holes.

Significantly this is described by the institution's personnel as the museum's ‘veil’. On the building’s exterior are also panels bearing Arabic calligraphy.

Within an enclosed courtyard beyond the entrance one comes across a billabong, which again is a clearly Australian reference as well as an acknowledgement of the importance of water in Islam. The billabong is juxtaposed with a ‘prophet tree’ rendered on a glass panel, outlining the relationship between Mohammed and the prophets and leaders from Jewish and Christian traditions, and establishing a structure of connections depicted as a tree. Visitors then cross a Bridge of Faith before entering the Museum galleries.

Much of the interior of the Museum is defined by a compressed wood structure, incorporating repetition of the incised dot-patterns that decorate the steel skin of the building.

The Museum is clearly and logically divided into five permanent exhibitions. These are dedicated to the themes of Islamic Faith; the Islamic Contribution to

Civilization; Islamic Art; Islamic Architecture; and the Australian Muslim Gallery.

The design of the permanent galleries is notable for their impact of clarity and restraint. The organisers have admirably avoided cluttering these spaces, enabling visitors a measured and informative exploration of what it means to be a Muslim in Australia. Each gallery is cleverly sign-posted in a specially featured but quiet colour, albeit against a consistently white background.

In the first gallery, dealing with Islamic Faith, one learns about the 5 Pillars of Faith and the 6 Articles of Religion. Many of the commonly held misconceptions about Islam are addressed, clearly and simply. There is a short video about the role of women in Islam.

Not many objects are used, but those presented are well chosen. There is an informative and evocative multimedia presentation leading off this space, with the theme of following a pilgrimage to the Hajj.

The second gallery highlights how Muslims have enriched western civilisation through their contributions to science, literature, astronomy, engineering, and writing. For instance, the main medical textbook used in Europe for 700 years was written by Ibn Sina; meanwhile Ibn Al-Haitham invented the pinhole camera and became the father of optics. This gallery features many interesting objects and much valuable information. It is dominated by the presence of a chess-board with which children will be encouraged to play, as a homage to the Muslim origins of this game.

The Islamic Art Gallery seeks to make connections between the past and the future, to show that expression of Islam in Australia has as much relevance today as the presentation of the historical art objects. The curator explained to visitors at the time of opening that Islam is a dynamic religion, alive in our country and in

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 11

RIGHT: Installation view of the Australian Muslim Gallery showing (in distance) and portrait by Abdul Abdullah: Waleed Aly, 2011.

Photo: Courtesy of the IMA.

the identity of contemporary Australian Muslims. Many contemporary works are displayed, including contemporary miniatures; surfboards decorated with both Islamic calligraphy and imagery by Phillip George; and the portrait of Waleed Aly by Abdul Abdullah, which was a finalist in the 2011 Archibald Prize in Sydney.

Upstairs, the Islamic Architecture Gallery is dominated by luminous photographs of the great mosques in Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Istanbul and elsewhere.

There is a minaret that one can enter and hear the Muslim Call to Prayer. There is a model of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

The fifth, final, and perhaps most important gallery for this Museum, is devoted to the history of Muslims in Australia: from the landing of the Macassans from Sulawesi on the Arnhem Land coast from 1720 or even earlier; to the Afghani Cameleers who provided desert transport across the Australian inland from the 1860s; leading on to notable Muslims who have made a particular contribution to our life in Australia today, including politicians, comedians, community personalities and sportsmen.

The Museum’s Temporary Exhibition Gallery currently features an ‘in the round’ multimedia presentation called Mush by Khaled Sabsabi, which has already been shown at several international venues.

The plan for future exhibitions to be borrowed from Qatar, Malaysia and London is ambitious, and doubtless will attract strong attendances.

The Islamic Museum of Australia’s tag-line is ‘ArtHeritage-Discovery’, implying that it wishes to be not only a museum but also a cultural centre for Muslims and non-Muslims to learn about Islam. For this reason the Museum is positioning itself to be a destination, a social gathering space.

Accordingly there are breakout workshop areas for both children and adults, a theatrette, a library (to be completed in the future), a museum shop replete with rich Islamic-based gifts and books, and a cafe at the rear run by Samira El Khafir, a Masterchef finalist.

There is also a room that lends itself to being hired out for functions. These are all great spaces for community gatherings, for a dynamic series of public programs, and for a solid education program to be realised.

The back of the Museum’s property opens onto the Merri Creek bike trail, which is a wonderful asset and should guarantee a wide range of local visitors. A lot of younger people in the area use the trail both recreationally and to get to work. According to the Museum, this diverse catchment of potential audiences is already being drawn into its facilities, although probably more for the café than the museum spaces at the initial stages – though food patrons may hopefully get around to extending their visit to explore the Museum as well.

As non-Muslims, I and my friends left the Islamic Museum of Australia knowing much more about Islam. We were made to feel welcome and composed by the experience. And we were very impressed with the building, the design, the conceptualisation and thoughtfulness of the layout, together with the quality of the information provided.

However the Museum is still new, and I believe it needs a little ‘tweaking’. I am aware, however, that most of the issues I discuss below are already being addressed by the astute staff of the Museum itself.

The greatest challenge for any museum is to define itself in relation to its visitors, and to negotiate a successful and productive relationship with its target audiences. An ethnic or faith-based museum in Australia, such as the IMA, should have two equally

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Islamic Museum of Australia opens in Melbourne

right: The Islamic Contribution to Civilization exhibition gallery.

Photo: Courtesy of the IMA.

important audiences: its own constituency – in this case, the Australian Muslim Community; and the wider Australian community. This is a challenge expanded by the fact that each of these two primary audiences has its own internal diversity and cultural differences.

The Muslim community needs a museum like this to strengthen pride; and as a place to express and explore what it means to be a Muslim in 21st Century Australia.

As mentioned above, it is also hoped that this building will become a gathering place for all Muslims.

The wider community meanwhile needs to learn what it means to be a Muslim, to break down barriers of ignorance and misunderstanding about this culture and faith, so that we can all live together in knowledge and respect for each other.

Indeed the mission of the Museum reads: The Museum is to create a culture of awareness and understanding through innovative environments, programs and tools that help people nurture their curiosity about Islam and build bridges of understanding between cultures.

Visiting at the time of opening, I couldn’t help but feel some confusion from the IMA about its target audiences. The building design itself appeals in specific ways to both audiences, which is a great strength and achievement.

However the location, while well placed for its primary faith constituency in the area north of the Yarra, is a challenge for other visitors from much further away.

The Museum is located in an industrial street, not on a main thoroughfare. While the street is familiar to locals, it is not easily discoverable by those seeking to visit from distant suburbs. The building needs to be sought out.

Perhaps street signage might help overcome this problem, and I have been told that the IMA has applied for permission to utilise such signage.

The galleries seem to be designed for non-Muslims to learn about Islam. Again, however, there are some difficulties evident that further adjustments and reconsideration of audience reactions may alleviate.

There is a lot of text used in the museum, without prioritisation. No hierarchy of information is indicated.

So when one reads the many panels, there is a difficulty of being swamped with the information, rather than some text-parts being highlighted to indicate the most important ideas for visitors to take away. (This is a problem in fact for many museums far more established and experienced than this new organisation.)

There is understandably a desire for the museum to be affirmative and build a positive image of Islam.

However, there is no explanation of the various sectarian divisions that are causing such strife in the Muslim world, and which are little understood by nonMuslims. Some thought could be given to this query as the Museum considers enrichment of audiences’

The Muslim community needs a museum like this to strengthen pride, and as a place to express and explore what it means to be a Muslim in 21st Century Australia

understanding after the opening period.

There is also sadly an absence of adequate evocation of the extraordinary artistic achievements of Islamic societies in the Islamic Art Gallery. This hopefully will be resolved in time, with donations of further works to the Museum, or through purchases or loans from other Islamic collections of examples of the exquisite Islamic tessellated tiles and patination of architectural surfaces, of the remarkable ceramics, the richly illustrated books, and the magnificent miniatures we associate with the highest artistic achievements of Islam.

Such additions would contextualise and provide background to the admirable contemporary art on display, conveying the continuum of wonderful Islamic aesthetic traditions that continue to be extended today.

Some outstanding historical objects would also add greatly to the impact of a visit to the Islamic Museum of Australia, shifting beyond a didactically satisfying experience to conveying an impact of wonder and awe, of the strong emotions that visitors hope to feel when viewing exhibitions, and which museums strive to convey in their presentation of collections.

In concluding, I must stress that it is impossible to get everything right the first time when establishing a Museum from scratch. I extend my compliments to the managing committee that has shaped the Islamic Museum of Australia with such dedication, such sensitivity and such professionalism. I think their achievements must be heralded and widely appreciated. I recommend that people visit and enjoy the new institution, and I look forward to revisiting this museum in the future. [ ] Dr Helen Light AM was inaugural Director of the Jewish Museum of Australia, having worked there from 1983–2010. She now works as a consultant in museums, on exhibitions and working with collections, specifically with a multicultural heritage focus.

She is currently working on a project with the Australian Multicultural Foundation to help ethnic community groups preserve their material history of migration and settlement.

Text citation: Helen Light, The Islamic Museum of Australia, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.10–12

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 13

South Australia Museum in Adelaide reinvents its fossils display in First Life Gallery

Ediacara Gallery: a new collection display at the South Australian Museum right: The refurbished fossils gallery showing the Wilpena Pound mural. Photo: Regan Forrest.

Text by South Australian Museum staff

E

diacara Gallery is a new presentation of the rich fossil collection from the South Australian Museum.

The Ediacara Gallery has been designed for people of all ages. Floor graphics and strategically placed portholes have been designed for smaller children to engage with the exhibit. iPad technology allows older children and adults to learn more about the fossil specimens, whilst interactive touchscreens provide further in-depth information for scientists and the interested public alike.

A great feature of the Ediacaran exhibition is its interactivity. The fossils are not placed behind glass; people are encouraged and prompted to touch the fossils, to feel their features and think about their relationships to today.

Educationally, this exhibition addresses the Australian Curriculum Science Understandings for Years 8-to-12 students. It explores Changes to the Earth, and supports Science as a Human Endeavour. As many findings presented are recent, the Ediacara story reflects the evolving character and development of science.

Our understanding of these fossils is continually developing and changing, and it is exciting for students to engage with results of this dynamic field of scientific research and to appreciate the growing knowledge the specimens provide. The fact that this exhibition encompasses a South Australian story, and that many students have visited the Flinders Ranges where the fossils were found, adds to the richness of the total experience.

Not only does the exhibit support scientific understanding; it also engages other learning pathways. For the Mathematical Units of inquiry have also been written to support students’ learning in an authentic context. Many of the Ediacaran fossils display

complex symmetry, and the purposefully designed floor graphics provide an opportunity for students to explore the concept of scale.

The Australian Curriculum is extensive in its reach for key subject areas, and blending the curriculum as a learning experience in more than one area simultaneously helps to enrich student learning while also supporting teachers. The South Australian Museum is already well known for its Science and Natural History curriculum links. However the Museum is endeavouring to broaden its reach for educators by including all subject areas where appropriate, and by providing high-level pedagogy for students.

Technology is an important learning engagement tool in education, and at SAM we are incorporating iPad and touchscreen technology into our exhibits. Five iPads placed throughout the new Ediacara gallery not only hold information about fossil specimens displayed but also pose further inquiry questions and actions, to increase engagement and understanding.

SAM is also developing an educational app for this new gallery. This app, easily downloaded from the app store, will allow students to respond to the exhibit via voice, video, images or text. The data can then be stored and sent back to teachers at school. Through such carefully designed continuing learning programs, teachers and students are provided with opportunities to extend their learning beyond a single Museum visit.

In these ways SAM is cultivating longer-term learning relationships, seeking to build life-long learning engagement with both the Museum and the wider world of evolving science. [ ]

Text citation: [South Australian Museum], ‘Ediacara Gallery: a new collection display at the South Australian Museum’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, p.13

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Overview of a remarkable art gallery collection’s development in far north Queensland

Touring the Cream: Sharing Rockhampton’s remarkable art legacy

Eleanor Palmer

R above: Eleanor Palmer right: Arthur Boyd (1920–1999) Woman in a jinker 1976 oil on canvas, 182.7 x 175.3 cm Rockhampton Art Gallery collection, Art Acquisition Fund, purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council 1976© Reproduced with permission of Bundanon Trust

ockhampton, Central Queensland: beef capital of Australia; gateway to the Capricorn coast; pit-stop to FNQ; or a city so hot that even the street lights when viewed from a height appear to spell HELL? Depending on your degree of fondness, Rocky, Rock Vegas or Rockbottom may be well known as a sure thing for a slap-up steak. But it is perhaps not a place many would immediately associate with a nationally significant art collection.

Thanks to an unlikely 1970s fundraising drive, led by a controversial mayor better known for being shot by his mistress, Rockhampton Art Gallery today houses works by renowned Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, John Brack and Margaret Olley.

The pick of this collection of more than 400 works is now being shared in a national touring exhibition.

Cream: four decades of Australian art hopes to lift the lid on one of the most remarkable art collecting stories of regional Australia that until now has remained untold.

It is a curious tale of seemingly constant contradictions: of a city better known for its heinous humidity than the architectural beauty of its colonial riverfront; and for its collection of bull statues rather than its assemblage of modern art, which was created by a man many regarded as more of a barbarian than an art buff.

The driver behind this effort, and indeed behind most late-twentieth century public infrastructure development across Rockhampton, was the redoubtable three-decades-presiding Mayor, from 1952 to 1982: Reginald (Rex) Byron Jarvis Pilbeam.

The embodiment of political incorrectness (but a product of the times), Pilbeam was a colourful character heralded as a ‘benign despot’ by his fans for his methods of transforming the dusty cow town into a modern regional city.

‘Yeah, he can be rude, crude and unattractive, but he’s the best thing that ever happened to Rockhampton,’ declared fellow Alderman Kevin Connors, chief steward at the Rockhampton Jockey Club in a 1977 National Times article.

Rex Pilbeam arrived in Rockhampton in 1949, was elected Mayor in 1952, and was shot by his lover in June 1953 when he tried to terminate their affair. The woman was charged with attempted murder, and a couple of months later the Police Court heard that she had described Pilbeam to investigating officers as ‘[P]oison for me... but oh, what sweet poison!’

The day after the trial, Pilbeam resigned as mayor and immediately announced his candidacy for

re-election (effectively placing himself on trial by the community). The people spoke, and Pilbeam was returned to office.

The ultimate ‘man with a plan’, Rex Pilbeam was a true conviction politician, a visionary character who possessed a boundless energy and unfettered ambition for transforming Rockhampton into a progressive, multi-faceted municipality.

Post-war Rockhampton was a town of sluggish apathy and a place which appeared to deserve the profile bestowed on it by Anthony Trollope as a ‘city of sin, sweat and sorrow’.

Pilbeam masterfully demonstrated what one astute, relentless and ruthless personality could achieve – whether it was laying bitumen from kerb to kerb in every street in the city; guaranteeing reliable drinking water by building a barrage across the Fitzroy River; or converting the city to a fully-sewered system: in all undertakings Pilbeam personally begged, badgered and bullied to make these and a myriad other initiatives happen – and remarkably, without significant cost to the ratepayer.

While Pilbeam strove to improve Rockhampton’s economic infrastructure, he was not ignorant of the need to provide a cultural life and other recreational pursuits for the city’s citizens.

Pilbeam professed that, like Rome, cities need a beating cultural heart because that is what makes them attractive to people. ‘I’ve given my people bread and butter and a seat to put their bottoms on – now we’re in a position to go in for the higher things of life,’ he told New Idea in 1980.

Pilbeam’s hyper-sensitive nose for sniffing out a government subsidy homed in on a 1970s scheme by the Australia Council which involved pump-priming a stagnant art market through providing a 70 per cent subsidy to galleries and institutions toward the purchase of works by living Australian artists.

Through this Whitlam-led initiative, the Australia Council aimed to enable and engage regional communities, and to connect them with a national cultural identity that could be drawn on as part of their everyday social experience.

Despite the economic recession of 1975, Pilbeam persuaded 80 businesses and organisations each to donate a minimum of $2000 towards his art-purchasing plans; and some $500,000 was swiftly raised (today, close to $2.7million) to enhance Rockhampton’s cultural amenities.

With considerable bravado, the Art Acquisition Committee – comprising Mayor Pilbeam, Bishop John Bayton, local architect Neil McKendry, and Gallery Director Don Taylor – cannily snapped up works at a fraction of what they are worth today, and thereby established a significant art collection within the space of a year.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 15

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Overview of a remarkable art gallery collection’s development in far north Queensland

Rex Pilbeam possessed a boundless energy and unfettered ambition for transforming Rockhampton into a progressive, multi-faceted municipality

BELOW: Rockhampton’s Mayor Rex Pilbeam. Photo courtesy of Lorna McDonald.

One example is Fred Williams’ painting, Burning Tree at Upwey, which was bought for $6000 and is now valued at more than $1 million. Rockhampton Art Gallery’s entire collection is today valued at more than $14 million.

Some of the first paintings acquired from 1976-77 are outstanding in the collection today. For example: • Fred Williams, Burning tree at Upwey (1965) • Arthur Boyd, Woman in a jinker (1976) • Margaret Olley, Pots and objects • Russell Drysdale, Outback postmistress and daughter (1976) • John Brack, Portrait of Lyn Williams (1976) • Jeffrey Smart, Fiumicino Car Park (1975) The Cream of the collection is now going on the road, thanks to an Australia Council Visions of Australia Touring Grant of more than $150,000. The project has also received financial support from the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation, Gordon Darling Foundation, Regional Arts Development Fund, and Rockhampton Regional Council.

The touring works chronicle the development of modernism in Australia from 1940 to 1980, and include paintings, drawings and prints by artists such as John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, John Brack, Clifton Pugh, Sam Fulbrook, Margaret Olley, and Fred Williams.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 17

Rockhampton Art Gallery Director Tracy CooperLavery has remarked on the power of the collection’s reputation in drawing her to the Gallery in 2011: Once I arrived, saw what was here, and began to research the story behind the collection, I knew this was a unique and remarkable body of work by some of Australia’s greatest artists that deserved wider recognition both within the region and the Australian arts community nationally.

One of the Director’s first priorities therefore was to develop a touring exhibition, to profile the ‘cream’ of the collection and to give other audiences an understanding of just what an exceptional group of artworks is held in Rockhampton – and later to draw more visitors to the northern city to enjoy these treasured resources.

Indeed, the Rockhampton Art Gallery of today actively embodies both Pilbeam’s and the Australia Council’s 1970s ambition to deliver a cultural dimension to the lives of those living in areas far beyond metropolitan Australia; to actively demonstrate that institutions and cultural life – while different in these

communities – need not be any less dynamic and certainly no less valuable.

Cream: four decades of Australian art commenced showing at Rockhampton Art Gallery on 15 February 2014, launching a two-year tour of these collection highlights.

Touring details: After the Cream exhibition closes at Rockhampton Art Gallery on 27 April, its 2014—2015 tour will cover the following venues: McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, VIC; Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo, NSW, Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre, Murwillumbah, NSW; and five further venues all in Queensland: Caloundra Regional Gallery; Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum; Outback Regional Gallery, Winton; Artspace Mackay; and Cairns Regional Gallery. [ ] Eleanor Palmer, trained in journalism, was a member of the Museums Australia National Office some years ago. After a demanding period of motherhood to three young children she has returned to the sector by joining the Rockhampton Art Gallery’s staff part-time.

Text citation: Eleanor Palmer, ‘Touring the Cream: Sharing Rockhampton’s remarkable art legacy’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.14–17

below left: Criterion Hotel, Rockhampton.

Photo: Nathan White.

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Australian university museums and collections considered in an international change context

Rethinking university museums: Material collections and the changing world of higher education

Andrew Simpson

T

hroughout history universities have collected objects and specimens, in service to a scholarly tradition that stretches back to the Renaissance and beyond.

Collections formed or held in universities are used for learning in the laboratory or tutorial room.

They can also provide the material evidence of research achieved in the name of an institution. When a university dedicates institutional space and facilities to the exhibition of collections, a university museum is created.

There are many famous university museums worldwide. Some have an organisational life separate from their parent body — Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, is a good example. University museums and collections, however, are highly variable.

They range from significant sources of cultural provision for diverse communities to collections previously used for university teaching but now locked away in storage and isolated from the mainstream of campus life.[1] There has been much soul searching recently about the future prospects of universities in a rapidly changing world. Over the last year there has also been more intense consideration of the future of university museums. There is a general sense that the tertiary education sector, and the collections it encompasses that support the sector’s work, may be quite different in the near future. This is a brief report sketching some of these developments.

A colloquium in late November 2013[2] at the University of Ghent, in Belgium, examined the issue of academic heritage. With increased global competition in higher education, many universities are examining how they can evolve a distinctive identity through their increased support for heritage. The ‘brand managers’ in higher education call this ‘developing an institutional narrative’. While everything to do with an institution’s history is on the table for consideration, it seems increasingly that university museums and collections can play a central role in the academic change process.

The University of Ghent, for example, has an ambitious plan to bring a number of its university museums and collections together in a new, more high-profile central facility: as both a statement of institutional identity and a mechanism for interacting with a variety of constituent communities and interest groups. The first session of the Ghent colloquium last year attracted much attention, producing numerous examples of institutions that either had already formed a new centralised museums and collections service or had physically integrated and co-located various collections that were previously dispersed across a campus.

Diverse approaches to the question of how material

collections can better serve institutional aspirations were presented in Ghent. It became clear that in many European universities, collections are regarded as central to institutional identity and perceived as a primary source of advancing the institutional narrative. With their long-developed history, many European university museums also have a very close alignment with the evolution of their cities, towns and wider geographic regions.

New projects discussed at the Ghent colloquium vary considerably in size and scope. Some present a simple exhibition to valorise an individual university’s academic history; others involve the development of

entirely new museums. There are also inter-university partnerships being undertaken to render academic heritage more accessible and with wider public outreach. A number of national or regional university networks are collaborating on digitisation of university collections to provide data through a single portal. All of the projects involve new ways to engage students, researchers and external communities.

European university museums typically manifest strong interest in the history of the production of knowledge. Material collections of equipment and archival items often form the basic currency for illuminating historical changes in our understanding of the world.

However the new thinking about the role of collections in an evolving academic landscape can even impact more broadly upon national policy. In Germany, for example, university collections are now recognised as an integral component of research infrastructure,[3] which represents a significant change in the positioning of their value at a national level of policy and planning. Recent communications

above: Andrew Simpson left: The History of Science Museum at the University of Ghent: an exhibit on scientific discovery. Photo: Andrew Simpson.

1. Simpson (2012a) suggested a classification of governance of university collections ranging from collections recognised and supported by their institutions through to ungoverned collections.

2. Positioning Academic Heritage: Challenges for Universities, Museums and Society in the 21st Century. A colloquium held at the University of Ghent, November 18—20, 2013. <http://www.sciencemuseum.ugent. be/colloquium/> (accessed 10.3.2014).

3. First reported by Weber (2012).

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 19

RIGHt: University of Ghent Herbarium. Photo: Andrew Simpson.

4. Email announcement from M. Lourenço, Lisbon, to author, 2 March 2014. Website information available at: <http://www.fct.pt/ apoios/equipamento/roteiro/index. phtml.en> (accessed 10/3/2014).

5. Some examples from Beloit College are given by Bartlett (2012).

6. Available on line at: <http://issuu.com/ universitymuseumsgroup/ docs/impact_and_engagement> (accessed 10/3/2014).

with the author also indicate that Portugal plans to adopt a similar position regarding that country’s collections.[4] Where collections were once seen as serving an institution’s triple mission of teaching, research and engagement, they are now seen as primary sources for this triple mission – effectively relocating them from the periphery to the centre of the academic enterprise.

All of the new projects gaining attention have a similar starting point: lifting collections from their disciplinespecific origins to enable them to play a more dynamic and central university role, with the changes being driven by institution-level thinking from a university’s leadership group.

A wide variety of individual projects were discussed at the Ghent colloquium. The Centre for Science and Culture at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, for example, aims to turn its visitors into researchers through innovative public programming. Other projects at a number of institutions bring historic scientific objects new life by recreating their role in early scientific experiments. Meanwhile, further projects are deploying university collections to ‘crowd-source’ memories of earlier use, to develop object biographies, and to evoke linkages to specific places and periods. And still others invite students in to develop exhibition themes and curate their own shows, to foster cross-disciplinary engagement, teamwork and creativity.

In the United States, some different developments have drawn world attention in recent years. In a context where many universities were privately founded historically or depend for their financial health on philanthropic support, continuous fundraising and endowment incomes, rising pressures on college budgets have forced some US administrators to consider deaccessioning or ‘monetisation’ of collection assets.

This has become a media issue in some instances, particularly when it has involved the proposed sale of artworks or even entire art collections with a high profile. This has stirred significant debate on the public trust vested in universities through bequests or direct gifts of valuable collections. The rising jeopardy of some campus collections caused such angst among university curators that a special resolution was formally adopted by the international committee of ICOM for university museums (UMAC) at the 2013 ICOM Triennial Conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The ‘Rio Declaration on the Protection of University Collections’ resolved that collections held by universities internationally are an important part of university and world heritage, and they must not be considered as financial assets of the university that can be disposed of to meet financial needs. Collections must be valued for the role they play in preserving the history of universities and for teaching and research

within their host institutions, as well as for educating and engaging a broader public. Simply put, the Rio Declaration insists that historic and cultural heritage aspects of collections, not their financial value, be considered before any planned disposal.

The Rio Declaration is timely, and supported by ICOM’s Code of Ethics, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers 2005 recommendation on the governance and management of university heritage, and the American Alliance of Museums Code of Ethics, adopted by AAM’s Board of Trustees in 1993.

The declaration is also evidence of the tension around material collections in higher education in

times of significant change. While the enthusiasm of some college administrators to sell artworks has mainly emerged in the US, in other parts of the same country American art workers are wringing maximum value out of their collections housed in the institutional context. Creative writing classes regularly use objects to stimulate ideas and output; artworks are used to sharpen the observational skills of trainee medical clinicians; students of music utilise art and objects for inspiration; and a general mathematics education study uses material collection items to explore the symmetry of objects. In these and many other situations, institutions’ collection objects are being embedded across the curriculum in new and diverse ways.[5] Returning to Europe, 2013 saw the release of a significant report entitled ‘Impact and Engagement: University Museums for the 21st Century’.[6] This publication highlights the contributions made by UK university museums to the higher education sector, particularly the unique contribution of museums to

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Australian university museums and collections considered in an international change context

the rising public profile of British universities. The report indicates that while the university sector holds 30% of collections judged as nationally significant, its actual holdings encompass a far lower number of particular collections. The report demonstrates how university museums also deliver unique benefits to the wider cultural sector, providing economic and social contributions as visitor attractions and cultural destinations. They have also demonstrated exceptional performance in increased ability to leverage special funding in recent years.

A meeting at Oxford University in March 2013[7] provided its own consideration of the future of the university museum. While there was general agreement that this would still closely align with the success or otherwise of the parent university system itself, diverse views were advanced about what the future university may look like.

There was general agreement that a good university museum would help differentiate a university in a crowded and competitive market place. However this was coupled with the realisation of how challenging it would also be to measure the impact of a museum as a special facility within a university, amidst the still robust case-arguments needed to justify retaining complex material collections within the higher education setting. How to devise and evaluate such ‘impact frameworks’, alongside the challenges of the co-production of knowledge and the capacity of university museums to explore demanding and sometimes controversial topics were also explored at the Oxford meeting.

Current changes in higher education have also prompted some interesting developments from within individual institutions. University College London, through its centralised museums service, has embedded object-based learning across many of its curricula.[8] After a decade of such developments, the UCL museums-based program has reached a stage where University College London, through a partnership with the British Council, is developing a Museums Training School geared to offering short courses for early career museum professionals drawn from around the world.

In Germany, the University of Göttingen enjoys a long history, during which it has earlier brought its museums together within a unified structure, then subsequently dispersed them back to different substructural units of the host institution. Göttingen has more recently re-instigated the centralisation process –while this time seeking to raise the profile and value of its collections by establishing a full professorship in the culture and materiality of knowledge. This new position will manage a research centre serving as a focal-point for future projects in knowledge research, developed in close cooperation with respective internal and external partners.

The University of Reading is meanwhile appraising establishment of new staff positions, in a similar venture to embed collections-based research within their doctoral training programs.

It seems increasingly that university museums and collections can play a central role in the academic change process

above: The

Cycle of Culture and Heritage – A modelling of cultural process (Developed

by Museums Australia)

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 21

opposite page: History of Medicine Museum at the University of Ghent, Belgium: an exhibit on trepanning.

Photo: Andrew Simpson.

below RIGHt: Museum of Comparative Morphology, Veterinary Science Faculty, University of Ghent. Photo: Andrew Simpson.

7. ‘What are University Museums for?’ 25th Anniversary University Museums Group Conference, Oxford University Museums, March 7—8, 2013. <http://www.oxfordaspiremuseums. org/news/what-are-universitymuseums> (accessed 10/3/2014).

8. This is covered in detail by Hannan et al (2013).

9. Data available in two reports published by the University Museums Review Committee (1996) and the University Museums Project Committee (1998), collectively known as the Cinderella Collections reports.

10. Data summarised by Simpson (2012b).

11. ibid.

What does all this mean for higher education in Australia?

A national review of Australian university museums was conducted in the 1990s under the auspices of the former Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee.[9] Just over 250 museums and collections were identified as dispersed across Australia’s universities at that time: some with histories as old as their host universities and stretching back to the colonial era; others more recent ventures of the later twentiethcentury. However despite housing many outstanding items of national and international significance, the review’s researchers uncovered a generally poor level of awareness by Australian universities of the museums and collections in their care.

Much has changed in the volatile world of higher education since the first and historic review of 1996.

More recent research (of 2010) has uncovered a far broader constellation of material culture and scientific resources within the sector today, with numbers having risen to more than 400 Australian university museums and collections.[10] Trends such as a sharp increase in the number of art collections, while there has been a decline at the same time in the number of natural history and scientific collections, have become strongly apparent.

Meanwhile declining public funding, changing technologies, reforming pedagogies, shifting research foci and an ever-proliferating array of communities of

interest are the universal challenges for higher education worldwide. Yet how many Australian universities are using their museums and collections as a resource for their ‘brand experience’? How many are deploying their exhibition spaces to articulate distinct institutional narratives?

Some museums – such as Sydney’s Nicholson Museum (mainly of antiquities) and Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art (including fine and decorative arts, antiquities, and some collection material acquired through the frameworks of anthropology) – have a high public profile; and they reach increasingly broad audiences beyond the campus they serve.

However the challenge for academic museums is generally not to create their own identity so much as to manifest their role in enhancing that of their parent organisation.

Australia has a still-youthful university system modelled on European traditions. The research conducted about their collections over more than two decades[11] shows that our universities have been engaged in a rather ad hoc approach to utilising the role of university museums or disparate collections within their care. They have liberally initiated new museums and collections while closing down and disposing of others along the way.

Such an unsystematic disposition about cultural and scientific heritage resources fails to utilise the full potential of Australian museums and collections

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Australian university museums and collections considered in an international change context

below: Botanic Gardens at the University of Ghent doubles as the botanic gardens for the city of Ghent. Photo: Andrew Simpson.

as proactive cultural assets at an institutional level.

Apart from the occasional ‘cultural collections open day’ and limited inter-disciplinary explorations in teaching and research, few Australian universities have yet invested in the creative and innovative potential of utilising their museums and collections as new sources of campus-wide learning and digital outreach, as well as a dynamic social interface with culturally diverse communities. Meanwhile as competition between our universities intensifies and they strive to carve out new identities and express distinct institutional narratives, there is a tantalising potential to bring our academic cultural heritage to the forefront of higher education.

How many Australian university leadership groups have such a commitment as part of their development vision for 2014 and beyond? [ ] Dr Andrew Simpson is Director of the Museum Studies Program at Macquarie University, Sydney, while also serving as a member of the National Council of Museums Australia.

References Bartlett, D. 2012. ‘Coaxing them Out of the Box: Removing Disciplinary Barriers to Collections Use’, in Jandl, S. & Gold, M. (eds.), A Handbook for Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education. MuseumsEtc, Edinburgh & Boston: 190–218.

Hannan, L., Duhs, R. & Chatterjee, H. 2013. ‘Object-Based Learning: A Powerful Pedagogy for Higher Education, in Boddington, A, Boys, J. & Speight, C., Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities. Ashgate, Farnham & Burlington: 159–168.

Simpson, A. 2012a. ‘Modelling governance structures for university museums and collections’, in Jandl, S. & Gold, M. (eds.), A Handbook for Academic Museums: Beyond Exhibitions and Education. MuseumsEtc, Edinburgh & Boston: 178–218.

Simpson, A. 2012b. ‘Cinderella Collections fifteen years after the ball: Australia’s university museums reviewed’, Museums Australia Magazine, 21 (2). Canberra: 18–20.

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

University Museums Project Committee. 1998. Transforming Cinderella Collections: the Management and Conservation of Australian University Museums, Collections and Herbaria. Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee.

Weber, C. 2012. ‘Recent recommendations by the German Council of Science and Humanities on scientific collections as research infrastructures – A report’.

University Museums and Collections Journal, 5, ICOM–UMAC: 95–99.

Text citation: Andrew Simpson, ‘Rethinking university museums: Material collections and the changing world of higher education’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.18–22.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 23

Medical Museion, Copenhagen

Medical Museion, Copenhagen: A university museum reinventing its contemporary mission

Bente Vinge Pedersen and Thomas Söderqvist

half of its budget is raised from external sources.

he former Medical-History Museum at the University of Copenhagen has undergone far-reaching changes during the last decade.

Although it still retains and utilises its huge collection of historical artefacts from the European medical past, the museum has carved out a new identity as a cross-disciplinary site for engaging with medical science and technology in historical, philosophical and cultural perspectives.

Combining academic research in medical humanities, aesthetics, material studies, and science communication studies with experimental exhibitionmaking, public events and an active web presence, the aim of the museum – now called Medical Museion – is to contribute to public engagement with medicine and to show how medical science and technology contribute to contemporary culture.

The vision of Medical Museion

T

The pre-history The Medical-History Museum began a century ago with a burst of collecting frenzy. To celebrate the rise of scientific medicine in the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of Copenhagen physicians decided to create a temporary exhibition in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Danish Medical Association in 1907, and issued a call to their colleagues to donate medical objects, including instruments, quack remedies, curiosities, healthcare items, portraits and manuscripts. The result of this massive acquisition enterprise – which would today perhaps be called crowdsourcing – was overwhelming: thousands of historical artefacts previously stored in the attics and basements of hospitals and the homes of doctors were collected and displayed.

The anniversary exhibition was soon turned into a permanent museum, which was taken over by the University of Copenhagen in 1918. After WWII, the museum was invited to move into the building of the former Royal Academy of Surgeons in central Copenhagen, where the medical faculty had resided since the mid-nineteenth century. In the late 1960s, permanent public exhibition galleries were established, yet they never really achieved an impact in public consciousness.

During the 1980s and early 1990s the museum’s activities and research declined and the museum was on the brink of closing down.

Eventually, the Faculty of Health Sciences decided to rescue the organisation and fill the long vacant professorship in medical history. PhD students were recruited; a research seminar established; and the level of external funding was increased significantly in the mid-2000s. Today the museum has about 20 permanent and temporary faculty and staff members, and

The revival of the museum organisation went hand in hand with a pronounced identity shift. In 2003, the new direction was heralded with a new name, Medical Museion, from the Greek μουσειον – or a place where the muses inspire intellectual and poetic activities. The name change signifies a change in expectations: that the institution will not simply continue to be a museum of the medical past but also a venue for engagement and reflection on contemporary and future medicine.

To make sense of the current biomedical and biotechnological revolution, and associated transformation of the visible and tangible anatomical body into a much more abstract molecular and biopolitical body, we found it necessary to employ a more crossdisciplinary approach to medicine. Research and outreach programs now draw on an array of cultural, social and scientific perspectives, as well as artistic, literary and design practices.

Another idea behind the identity shift from medical history museum to Medical Museion was to integrate the major museum functions as far as possible. Whereas many museums separate research, outreach and curatorship into separate departments, the founding idea behind the Medical Museion was that it is necessary to integrate them closely – with research as the basis – in order to engage with the contemporary transformation of medical practices in new and innovative ways.

Developing new exhibition practices Academic staff members today divide their time between research, curating, exhibition-making and public event activities. One of the advantages of being a part of the university organisation is that it makes it easier to attract research funding. The first major grant under the title Biomedicine on Display (Novo Nordisk Foundation, 2004–2008) was achieved to support the integration of collecting with research projects on topics like the organisation of organ transplantation, visualisation in epidemiology, endoscopic regimes, and abortion practices and foetus disposal. The four-year grant also included funding for a major public exhibition, Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine (2009), in which the exhibition rooms were based on the individual researcher’s work and on new acquisitions from regional hospitals and research laboratories.

The Biomedicine on Display project laid out a model for further museum activities with a strong research foundation in medical humanities. In 2010 the Novo Nordisk Foundation endowed a Centre for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen,

top and middle: Thomas Söderqvist and Bente Vinge Pedersen BOTTOM: The museum logo is constructed on the basic of an architectural cross section drawing of the museum building, the former Royal Academy of Surgeons built in 1787.

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Medical Museion, Copenhagen

Academic staff members today divide their time between research, curating, exhibition-making and public event activities

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 25

OPPOSITE PAGE (CLOCKWISE FORM LEFT):

From the exhibition Split and Splice. Fragment from the Age of Biomedicine (2009). This installation of body-measuring instruments was a part of the theme 'Avalanches of data' on epidemiological research.

The centre of the academy building is the auditorium. For more than 150 years medical students were trained here.

Today it is the venue for Medical Museion’s event program.

Medical Museion is situated in the centre of Copenhagen, close to the royal palace.

including a Section for Science Communication based at Medical Museion.

Academic research is still the cornerstone of this decade-long communication program; however the ambition today is to integrate research with exhibition-making, development of social media platforms, events and collecting. For example, philosophical research has led the curators and researchers to consider anew the importance of the physical presence of objects in the museum – an approach that informed exhibitions like Primary Substances: Treasures from the History of Protein Research (2009); The Chemistry of Life (2010), which explored metabolic

raises more questions than it provides answers.

Art and medical research The gradual development over the last years of new exhibition practices that explore historical and contemporary objects in their full and immediate materiality has also led to significant art projects. The installation Genomic Enlightenment (2011) consists of 650 Illumina Genotyping BeadChips hanging from the ceiling in fiber light strings.

The chips were donated from a research project in which 17,000 Danish individuals were genotyped in

RIGHT: The installation Genomic Enlightenment (2011) consists of 700 Illumina Genotyping BeadChips hung in strings of fibre light.

research from the 17th century to the present; and Balance and Metabolism (2011).

Another curatorial approach resulted in the exhibition Obesity: What’s the Problem? (2012), dealing with recent gastric bypass surgery and obesity research, which was developed in close collaboration with biomedical researchers and surgeons. The intention was to develop the exhibition more like a museological research process than the dissemination of alreadyestablished knowledge. The curators – historians and designers – embarked on an investigative journey into the emerging world of gastric bypass surgery, and shared their year-long inquiry in an exhibition that

order to identify novel genetic variations that lead to increased risk of common metabolic disorders, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension.

The installation both underlines the aesthetic qualities of the chips and emphasises the material basis for genomic research, which is otherwise abstract and difficult to comprehend. The installation in itself does not intend to explain how research is performed or what results come out of it; however the bare meeting with the physical remains of cutting-edge genomic research has proved to be an icebreaker for conversation.

Recently, Medical Museion commissioned the

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Medical Museion, Copenhagen

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 27

Femme Vitale (2013) from the British art group Pharmacopoeia, probably best known for the installation From Cradle to Grave at the British Museum in London, which expresses the lifespan of a typical man and woman through their pill intake, woven into a fabric ‘diary’ displayed on a long table alongside objects, documents, and personal photographs. The art group includes textile artist Susie Freeman, general practitioner Liz Lee, and video artist David Critchley. Susie Freeman invented what is now her signature technique of weaving pills into little pockets, producing long lengths of fabric that are then made into sculptural garments.

Femme Vitale is a larger-than-life dress placed in the entrance hall of the museum. It consists of 27,774 tablets and capsules representing ten years of prescription medicine intake for a woman suffering from chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity (the metabolic syndrome). The selection of the pills was based on the medical records of two actual women patients, from Denmark and the UK respectively. The overwhelming number of pills which Femme Vitale has taken over the last ten years of her life is a hidden burden that she

expresses by wearing her pills on the outside.

Future development Just as the practices of physical exhibition-making have been explored and rethought in close connection with research in science communication, the event and digital outreach programs at Medical Museion have involved extensive experimental work. The event series, Close Encounters of a Material Kind,and an associated research-curatorial workshop, It’s Not What You Think: Communicating Medical Materialities, focused on the sensuous and material aspects of medical research and museum objects, including the involvement of smell and touch.

The museum has also put much effort into integrating social media with its exhibition, research and event activities. New social media platforms are being implemented: not so much as branding and advertising tools, but rather as instruments for daily research, curatorial work, conservation, exhibition making, event-planning, and as an internal archive. [ ]

Bente Vinge Pedersen is Senior Curator and Thomas Söderqvist is Director at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen.

Note: Parts of this article have already been published in Sam Alberti and Liz Hallam (eds), Medical Museums: Past, present and future (2013) and in a UMAC newsletter (for ICOM’s International Committee of University Museums).

Text citation: Bente Vinge Pedersen and Thomas Söderqvist, ‘Medical Museion, Copenhagen: A university museum reinventing its contemporary mission’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.23–27

OPPOSITE PAGE:

Femme Vitale (2013), the new art work by British art group Pharmacopoeia, which now welcomes visitors at Medical Museion. The 27,774 pills and capsules represent the ten years of prescription pills for a woman with metabolic syndrome.

ABOVE: Detail of Femme Vitale (2013)

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Museum theatre’s progress highlighted at IMTAL’s eighth biennial conference

International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2013 (Washington)

Lyn Beasley

I

n October 2013, Susan Evans, S Xavier Carnegie and Mary Macko headed a wonderful conference organising team who pulled off a great international conference in the US, when none of them was supposed to be working and the museum venues they had organised to use were all closed.

The eighth global IMTAL conference on museum theatre[1] was held in Washington, 6–10 October 2013.

The global conference is a biennial event and in 2013 was due to be held in Europe. However no museum in Europe felt able to host the gathering, so the team from the Smithsonian offered to step up. After a year of dedicated organising, a dispute within their own government put last-minute obstacles in the way.

Only a few weeks out from the conference a US government shutdown was announced as Congress had failed to pass the budget for the new financial year. The shutdown encompassed the full duration of the IMTAL conference and meant that not only were all the proposed venues going to be closed, but the organising committee members themselves were on compulsory standdown.

Undaunted, in two weeks the organisers secured an alternative venue, reorganised the site visits schedule, agreed to work in their own time and pulled off an amazing conference. The venue Artsphere, across the Potomac River in Virginia, was not federally funded. It proved to be an excellent facility and actually closer to the recommended conference accommodation. The management was supportive and the staff were helpful.

Although Americans who worked for government were officially on stand-down the conference was still well attended. There was also a large Australian presence, along with delegates from New Zealand, Nigeria, Iraq, Taiwan, Germany and England. However Europe and the UK were not as well represented as at previous IMTAL conferences, and it was disappointing to learn at the AGM that IMTAL was struggling in Europe.

The conference opened impressively, with a presentation by keynote speaker PJ Powers, Artistic Director of Timeline Theatre in Chicago. The story of four young men who in 1996 each put in $50 to start a theatre company, which today is a multi-million dollar

international success, is fascinating. It was particularly exciting to learn that part of the reason for this success was the decision to build the company around exploring history. The vision was to bring history into the here and now in a way that was exciting, vibrant, interesting and immediate. To achieve this, Timeline Theatre members knew they had to use provocative storytelling that would arouse audiences’ curiosity about history. As PJ Powers put it: ‘People do not want to check their brains at the door.’

The company’s success in making Timeline Theatre a place where people could find the drama in the story, where there was communion between performer and audience, where stories could transport the audience to another time and place yet still shed light on the here and now, soon gained powerful recognition. In 2010 Terry Teachout named Timeline his ‘Company of the Year’ in The Wall Street Journal, and in 2011 the company was named ‘Best Theatre in the City’ by Chicago Magazine.

I strongly related to PJ Powers’ belief that it makes no difference if theatre is performed in a museum, a theatre or on a street corner. Living history helps people understand not only how history has shaped their lives, but how they can also have a voice in their own history.

The second keynote speaker was Roscoe Orman, who presented on the last day of the conference. Television’s former children of the last 30 years will know Roscoe as ‘Gordon’ from Sesame Street. While he comes from a solid theatrical background he became known around the world as the friendly Gordon Robinson, a man who is firm but gentle, gives good advice, and is the one to talk to if there is a problem.

Roscoe considered that Sesame Street often addressed hard issues and rose to real challenges. He cited two specific cases. The first was the episode 'Farewell Mr Hooper' which addressed the issue of death and loss after the actor Will Lee died of a heart attack. The show’s producers also took on board criticism of the way women were depicted, and created stronger female characters such as Abby Cadabby, a three-year-old fairy in training.

Roscoe concluded that the show has taught a lot of people, both parents and children, about things like sharing and cooperation, and that its success is based

ABOVE: Lyn Beasley

Museums should begin with the premise that our audiences are intelligent, eager to learn, and full of imagination and fun

1. [Ed:] In addition to activities of MA’s National Network IMTALAP, there have been various articles in MA Magazine highlighting the growing presence of ‘museum theatre’ in museum-sector programming and more active audience involvement in historical interpretation in museums.

The following are highlighted: • Alana Valentine, ‘Museum Theatre’, Museums Australia Magazine, 19 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, Spring 2010, pp. 29-32.

• Patrick Watt, ‘All the world’s museums are a stage: MA’s National Network for Museum Theatre (IMTALAP)', Museums Australia Magazine, 19 (1), Museums Australia, Canberra, September 2010, pp. 33-34.

• Lyn Beasley, ‘Risks, Relationships and Rewards: Museum Theatre at the National Museum of Australia’, Museums Australia Magazine, 21 (4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2013, pp. 48–51.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 29

RIGHT: The Asia Pacific contingent at IMTAL, Washington (Patrick, Jo, Zoe, John, Lyn and Barry). Photo: Patrick Watt.

on the fact that it respects its audience. What I took away from Roscoe’s talk was a reaffirmation that like Sesame Street, museums should begin with the premise that our audiences are intelligent, eager to learn, and full of imagination and fun.

Of the concurrent IMTAL sessions, some of my favourites were: Presenting Living Cultures through Authentic Participation; Museum Theatre for Learning in a Digital World; and Involving the Visitors.

Presenting Living Cultures through Authentic Participation consisted of three presentations: • We Are Still Here: Connecting Visitors to Indigenous Culture, presented by Lisa Hayes from the Accokeek Foundation, began with a reading of a short play that explored the history and culture of the Piscataway people at Piscataway Park, whose Native American lands underlie Washington.

Weaving together material from multiple sources, the performance served as a springboard for a wider discussion about potential museum theatre approaches, illuminating ways that other museums have approached interpreting indigenous history and culture. It raised questions about how we address issues of cultural ownership (who writes the material and who performs it); how we navigate cultural sensitivities; and how we represent the past while honouring the present.

• Creation Story Theatre: Working with Aboriginal Australian Communities to Tell Their Stories was presented by John Patten from Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum. This presentation explored theatre as a practical means

for engaging audiences with the oral traditions and histories of Australia’s First Peoples, and addressed the questions: how do Australia’s First Peoples share with theatre audiences their oral traditions, stories and histories? which stories should be chosen? who may give permission to use a story? and how can oral history be translated into an exciting and coherent visual experience?

• Museums as Living Theatre in Nigeria, presented

by Dr. Segun Oyeleke Oyewo of the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, explored how theatre has a great potential to make a museum of living arts relevant to modern reality within the context of a museum of antiquity. The presentation examined the Ife people and Museum Kitchen experiment in Nigeria, focusing on the annual Osun Osogbo festival. In this ambience, the museum theatre experience is defined as both traditional and contemporary theatre, and both are inextricably linked because the museum’s pieces are primarily traditional while the festival is current.

Museum Theatre for Learning in a Digital World consisted of two presentations, both interesting in the way they took very different approaches to their subject.

• Beyond the Theatre Seats: The Reach of Interactive Video Conferencing, presented by Melissa Kneeland of the Minnesota Historical Society, outlined the steps that have made their video conferencing successful, and why performing for video conferencing is different from performing for film. She emphasised that to engage students, the performance must be kept physical and interactive, also

30 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Museum theatre’s progress highlighted at IMTAL’s eighth biennial conference

stressing the need to encourage students to participate and work together.

• Videoconferencing and Teacher Training, presented

by Carrie Kotcho from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, explored making a video of a performance, and using video conferencing to train teachers in best use of their material.

The Smithsonian uses ‘performance storytelling’ in education programs, and designs their live performance and media delivery in parallel, to ensure they capture both the narrative essence and emotion of a performance.

Involving the Visitors also consisted of two presentations that used different approaches to present ways of engaging with audiences.

• Evolving the Interpreter: Interpreting History ‘In the Moment’, presented by Todd D. Norris and Timothy Sutphin of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, described the advantages of historic interpreters using present-tense delivery and active voice to put visitors in a particular time and place. They guided the audience through a series of exercises that delineated how to transform third-person interpretation into ‘In the Moment’ narrative, utilising examples provided on a printed sheet.

• Shattering the Fourth Wall: Meaningful Visitor Participation Techniques for Live Interpretation, presented by Andrea Jones and Catherine Hughes, explored the challenges and best practices for incorporating participation in museum programs in ways that encourage deeper thinking, emotional response and prolonged memories. The presentation engaged the audience as participants in two scenarios about race relations in America, using an actor to fully involve the participants in the story.

This workshop was exciting and very effective.

It had been planned that the second day of the IMTAL conference would be spent visiting Smithsonian Museums on the National Mall. Since these were all now closed, this program segment was replaced by a very pleasant excursion to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, and the most popular historic estate in America. The Mt Vernon precinct includes the original Mansion, more than a dozen original structures, Washington’s Tomb, a working blacksmith’s shop, and a demonstration farm incorporating a reconstructed slave cabin. The Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Centre meanwhile hosts 25 theatres and galleries, which together relate the detailed story of George Washington’s life. While this was an amazing historic site, some of the Australian contingent, myself included, were slightly bemused at the almost deifying approach taken to this giant of American history.

Mount Vernon is promoted as ‘an American

landmark and a lasting reminder of the life and legacy of the Father of Our Country’. Veneration of Washington’s historical role was paramount, and there was barely a hint that he was other than perfect of character. While admitting Washington inherited ten slaves from his father when he was just 11 years old, and by the end of his life more than 300 African American slaves lived in bondage at Mount Vernon, this aspect was little explored because his views on the subject of slavery did a ‘complete turnabout over the course of his life’. Washington eventually left directions in his will for the emancipation, after Martha Washington died, of all the slaves who belonged to him.

The resolutely ennobling approach to awkward facts of history was notably marked in the first-person interpretation of Martha Washington by the delightful Mary Wiseman. Obviously in Martha’s eyes ‘The General’ could do no wrong. This was also evidenced by her unwillingness to discuss the tensions between Thomas Jefferson and Washington, describing Jefferson only as ‘that terrible man’. I found it diverting that when one of our guides asked Mary to come out of character to speak to our conference group, I still felt

ABOVE: S. Xavier Carnegie.

Photo: Patrick Watt.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 31

I was listening to Martha Washington.

Australia was well represented at this global conference, with three presentations at the concurrent sessions and one Pecha Kucha event. Through traps of compression in titling of some sessions – one difficulty of the Program no doubt caused by lastminute reorganisation – I unfortunately missed the presentation by Australian dancer and Choreographer Liz Lea. Having already experienced Liz’s wonderful ‘In Flight’ at the National Library of Australia, I opted for a different presentation, which I regretted later after reading Patrick Watt’s article in the IMTALAP RAP, where he called this a highlight presentation, in which Liz ‘discussed how her partner-shipping, resource sharing and research led to this beautiful performance’. Patrick also related how Liz beguiled the audience with some of her dance sequences, in a presentation he described as ‘high art museum theatre’.

IMTAL 2013 in Washington proved to be one of the most upbeat conferences I have been to. While we witnessed museums grappling with challenging topics of racism, slavery, bigotry and contested historical truth, at the same time we experienced people who

were prepared to put themselves ‘out there’, to engage with their audiences in ways that produce historical (or scientific) insights, while at the same time being honest, educational, and great fun. [ ] Lyn Beasley was a museum educator for more than twenty years and is currently the President of the International Museum Theatre Alliance — Asia Pacific (IMTALAP). She is dedicated to engaging audiences through effective, dynamic interpretation and believes museum theatre is a great way to do this.

Text citation: Lyn Beasley, ‘International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2013 (Washington)’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.28–31

ABOVE: Liz Lea

32 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

Australia’s conservators continue to work nationally and internationally on evolving standards for objects’ care

Sustainability and Environmental Guidelines for Collections: AICCM’s interim position Editorial note Sustainability around energy consumption, building standards, and environmental controls for objects’ safety has formed a rising topic in museums’ attention in recent years. Museums Australia first developed a Sustainability Policy for the sector more than a decade ago. It was released by the MA National Council in February 2013 and is accessible on MA’s website. Other national associations – for example AAM in the US – have also turned to sustainability as a focus topic for the future of museums in the last few years. MA will ensure these issues gain attention and remain on the national agenda of important topics for the sector’s future.

Colleagues are referred to an article in the previous MAM issue: Scott Mitchell, Colin MacGregor and Glenn Hodges, ‘Outside the comfort zone? Towards more energy-efficient collection storage for museums’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 22(2), Museums Australia, Canberra, 2013, pp.30-33. And earlier, a text by the present article’s author appeared in a 2010 issue of MAM: Julian Bickersteth, ‘Changing environmental standards for museums and galleries – Where are we now?’, Museums Australia Magazine, 18 (3&4), double issue, Museums Australia, Canberra, June 2010, pp.10-11.

[MAM/Ed.]

Julian Bickersteth

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n 2009 the Council of AICCM (Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Material) established an Environmental Guidelines Taskforce. Its brief was to provide conservators and the wider Australian museums and galleries community with an AICCM position on how to respond to the global debate on safe environmental parameters for the display and storage of objects and collections.

Four years on, we have finally reached an interim position. What is that position, and why has it taken so long?

First, the position today, its aims and effects, which is as follows:

Second, why has this taken so long?

Some relaxation in environmental parameters for museums have been on the table for consideration by the conservation community for at least the last five years, promoted by building managers and directors alike.

For example in September 2008, Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the UK’s Tate, joined a pivotal public dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) at the National Gallery, London. Serota stated at that gathering that the issue of achievable and appropriate environmental levels had to be addressed, even positing the concept that visitors to the Tate in future may have to wear overcoats in winter due to the collections’ being exhibited at lower temperatures.

At the same time the Bizot Group, also known as the International Group of Organizers of Large Scale Exhibitions, had drawn up draft guiding principles covering the broad area of reducing carbon footprints in exhibitions exchange, with the relevant environmental guidelines principle reading as follows: Environmental standards should become more intelligent and better tailored to clearly identified needs.

Blanket conditions should no longer apply. Instead conditions should be determined by the requirements of the individual objects or groups of objects and the climate of the part of the world where the museums is located.

Two and a half years ago it looked as though international agreement on relaxation of environmental conditions in museums and galleries to reduce energy consumption, whilst not compromising the preservation of collections, was close. The AICCM Taskforce produced a draft document, which then went on to be the 2011 Museums Australia overall winning entry in the Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNA National Awards Winner 2011).

However this accolade proved a little embarrassing in retrospect, as shortly thereafter it became clear that the international conservation community was still

AICCM Interim Temperature and Relative Humidity Guidelines The AICCM has developed interim temperature and relative humidity guidelines for acceptable storage and display conditions of general collection material based on those developed by professional conservation groups internationally, most notably by the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).

It should be noted that specific temperature and relative humidity requirements for sensitive or fragile collections and for collections on loan should be determined in consultation with a professional conservator. Some material will require different or tighter conditions, which may be managed through, for example, the use of micro-climates.

Additional specific environmental requirements—such as light levels, air-flow, and other conditions—should be determined based upon professional conservation advice.

The AICCM recommended Interim Temperature and Relative Humidity Guidelines for acceptable storage and display conditions of general collection material are as follows: • Temperature: between 15–25ºC with allowable fluctuations of +/-4ºC per 24 hr.

• Temperature: between 15–25ºC with allowable fluctuations of +/-4ºC per 24 hr.

• Relative Humidity: between 45–55% with an allowable fluctuation of +/- 5% per 24 hr. Where storage and display environments experience seasonal drift, RH change to be managed gradually across a wider range limited to 40%–60%.

Temperature and Relative Humidity parameters for preservation of cultural materials will differ according to their material, construction and condition, but stable conditions maintained within the parameters above are generally acceptable for most objects.

ABOVE: Julian Bickersteth

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 33

divided on the issue of appropriate standards, and the prepared document needed to go back into the melting pot for further professional consideration. The Taskforce, whilst potentially able to provide parameters for Australia’s permanent collections, was unable to do so for any collection space where international loans were likely to be housed if the collecting institution wanted to continue to borrow artworks and objects from overseas.

Since 2011, the debate internationally has become somewhat polarised between conservators who are not prepared to relax standards—particularly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland—and those that are; and with further fault-lines around standards evident between art conservators and museum conservators.

At one end of the spectrum are organisations such as Munich’s Doerner Institute, which in 2013 stated: [A] stable room climate with tight ranges for relative humidity and temperature has been largely responsible in the past for the excellent condition of sensitive art objects, including paintings of all types, in our collections.

To depart from these values, would increase the risk for our collections and do little to help the environment.

Meanwhile, the more relaxed Bizot Group ‘Interim Guidelines’ increase the risk for all lenders and will raise insurance premiums, perhaps very significantly. The Institute is convinced that the goals of a ‘green museum’ and ‘sustainability’ can be achieved by means other than by abandoning globally accepted museum standards that are also applied generally to art in transit around the world.

At the other end of the debate, proponents of a more liberal approach include Jim Reilly, of the Image Permanence Institute in the US, who recently stated: [I]t’s time to put a stake in the heart of the zombie of 20/50 for all collections, all the time. The standard is not ideal for all circumstances, doesn’t meet the needs of many collection types, and is difficult and costly to maintain mechanically.

Jonathan Ashley-Smith, former Head of Conservation at the V&A in London, as long ago as 1994 stated: [A]s far as environmental damage is concerned my thesis is that if you move a sound object from an environment somewhere in that middle range of 50rh plus or minus 15 to another environment that is also in that mid-range, the risk of detectable additional deterioration is small.

In between the two extremes there is a variety of positions.

For example, the AIC issued guidelines in 2010 that were endorsed by the US Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in May 2013, which include the following: For the majority of cultural materials, a set point in the range of 45-55% relative humidity with an allowable drift of +/- 5% yielding a total annual range of 40% minimum to 60% maximum and a temperature range of

15-25C is acceptable. Fluctuations must be minimised.

Meanwhile the new UK standard PAS 198 – in ‘Specifications for Managing Environmental Conditions for Cultural Collections’ – is not as prescriptive, allowing 35-65% RH and 5-30C temperature, as determined by a process best described as a risk-managed, holistic approach to environmental management.

No ‘ideal’ standard is presented. The goal is to help users make their own judgments based on local climates, an understanding of collection material vulnerabilities to agents of deterioration, the capabilities of the mechanical system and the building envelope, and the general move towards energy reduction.

Finally there are also non-conservators weighing into the debate, such as Maxwell Anderson, Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, who has elsewhere been prominent in the discussion of due diligence standards on provenance of items considered for acquisition by art museums in the US: Throughout their history, art museums have spawned and fostered a subculture indifferent to developments in the world at large. Our ocean liner-like art galleries are slow to change course even in the face of evidence demanding it. A critical illustration of this habit is the rigid formula arrived at long ago that prescribes the set points of relative humidity and temperature in our museums.

It remains an unshakeable conviction for most conservators and administrators that unless a museum can guarantee lenders that its interior climate is 20 degrees celsius and 50 per cent relative humidity (with an allowance for minor fluctuations), it has no business asking for loans, and cannot be trusted with its own collection.

That conviction informs many facets of a museum’s operations beyond the cost, including how art is borrowed, lent, shipped, installed and stored.

Where the profession goes from here is under debate.

Perhaps the most important initiative currently is that being undertaken by a joint IIC /ICOM-CC working group, charged by both these leading professional groups with finding a path forward.

The working group will be providing an interim report on the issue at both the ICOM-CC triennial Conference, this year occurring in Melbourne, and the IIC Hong Kong Congress– both scheduled for September 2014. [ ] Julian Bickersteth is chair of the AICCM Taskforce on environmental guidelines, coordinator of the joint IIC/ICOM-CC working group on environmental guidelines, and Managing Director of International Conservation Services, Sydney.

Text citation: Julian Bickersteth, ‘Sustainability and Environmental Guidelines for Collections: AICCM’s interim position’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.32–33

34 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014

New Publications

Book Review: Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities

Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities (Eds. Anne Boddington, Jos Boys and Catherine Speight; Ashgate, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4094-4876-1.)

Andrew Simpson

T

his book opens with the fairly uncontroversial proposition that while there is much collaboration between museums and primary and secondary education, there is very little interface with higher education. The editors propose that we need to investigate why this is so; and if things can be done to change this situation then perhaps great conceptual advances, benefiting both partners and their stakeholders, will ensue.

This publication is the second from Ashgate about the relationships between the university and museum sectors. It follows Museums and Design Education: Looking to Learn, Learning to See published in 2010.

Both of these offerings originated from the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) in the UK. This organisation, established at the University of Brighton, involved a partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal College for the Arts, and the Royal Institute of British Architects,

all based in London. It was therefore something of an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional organisation that produced this outcome of collective scholarship on the potential of organisational hybridity.

Much of the material covered in the book emerged from a two-day conference entitled ‘Learning at the interface’, held at the Sackler Centre for Arts Education at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010.

Understandably, many of the case-studies and much of the analysis covered in the book are British examples, but this is not exclusively so; in fact one chapter on museum internships draws heavily on Australian data via Museums Australia.

The book is well structured with a number of interesting, mixed presentations interspersed with ample editorial scene-setting and summative analysis.

Reading this anthology of ideas feels a little like transporting the reader to a higher education or museum setting where leaders attend one of those well-facilitated, strategic, one-day seminars designed to broker new thinking and break new ground.

The introductory sections include a brief but succinct summary by Roy Clare (formerly head of MLA in the UK, now Director of the Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand) on the challenges and changes facing museums. After the editors outline the need for long-term, impactful and robust alliances between universities and museums, the book is divided into three major sections. The first focuses on strategic alliances.

Stephen Brown notes that the types of learning that occur in museums and universities is generally characterised as being quite different from one another, even polar opposites. Universities privilege structured, formal learning, whereas museums privilege selfdirected, informal learning. He argues however that this duality is false, based on a misalignment between process and outcome.

Elizabeth Beckman discusses museum studies internships, and highlights some of the tensions and misunderstandings between museums and universities. Despite the two getting along together reasonably well in this endeavour, the essay makes the noncontroversial suggestion that those working in both sectors are somewhat time-poor and this needs to be taken into account in aiming for the best outcomes.

Bautista and Balsamo, two contributors from the US, present a very interesting contribution on the dispersed nature of the museum experience. They cover the dualities between the physical and digital, fixed and mobile, and open and closed systems, and what such differences may mean for higher education.

The section rounds off with a piece about universities and the changing nature of expert groups

by Richard Watermeyer. This contribution draws on experiences from the now-defunct ‘Beacons for Science’ program in the UK: which encouraged academics to engage more openly with a wider

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(3) – Autumn 2014 35

public and was designed so that universities could move towards being of their communities rather than simply in their communities. At the end of this section, readers may detect a none-too-subtle intimation that universities are dinosaurs and there is still much to be done to bring them into the present world.

The next section covers a number of art and design case-studies, which are always very useful to test ideas in actual learning situations. A historical review by Sarah Ganz Blythe sets the scene. It covers the tensions between art and design school practice and the museum as institution, moving from emulation of masterpieces to appropriation and intervention. Gareth Williams explores the same tensions, noting that new design works lack the critical distance of historical artefacts. As a design scholar, Williams seems somewhat disappointed that interesting conceptual design challenges in the museum context are considered contemporary art; he then concludes with the position that museums, as presently construed, cannot really cope adequately to addressing the highly experimental work emerging from higher education.

The final offering within this section is from artists Mackenna and Janssen, documenting a number of artist-led curatorial interventions from their own practice. They construe the museum as a cornerstone institution impacting within their practice, but also a sparring partner to be outwitted and stretched beyond its comfort levels at every opportunity. At the end of this section, readers may detect a subtle impression that museums are dinosaurs and there is still much to be done to bring them into the present world.

In the final section of Museums and Higher Education Working Together, there are reports from those who have been involved directly at the interface of museums and higher education, as an attempt to weave the two threads of the institutional discourse together. Carrie Winstanley reports on surprising and strident anti-museum attitudes among students in general education tertiary programs. She discusses how much of this hostility can be turned around simply, but counter-intuitively, by providing more scaffolding. Many people feel they need a road-map before embarking on self-directed learning.

Manfredi and Reynolds analyse both courses that use university museum spaces and courses that use the services of specialised higher education staff in major cultural institutions. They favour a new, blended-learning model – in particular one that can encompass the advantages and opportunities of 3D scanning and printing – as better than having higher education specialists in major institutions. They note that some cross-disciplinary collaboration occurs, but it is relatively small and unmapped. They also encourage academics to allow students to occupy spaces with their own versions of knowledge construction. Linda

Friedlander follows with a case-study of specific cross-disciplinary application: involving the sharpening of trainee clinicians' observational skills using artworks as vehicles. This notion of directed observational learning could in fact be widened to the training of any observational scientist.

The final chapter by Hannan, Duhs and Chatterjee, before concluding remarks by the editors, focuses on what is seen as a key capability with immense possibilities through partnerships: this is object-based learning (OBL). It draws strongly on the experiences of University College London (UCL), where campus museums have been drawn together into the one institution-level organisation – a museums service department – rather than leaving them at the whim of discipline-based administrative substructures in the academy. This has unleashed some of the potential hinted at throughout the book in different ways. One of these is the integration of object-based learning across a wide range of disciplines, enshrining it in the pedagogic mission of the entire organisation. Objects are seen as enabling critical thinking skills via the role of kinaesthetic activity in memory retention. There is a lengthy discussion on the obstacles presented to implementing this at UCL during a ten-year campaign of institutional change. However the advantages remain clear. I was certainly convinced by the end of the chapter that OBL should be a central driver for future museums-and-higher education partnerships.

So to all sector leaders in higher education and cultural collecting organisations: shiny epistemological and ontological treasures beyond your wildest dreams are now within your grasp through collaboration. It is the perfect antidote to the numbing reductive world of academic restructuring or neoliberal management metrics that may enslave you.

However, as the concluding piece in this gathering makes clear, there is no obvious way forward for all.

As all knowledge-based organisations are compelled to reconfigure themselves because of the continuing tsunami of societal change, this book throws down the challenge and offers some tantalising glimpses of what is possible in transformative change through universities and museums working more closely and imaginatively together. [ ] Dr Andrew Simpson is Director of the Museum Studies Program at Macquarie University, Sydney, while also serving as a member of the National Council of Museums Australia.

Text citation: Andrew Simpson, ‘Book Review: Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2014, pp.34–35