Museums Australia Magazine 23(2&3) Autumn & Winter 2015

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• Dr Xerxes Mazda, Deputy Director Engagement, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto • Kim McKay AO, Executive Director and CEO, Australian Museum • Prof Dr Guenther Schauerte,Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) • Professor John Simons, President, Council for the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences • Kim Williams AM, various commercial and not-for-profit boards • Michaela Boland, National Arts Writer, The Australian • Genevieve Grieves, University of Melbourne • Janelle Hatherly, Education & Interpretation Specialist • Dr Michael A. Mares, PhD, University of Oklahoma • Dr Aden Ridgeway, Partner, Cox Inall Ridgeway • A/Prof Robyn Sloggett, Director, Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation • Steven Alderton, Assistant Director, Public Engagement & Culture, Australian Museum • Suesann Vos, Marketing & Sponsorship Manager, Abby Museum of Art & Archaeology • Dr Sally Watterson, Museum Advisor, Wollongong City

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Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 7

Contents

In this issue Museums Australia National Council 2013—2015 President’s Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A Growing Cacophony: ‘MA2015’ Conference shaping up in Sydney (21—24 May 2015) . . . . . . . . . . 9 Glass: a personal journey – and The Tom Malone Prize at AGWA. . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Art on the way to the theatre: Arts Centre Melbourne’s Art Collection. . . . . . 16 Performing arts heritage enriched through local histories: 2014 PAHN Conference in Ballarat . . . . 20

Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses – A conversation at the NGV in Melbourne . . . . . . . . 39 Artful museum marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2014 Regional Museums Networking Project – Progress Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Culture Through the Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 COVER IMAGE: Tom Moore, Buff Sandy 2012, blown and solid glass State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia.

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

treasurer

Suzanne Bravery (Independent museum consultant) secretary

Dr Mat Trinca (Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra)

Carol Cartwright

Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then and Now (2013—18) . . . . . . . 35

Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346

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

Fairweather, Tuckson and Wlodarczak: Translating the Lines of Abstraction. . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Using social media to promote access to Queensland’s cultural heritage collections. . . . . . . . 33

Advertising: 02) 6230 0346

vice-president

members

Un-dead Science Ed: Zombies, Museum Learning, and Students’ Science Aspirations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Editorial: (02) 6230 0346

Frank Howarth PSM (Former Director, Australian Museum, Sydney)

The Embodied Line: A suite of three exhibitions at TarraWarra Museum of Art . . . . 22

The Natural Futures Museum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Museums Australia Magazine PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608

president

© 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 Ministry for the Arts and Department of the Environment; 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 Andrew Simpson (Macquarie University, Sydney) (Former Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra)

Padraic Fisher (Director, National Wool Museum, Geelong) Peter Abbott (Manager, Tourism Services, Warrnambool City Council, Victoria) Pierre Arpin (Director, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northen Territory, Darwin) Rebekah Butler (Executive Director, Museum & Gallery Services Queensland, Brisbane) ex officio member

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

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

ACT Rebecca Coronel (Manager – Exhibitions and Gallery Development, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) NSW Dr Andrew Simpson (Macquarie University, Sydney) NT Janie Mason (Charles Darwin University Nursing Museum, Darwin) QLD John Waldron (Museum consultant, Sunshine Coast, Queensland) SA Mirna Heruc (Manager, Art & Heritage Collections, University of Adelaide, Adelaide)

TAS Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) VIC Jo-Anne Cooper (Manager, Grainger Museum, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Manager, Western Australian Museum, Perth)

8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

President’s Message Frank Howarth

O top:

Frank Howarth

above:

Alex Marsden

n a recent weekend I was fortunate to be the guest of the Central West NSW chapter of Museums Australia (MA) at their meeting in Kandos, north-west of Sydney. It was a chance to meet some more of the passionate museum and gallery people who are the custodians of much of the cultural expression of Australia, especially at the local community level.

The visit also reinforced the importance of narrative in communicating a popular culture heritage and design story, if I can refer to the evolution of Harley Davidson motorcycles in those terms. Kandos is home to one of the most significant Harley collections in the world, and that collection is brought to life in the words of its custodian and creator, Ken Hopkins. Now I’m not a motorcycle sort of person, but Ken told me stories that had me transfixed, because he was part of many of them. Have a look at their website www.bikesandbuds.com and Facebook page; and better still, visit Ken in Kandos.

MA is a broad church, ranging from a small specialised museum like the Kandos Motorcycle Museum, to highly professional regional galleries, to major State and National institutions. That breadth is a delight, but it’s also a challenge. How do we, as your association, adequately represent such breadth?

This question has most recently and sharply been asked by some of the regional galleries. What does a small volunteer-run social history museum have in common with a professionally staffed art gallery?

To my mind, both are part of the cultural expression and memory of Australia and its place in the world, and both connect people with that cultural narrative.

Furthermore both are engaged in the transformative impact of digital interactions on the relationship between institution and community. MA can and should represent that breadth and depth.

In terms of depth and breadth, several of our members have asked whether MA’s current, somewhat complex structure is still appropriate for a diverse and digital age. Our current structure is highly geographically focused – especially in terms of how MA is governed. But should we be based more around a type of institution or theme, or a better combination of both? These are questions that I am keen for MA and its new Council to consider over the next year, with wide involvement of our membership in that discussion.

The upcoming Sydney conference of MA in May will also reflect both our diversity and the digital age.

One of the plenary sessions will explore the blurring of boundaries in visual arts expression, in part driven by the increasing role of digital in such expression.

Another will look at a couple of the world’s current mega-museum developments: M+ in Hong Kong and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Both are unconventional, and the session will explore why. A further plenary will explore Indigenous culture’s role in the

Melbourne Museum, and within the Barangaroo development in Sydney. Again, the approaches taken are very different.

Come to the ‘MA2015’ National Conference in May, and take part in the 2015 Vivid festival, especially Vivid Ideas.

The Sydney conference will also be a chance for us to farewell our recently departed National Director, Bernice Murphy, and to welcome our new Director, Alex Marsden.

We owe a large debt of gratitude to Bernice, who came to MA at the beginning of 2006, and who has worked tirelessly to build the role and influence of MA. We are fortunate that Bernice continues in the role of Editor of the MA Magazine.

Alex meanwhile has long-standing connections with the museums sector and MA, and she comes to us after recently leaving years of service within the Commonwealth Government. Her experience and guidance will be vital when reviewing the structure and priorities for MA over the next few years.

I look forward to talking with many of you in Sydney during ‘MA2015’. [ ] Frank Howarth PSM National President, Museums Australia

Greetings from new National Director

I

’m delighted to have been given the opportunity to follow Bernice and lead the National Office of Museums Australia at a time of far-reaching changes and great opportunities for our members and the sector.

Having just travelled to meet MA staff, Councillors, and colleagues in the broader heritage and culture sector – in Perth and Melbourne, as well as Canberra – I’m energised by the ideas, generosity and commitment shown by everyone.

I’m looking forward to meeting many of you face-to-face in the coming months, to hearing your suggestions, issues and plans, and to working with you to get the important things done.

Please feel free to get in touch with me, to drop in for a coffee at our office at the NMA, or send me a message from wherever you are located.

I’m especially keen to catch opportunities for you to share your ideas and concerns, your intelligence about what’s going on, and your creative solutions!

The National Conference will be an ideal opportunity to talk, learn and listen. Look forward to catching up with you in May! [ ] Alex Marsden National Director, Museums Australia

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 9

Snapshot of ‘MA2015’ National Conference planning, program, and social events

A Growing Cacophony: ‘MA2015’ Conference shaping up in Sydney (21—24 May 2015) Andrew Simpson

T

he Australian printmaker, Rew Hanks, was recently awarded the Grand Prize at the prestigious Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints. It was for his 2012 depiction of Krefft’s Chair at the Australian Museum. The Chair was once occupied by an early Director of the Australian Museum, Gerard Krefft. He was carried out of the Director’s office, still resolutely occupying the chair, and unceremoniously dumped on William Street on the orders of the Board of Trustees in 1874, amid claim and counter-claim of falsifying records, misuse of public funds and drunkenness.

In the museums and galleries sector, how much has changed in the intervening 141 years? Have a look at the program for the 2015 Museums Australia National Conference, ‘A Cultural Cacophony’ to find out.

Krefft’s Chair is in Australia’s first and oldest museum in the city that was also the entry-point for European occupation of Aboriginal lands. It is a symbol of contestation and resistance.

The museums and galleries sector – from big city institutions to regional outposts staffed by dedicated volunteers – is not immune to the tsunami of technological and socio-cultural change that is engulfing the modern world. Contestation is the new norm. Different voices battle to occupy the heart of the public sphere, and the boundaries between those who fund, produce and consume culture in our museums and gallery spaces are increasingly fluid and changing.

How much is the modern museum and gallery about contestation and resistance?

To tackle these issues, the ‘Cultural Cacophony’ framing the MA National Conference in 2015 will gather colleagues from May 21 to 24 at various sites in Sydney: at the Australian National Maritime Museum (Remote, Regional and Community Museums day, in partnership with our state agency, Museums and Galleries NSW), and at the iconic Sydney Town Hall afterwards. The Social Program and other events will take you further afield to colleague institutions across town before you leave, including some itineraries bound to appeal to feral temperaments.

There are high-profile local and international keynote speakers gathering to stimulate ideas and conversations. In a number of highly topical, curated panel discussions we will delve into the thinking behind the largest international museum developments; and some small and perfect alternatives. We’ll unlock the inter-disciplinary potential of the visual arts; and tackle the challenging issues around provenance of collections that have repeatedly hit the headlines in spectacular coverage of controversial cases for museums to discuss and re-frame their practices for the future more clearly.

Accompanying these big-ticket items is a plethora of professional development workshops scheduled throughout the program, representing substantial value for money. They cover topics such as deaccessioning, Trove, community collaboration, exhibition

logistics, myth-busting, the future of museum work, and even food.

There is also an excellent Exhibitions Masterclass with an international focus presented by a revitalised Museums Australia network – and a Trade Show with a fine range of presenters, suppliers and sponsors of the sector.

Meanwhile ‘MA 2015’ Conference sub-themes have strong strands dealing with digitisation and access, Indigenous issues, social inclusion, empowering audiences, design thinking, and current topics for university museums and art galleries.

If you are not completely exhausted by the program contents, you will be fully stretched and entertained by the social events – with a substantial offering every evening hosted by Sydney’s leading cultural institutions. Then there is a range of Sydney-specific experiences and tours – including a tour of regional NSW that you won’t find in any tourism brochures.

If you need any more reasons to attend the Museums Australia National Conference in Sydney this year, there are a couple of other stand-out city festival events on at the same time. The Sydney Writer’s Festival is happening. And another edition of Vivid will also coincide: to light up the city spectacularly while you’re our guests in Sydney!

In fact, if you get to the 2015 MAPDA and MAGNA Awards, you’ll be at a Harbourside top-spot that evening for the launch of Vivid at the Australian National Maritime Museum, fronting a spectacular Vivid sampling across Darling Harbour. If you haven’t seen Sydney annually illuminated by contemporary visual artists creating multiple light-works around the city, then this is your special opportunity: 2015 is the International Year of Light.

Welcome to Sydney. Bring your experience, voices and ideas, and take more away when you leave. Shape the Cacophony! [ ] Dr Andrew Simpson is President, MA-NSW, and Chair of the Organising Committee for the 2015 National Conference.

above:

Andrew Simpson

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Snapshot of ‘MA2015’ National Conference planning, program, and social events

‘MA 2015’ National Conference (21-24 May 2015, Sydney): Viewpoints and expectations

Steph Chinneck (Recent graduate of Museum Studies, Macquarie University)

Penelope Grist (Assistant Curator, National Portrait Gallery)

As a recent graduate and someone looking to work in the museums sector, I love attending museums conferences as they are always such exciting places of discussion. Sometimes it seems like the challenges facing museums never change, but it’s inspiring to see how many new ways museums find to overcome issues they face.

I attend because I want to hear about what museums are up to, what challenges they are facing and how museums overcome them. It makes me excited about my future working in museums, knowing that there are so many inspirational and passionate people working in this field.

I think it’s really important that students are able to attend conferences like these. We spend so much time reading about theoretical approaches in museums, but at a conference we get to see what people are actually doing. It’s also a great place to meet people who work in the field. It can be very difficult to break into the sector, making connections with people who are also passionate about museums helps you feel like you are part of a community.

Some of the best conversations I’ve had about the arts and museums happen after a day of talks when everyone unwinds with a drink or two (or three). I had a lot of fun at last year’s conference in Launceston, meeting new people and learning so much about museum work.

I’m sure that this year’s conference will also be full of opportunities to connect with others and learn about their work.

The first Museums Australia Conference I ever attended was ten years ago in Sydney, when I was a student working as a research assistant. So the 2015 conference is an anniversary of sorts for me.

Looking back at the program of a decade ago, I was expecting discussions around quirky time-anchored technology (in the days before the ‘i-’ everything!); and some serious blast-from-the-past-postmodernism (then in full swing).

But it is the similarities across the years that are striking: a focus on audiences, the visitor experience and the challenges of evaluating what kind of impact we are actually making; contested histories; the best way to use new technologies; methods of interpretation; and, of course, the future of collecting institutions. I don’t think this is a sign that we haven’t moved on!

In fact, it is these recurring issues wrestled with each year at the MA conference that are most revealing of the cultural sector’s strength. Each year, new ideas, new perspectives and new experiments are brought to bear on these issues across Australia and they are brought together at the National Conference. I look forward to being forced to reckon with questions bigger than my projects and my role at my institution.

Since 2005, I have been fortunate to have been able to attend four Conferences, and I am always struck by the particular energy of these gatherings. It is born of the sector’s sheer diversity: from galleries of all shapes and sizes, to the tiniest volunteer-run museums, to libraries, historic houses and private collections. There is an atmosphere born of an uncompromising engagement with the sector’s purpose. And there is the joy of meeting up with colleagues from around Australia.

At the 2015 Conference, I will remember my awkward decade-ago-self, rigorously following what was best described by Frank Moorhouse in his novella Conference-ville, as ‘Horne’s Rule of Diligence – Miss nothing, take one of everything’. I still have my lanyard! This time, I might be a bit more relaxed and I will seek out new colleagues attending the Conference for the first time.

I think it’s really important that students are able to attend conferences like these. We spend so much time reading about theoretical approaches in museums, but at a conference we get to see what people are actually doing

I look forward to being forced to reckon with questions bigger than my projects and my role at my institution

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Steph Chinneck

above:

Penelope Grist

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 11

top:

Alec Coles

above:

Skye Bennett

Alec Coles (Museum director/CEO – Western Australian Museum)

Skye Bennett (Emerging museum professional and volunteer for multiple museums, Adelaide)

The National MA Conference provides a rare and vital opportunity for museum colleagues and supporters to beat the tyranny of distance and to come together to share and debate ideas and opinions, as well as considering challenges ahead and how best to address them.

It also brings together people from right across the sector, from wide geographic, operational and interest areas, but also ensuring that there are no hierarchical boundaries: indeed the egalitarian nature of the National Conference, for me, is one of its greatest strengths.

This year’s theme, Message + Medium is very pertinent to us in the West as we embark upon our major new museum development. But this is also a critical time for museums to assert themselves in a period of disruption.

The worrying of level of intolerance that seems depressingly and increasingly prevalent in the world is not only a challenge to society, but it is a challenge to museums. Perhaps the adage of ‘safe places for un-safe ideas’ has never been more fragile – but has also never been more important.

I hope in Sydney that we will explore these ideas further and not only seek to demonstrate our fundamental values in these difficult times, but will reaffirm the many ways that we can contribute positively to societies in change.

I have been privileged to receive a bursary to attend MA2015, provided through the generosity of Museums Australia SA Branch. As an emerging museum professional, attending the MA National Conference will provide a valuable opportunity to further develop professional networks, so vital in early career stages, as well as stay informed of key issues impacting on the museums and galleries sector.

As a current student and volunteer with the South Australian Museum, Unley Museum, and Art Gallery of South Australia, the MA National Conference presents an opportunity to engage with and learn from both established practitioners and respected leaders, and share the knowledge and key issues with colleagues to drive innovation and new ideas at a local level.

The program’s varied and diverse concurrent sessions ­— particularly under the themes of digital access, the visitor experience, relevance, professional development, and the ever changing nature of museum work — present key highlights. Moreover, the program’s emphasis on engaging students and emerging professionals will help to foster and support future career paths within the sector.

I look forward to sharing new ideas, discussing key challenges and opportunities, particularly in the areas of audience engagement, emerging digital technologies, and the rapidly changing role of museums and their audiences at MA2015.

There are no hierarchical boundaries: indeed the egalitarian nature of the National Conference, for me, is one of its greatest strengths

The program’s emphasis on engaging students and emerging professionals will help to foster and support future career paths within the sector

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Snapshot of ‘MA2015’ National Conference planning, program, and social events

Andrew Hiskens (Manager, Learning Services at State Library Victoria and President, Museums Australia Education) In my experience, the best conferences are the ones which mix ideas and surprise within a social context that supports learning. And the very best conferences make you feel as though you are at the centre of the world, in company with the best thinkers and the most interesting people (yourself included!) You are, as T S Eliot describes it, ‘at the still point of the turning world’.

Several years ago, Professor Stephen Heppell (himself a former keynote at an MA Conference) undertook some research into ‘best learning experiences’. The characteristics people described included: active (doing something), doing it with others, a sense of personal progress, a guide/coach/teacher, a difficult task achieved, there was an audience, a sense of ‘got there early’, a feel for others’ progress, some passion and a little eccentricity. (See – http://rubble.heppell. net/archive/best_learning/) So many of these characteristics are the kinds of things we think of when we imagine our ‘perfect conference’: the social; the sense that you are learning; learning from others; spending time with new people; passion, and definitely eccentricity. We go to conferences to have new conversations, to have our ideas challenged and to come away renewed – with a store of thinking, connections, ideas and energy to see us through the dark days of ‘business as usual’.

Educators particularly value these aspects of conferences and, at last year’s MA Conference in Launceston, we structured our own pre-conference day. The benefits were not only seen in the direct learning, but in the creation of a cohort with which to experience and share the conference (Stephen’s ‘doing it with others’).

This year’s Conference sees a new take on the preConference day, called MEET. Museums Australia Education has teamed up with the evaluation and technology groups for a combined Museum Education Evaluation and Technology (MEET) Day. There is much in common between us: we are all interested in learning; we value evaluation and the way in which it helps us be better at what we do; and we are interested in the affordances of technology to enable the previously impossible to be done interestingly and at scale. Because of this, we will come away with an even larger, more diverse group with which to share the experience of the main conference.

In addition, 2015 marks the fortieth anniversary of the national museum education group, so we are planning a modest celebration to mark the occasion (there may be cake).

All of this sets the scene for a great conference – ‘at the still point of the turning world’ – before we all step back onto the merry-go-round.

Julie Baird, Manager Newcastle Museum When your region’s professional network could comfortably fit in a Holden Commodore, attending the MA National Conference has an added significance and offers a variety of opportunities, often difficult for regional museum workers to access.

The variety of speakers and subjects means that I have never attended an MA conference where I have not learned something surprising or remarkable, often from a paper I accidentally found myself attending by someone working in a completely different specialisation or region. I recommend that all delegates try to attend at least one session they believe has nothing to do with them. I’ve gained remarkable insights that have helped my museum – from random speakers that I would never have an opportunity to hear except at this national gathering.

At MA 2015, you can meet international speakers, Directors and CEOs, or lovely Frank from a small art gallery run by volunteers out the back of Bourke.

Talk to everybody: random strangers, old friends, locals. Swap cards and confidently discuss your institution’s victories and defeats. That person nursing a friand at coffee break could be the one to solve your 20-year-old deaccessioning nightmare. We are a small-industry family in a big country, and only the national conference can overcome many barriers.

When you are overdosing after a couple of days of talk, take the opportunity to explore the exhibitions and institutions in Sydney. We as a group love showing off our amazing collections. It’s also a great chance to investigate travelling exhibitions and organise object loans. Yes, you will learn; but you can also check out the national temperature of our industry. Keep an ear out for trends that can help you; and you may see that you’re actually innovating too – and the next conference really needs you to give a paper to let others catch up with your institution’s remarkable program, exhibition or problem-solving.

Can’t wait to see you there!

I have never attended an MA conference where I have not learned something surprising or remarkable

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Andrew Hiskins

above:

Julie Baird

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 13

Perth’s state gallery champions glass, through a special prize and exhibition annually

Glass: a personal journey – and The Tom Malone Prize at AGWA

Stefano Carboni

I above: top:

Stefano Carboni

David Hay A need for balance 2014 blown, overlayed, sandblasted and carved glass 22 x 22 x 24 cm Collection of the artist Photo credit: Kevin Gordon

t is sometimes enjoyable to reflect upon apparently small episodes in one’s life, which in retrospect reveal themselves to be major turningpoints in personal and professional development.

In my case, an affinity with glass studies grew not so much from my formative cultural environment – that is, the city of Venice – but from a casual assignment I was given by my professor and mentor in Islamic art at the University of Venice, the late Ernst Grube.

As a young graduate, I was asked to give my first public talk at a symposium in 1986 entitled ‘Venezia e l’Oriente Vicino’ (Venice and the Near East). Professor Grube suggested that I research an unfamiliar topic: to establish whether it was possible to demonstrate a correlation between artistic glass production in the Near East in the mediaeval period and the growing influence of Venetian glass on the world market from the fifteenth century onwards.

The journey I began – almost thirty years ago now – has been incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. It allowed me to carve an academic niche for myself in the study of mediaeval glass from the Islamic

lands, and especially to discover new horizons in the complex diplomatic, commercial, cultural and artistic relationships between the Islamic Middle East and the ‘Serenissima’ Republic of Venice. Happily, the results of this passion have also been tangible. During my time as curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, I published a number of exhibition and collection catalogues, articles, and lectures – notably Glass from Islamic Lands, The Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum (2001); and relevant chapters of Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797 (2007).

Although Venice is today famous as a centre for glass production, it is still little-known that its artistic glassmaking industry would not have developed without its close commercial and cultural relationships with the Islamic world. These long-standing historical connections allowed raw materials (such as alkali), cullet or broken glass for recycling purposes, and of course technically advanced and superbly finished objects, to reach the Venetian lagoon from the eastern Mediterranean and the Egyptian coasts.

For example, the impetus for experimenting with the application of enamels on glass began in Venice in the

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Perth’s state gallery champions glass, through a special prize and exhibition annually

late-thirteenth century, reflecting direct access to the world’s most refined and technically accomplished large enameled bottles, vases and mosque lamps of the period, which were produced in Damascus and Cairo. These fine objects often arrived in Europe to be deposited in church treasuries, in view of their precious status.

Another crucial moment in my journey occurred when, as part of the organisation of a major survey of Islamic glass in collaboration with the late David Whitehouse – Glass of the Sultans, 2001, which was exhibited at the Corning Museum of Glass, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Benaki Museum in Athens – I was asked to coordinate and edit The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin for Summer 2001, which was entirely dedicated to the subject of glass (Ars Vitraria: Glass in The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

This proved a great opportunity to broaden my horizons, to collaborate and learn much more about glass from many colleagues within the MMA across its diverse curatorial departments: ranging chronologically and stylistically from Ancient Near Eastern to Modern art; and geographically from all parts of Europe, Northern America and Asia. Such intense comparative work also provided my introduction to contemporary artistic glass movements in Europe and North America. This was built upon the historical extensions I was already familiar with, such as the ‘modernist turn’ of Murano’s production in Venice as well as Scandinavian designers and glassmakers in the mid-twentieth century – later enriched by the exciting developments of the Pilchuk Glass School in Seattle, Washington, in the early 1970s.

My main fascination with glass lies in its versatility and infinite artistic possibilities as a material; but also its mystifying molecular composition that makes it hard and solid at ambient temperatures while still maintaining the random atomic organization of a liquid. Indeed, it is a viscous, volatile and dangerous liquid when it comes out of the furnace, requiring precise and fast action by expert hands before it cools down, or else needs to be reheated.

With such previous experience in the field of glass

studies, I was naturally surprised and delighted, arriving in Perth in late 2008, to find that the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) had taken the lead in promoting artistic glassmaking in this country. Since I knew very little about contemporary glass production in Australia, this became one of the most pleasant challenges of my new role as AGWA Director when seeking to become actively involved in this country’s cultural scenes. Indigenous arts provided another focus on arrival, and I was later to discover some recent connections linking these seemingly disparate fields.

The Tom Malone Prize was inaugurated in 2003, specifically as a ‘gift to the people of Western Australia and their Art Gallery’, and this new venture was made possible through generous benefaction by Elizabeth Malone, as a tribute to her late husband and fellow glass enthusiast, Tom Malone.

With its twelfth year in 2014, this highly respected and eagerly anticipated Prize has become the most important showcase at a national level for Australian artists working in glass, while also greatly enriching the collection of the state’s Art Gallery, both through its acquisitive nature and as an incentive for us to acquire additional works from the pool of finalists annually.

While many of the winners over the years have been well-established artists – such as Nick Mount, Clare Belfrage, Jessica Loughlin and Tom Moore – one of the most important aspects of the Tom Malone Prize is that it encourages younger and emerging artists to submit entries. We are therefore proud that we have been able to offer a small but significant contribution towards nurturing careers, mentoring, and sometimes discovering some of the most respected Australian glass artists of today – among these, Cobi Cockburn, Charles Butcher, Brian Corr, Jeremy Lepisto and Jason Sims.

Consistently we have received several dozens of entries each year, while AGWA curator Robert Cook, being in charge of the project from its gestation, has steered liaison with all the artists, and developed a network of Gallery contacts and expanding expertise in the field of glass among our public collections nationally.

Since my arrival in 2008, Robert and I have worked on the shortlist of selected finalists, together with Elizabeth Malone. The continuing process is extremely rewarding because we are all enthusiasts for the medium, and our discussions extend beyond the aesthetic and technological worth of current works to focus broadly on how artists and their works fit within the evolving Australian artistic scene as a whole.

Once the finalists are selected – usually not more

left:

Matthew Curtis Increment binate amber 2014 cast tinted glass, stainless steel 50 x 170 x 50 cm Collection of the artist Photo credit: Rob Little

right, top:

Tom Moore Buff Sandy 2012 blown and solid glass 69 x 30 x 17 cm State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia Purchased through the Tom Malone Prize, Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2013 right: below:

Clare Belfrage In deep with brown and green 2014 blown glass with cane drawing, hand sanded and polished 37 x 39 x 7 cm Collection of the artist Photo credit: Pippy Mount

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is proud to have carved this niche of unique support in the panorama of contemporary Australian art

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 15

than a dozen – the works are shipped to Perth and the exhibition prepared. The Prize is installed so that it can be enjoyed by the general public, at the same time offering the judges the opportunity to view the works in an ideal environment. While the three of us are very keen judges, we regularly include an additional judge, selected from among senior artists such as Nick Mount, Klaus Moje or David Hay – that is, of course, if they are not themselves candidates for the Prize in a given year.

In the past, instead of waiting for the installation of finalists in Perth, we have also travelled across Australia to pay visits to artists and view selected works in their studios. Such occasions are an outstanding learning experience for me personally, allowing me to get to know the artists, listen to their thoughts and ideas, and to appreciate the environment and context in which they work. Nevertheless, it still proves to be more practical to have all of the objects finally in the same room during the judging process; so we are currently mounting regular annual shows at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

The timing of the introduction of the Tom Malone Prize in 2003 has proved excellent, since contemporary Australian glassmaking is a creative arts field that does not have wide recognition in art historical or museum circles; moreover it has suffered in the past from being positioned as an elevated expression of craft-making, rather than an independent ‘fine art’ with its own history, intangible heritage and distinctive achievements. However, similarly to other countries in Europe and North America, this field in Australia has been growing and blossoming for some time, through consistent studio efforts and individual artistic brilliance, to the point that its ambitions are now ready to extend beyond Australian boundaries and also gain appreciation overseas.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is proud to have carved for itself this niche of unique support and focused attention in the panorama of contemporary Australian art. The Gallery wishes to pay tribute not only to the winners and finalists of the 2014 Tom Malone Prize, celebrating its 13th year of existence – but also to the hundreds of additional participants over the years, who might not have made the shortlists for exhibition or publication but who nevertheless make up the field of significant activity which is vital for maintenance of glass production, awareness and excellence in Australian creativity at large.

Although still undervalued as a medium within ‘Australian arts’, AGWA remains vigorously aware that the contemporary Australian ‘art glass’ movement is steadily growing its grassroots, and we are resolved to continue to foster its progress. [ ] Dr Stefano Carboni is Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.

Citation for this text: Stefano Carboni, ‘Glass: a personal journey – and The Tom Malone Prize at AGWA, Perth’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.13-15.

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Performing arts centre collections profiled in three capital cities

Art on the way to the theatre: Arts Centre Melbourne’s Art Collection

Steven Tonkin

A above:

Steven Tonkin

rts Centre Melbourne is the custodian of what is arguably one of the most significant public collections of Australian art outside the major state art galleries.[1] Yet the works of art often go unnoticed as theatregoers scurry to their seats for a performance, or jostle to get a drink and a snack during the interval.

The foundation of Arts Centre Melbourne’s Art Collection dates back to the construction of what was then known as the Victorian Arts Centre in the 1970s

and early 1980s. The works of art from this time are principally site-specific and embedded within the architectural fabric and interior public spaces. The Art Collection has therefore been a vital part of the history and evolution of Arts Centre Melbourne over the last four decades, while a number of these works are now recognised in their own right as significant examples of Australian art.

The first acquisitions for the Art Collection took place in 1973, under the direction of the Victorian Arts Centre Building Committee, with the support of the William Angliss Art Fund. The imperative at this time was to acquire major public sculptures for the cultural precinct, and this resulted in the commission of two landmark monumental sculptures: Clement Meadmore’s Dervish 1973–81, today located on the riverside promenade; and Inge King’s Forward Surge 1974–81, sited on the lawn between Hamer Hall and the Theatres Building, which is one of Melbourne’s most prominent and well-loved public sculptures.

The Melbourne-born, internationally-renowned stage designer, John Truscott, was the creative visionary behind the original interiors and foyers of Arts Centre Melbourne, which were realised during the final years of construction between 1979 and 1984.

Truscott worked across dance, opera, film and festivals, and was lured back from abroad to undertake this monumental task.

Truscott’s design aesthetic encompassed everything from the striated rock finish of the Concert Hall to the coffee table lamps in the foyers. Works of art were integral to Truscott’s conception of a secular cathedral of the arts, and he can be credited with instigating the commission and acquisition of major works of art from some of Australia’s most-renowned twentieth-century artists. It was Truscott’s skills in persuasion and his range of personal contacts within the art world that helped secure major series of works

by Arthur Boyd, Roger Kemp, Donald Laycock, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, and Jeffrey Smart, among others; along with a ground-breaking selection of early Western Desert paintings and tapestries. In keeping with Truscott’s original vision, many of these works of art remain in their original locations and frames within the heritage interiors of Arts Centre Melbourne.

Arthur Boyd, for example, completed 16 paintings for the State Theatre circle foyer, including The Actor 1984, and Landscape with Dog 1984, which incorporate a number of recurrent themes in the artist’s work from the 1950s onwards. Boyd then painted 14 views from his Bundanon property on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, New South Wales. In homage to the cyclical rhythms of the landscape, the artist captured the shifting light and colours at various times of the day: from the crisp clarity of the early morning to the hazy glow of the river bank bathed by the lateafternoon sun. The Shoalhaven series presents a panoramic vista that spans the entire foyer.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 17

John Olsen’s series of paintings in the State Theatre stalls foyer is based on operas, including Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes 1984; Largo al Factotum: Tribute to Rossini 1984; and Mozart’s Papageno the Bird Catcher in ‘The Magic Flute’ 1984. Olsen noted at the time: I felt very happy working on the theme of opera.

It suits my narrative inclinations. Aside from the atmosphere of music, the sequential story themes provide exciting motifs for pictures.[2] Olsen’s series culminated in a pictorial rendition of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, completed in 1985.

It is an eclectic composition combining ritualistic symbols and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs with a stark modernist depiction of the Temple of Vulcan, in which Radamès and Aida are buried together in the final scene of the opera. Aida is painted on convex hardboard panels specifically moulded to the curvature of the foyer wall, which emphasises the site-specificity of the work of art to the interior in which it is located.

Other major works worthy of specific mention, and worth seeking out on your next visit, include Sidney Nolan’s monumental botanical suite, Paradise Garden 1968–70, on display in the State Theatre foyers; Hugh Oliveiro’s opulent mural, The Four Seasons 1983-84, located at the entrance to the Theatres Building; and Jeffrey Smart’s masterpiece, Container Train in Landscape 1983–4, in the Fairfax Studio Foyer. Over the decades, Arts Centre Melbourne’s venues have, in effect, been transformed into a museological environment for the preservation of what has now become a very significant art historical collection.

While many of the ‘foundation’ works of art have remained on permanent public display for more than thirty years, in the last decade, Arts Centre Melbourne has also embarked on the active pursuit of contemporary works of art that speak of and to the performing arts and the creativity of performance, and which reflect the entwined histories of art and performance throughout the twentieth century to the present.

The development of the contemporary art collection has occurred alongside a cross-disciplinary exhibition program, which over the last decade has incorporated thematic exhibitions exploring the various creative intersections between the visual and performing arts.

Recent exhibitions have included Creative Australia and the Ballet Russes (2009-10); Sight & Sound: Music & Abstraction in Australian Art (2010); Black Box <> White Cube: Aspects of Performance in Contemporary Australian Art (2011); Singing the World: Western desert art from the collection of Arts Centre Melbourne (2012); Performative Prints from the Torres Strait (2013); and most recently, Show Time: The Art Collection of Arts Centre Melbourne (2014).

One specific collection development strategy has been to acquire contemporary Australian

photography, in which the photographs are in some way theatrically framed and staged. This ‘performativity’ is widely evident throughout contemporary practice, whereby the artist takes on the role of a central character, or operates behind the scenes like a movie or theatre director. Recent acquisitions have included works by Siri Hayes, Polixeni Papapetrou, Deborah Paauwe, Darren Siwes and Anne Zahalka.

Another collection development strategy has been to commission new works of art informed by the history of the organisation, or inspired by Arts Centre Melbourne’s nationally-recognised Performing Arts Collection and its main collecting areas of circus, dance, music, opera and theatre. As illustrative of this approach, in 2008, Canberra-based sculptor Anna Eggert was invited to visit the Performing Arts Collection, where she was able to study an opulent 1890s gown worn by Dame Nellie Melba in the lead role of Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata. In response, and with an attention to detail reminiscent of a late-nineteenth century couturière, the artist created an arresting lifesize ‘figurative’ sculpture out of stainless steel, which seems inhabited by Melba’s presence. These current initiatives and strategic acquisitions aim to facilitate the re-contextualisation, and therefore reinterpretation, of the existing ‘historical’ art collection.

The Art Collection is undoubtedly one of Arts Centre Melbourne’s cultural jewels, which is freely accessible to the public, patrons and visitors, from early in the morning when the Theatres Building opens until the curtain falls on the last performance of the night. Despite the organisational significance placed on the Art Collection by Arts Centre Melbourne itself, it is also worthwhile to consider this collection in a wider historical and cultural context.

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the final construction and opening of a number of major Australian

above: Hugh

Williamson Room, with Michael Shannon’s painting of the Original Concept of the Victorian Arts Centre 1963. (Image: Damian Vincenzi, 2008) opposite:

Clement Meadmore’s monumental sculpture Dervish 1973–81, located on the promenade next to the Yarra River. (Image: Mark Ashkanasy, 2014)

1. For detailed accounts, see Steven Tonkin, Janine Barrand, et al., Show Time: The Art Collection of Arts Centre Melbourne, Victorian Arts Centre Trust, Melbourne, 2014; Vicki Fairfax, ‘Nothing Short of a Miracle’, in A Place Across the River: they aspired to create the Victorian Arts Centre, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2002, pp.171–205; Robert Lindsay and Jaqueline Taylor, eds, The Art Collections of the Victorian Arts Centre, Victorian Arts Centre Trust, Melbourne, 1992.

2 John Olsen quoted in Lindsay and Taylor, The Art Collections of the Victorian Arts Centre, op.cit., p.16.

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Performing arts centre collections profiled in three capital cities

below: The Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House, with Jørn Utzon’s tapestry design Homage to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, woven by the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne, in 2003. (Image: Courtesy the Sydney Opera House Trust) bottom:

John Olsen’s mural, Salute to Five Bells 1973, on permanent public display in the north foyer of Sydney Opera House (Image: Courtesy the Sydney Opera House Trust).

3. See Daniel Thomas, ‘Sydney Opera House: The Works of Art’, Art and Australia, vol.11 no.3, January–March 1974, pp.262–9.

performing arts centres. Most spectacularly, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened in October 1973, in the same year as Adelaide’s Festival Theatre.

The opening of the Victorian Arts Centre followed suit in the following decade, with the Melbourne Concert Hall (now Hamer Hall) opened in 1982 and the Theatres Building in 1984; meanwhile the Queensland Performing Arts Centre was completed in 1985 as part of the wider Queensland Cultural Precinct.

There are intriguing parallels in the formation of the respective art collections held by these major performing arts centres: in the similar approaches adopted to the display of public sculptures and interior works of art, the common representation of specific artists, and the ongoing preservation and current redevelopment issues facing these organisations and their collections today.

Art and Australia devoted its summer 1974 issue to the new Sydney Opera House, highlighting its iconic architecture and the incorporation of works of art. Special attention was given to John Coburn’s two theatre curtains, Curtain of the Sun 1971 and Curtain of the Moon

1971; and the ‘undoubted success’ of John Olsen’s monumental mural Salute to Five Bells 1973 was celebrated.

Nevertheless, the initial impression was that the impact of Jørn Utzon’s architectural masterpiece overwhelmed the art, inevitably reducing it to a subordinate, decorative function – a situation that has perhaps not altered significantly today.[3] While Olsen’s mural remains in its original location – although for conservation reasons usually hidden behind a curtain to protect it from sunlight – over the last decades there have been some significant changes, as well as some timely additions: for example, the installation of the Larrakitj memorial poles in 2002; and more recently, Jørn Utzon’s own tapestry design, Homage to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, unveiled in the Utzon Room in 2004. Yet despite the millions of tourists who make the pilgrimage to the Sydney Opera House each year, it is debatable whether many even notice the works of art that are on public display.

The parallels between Arts Centre Melbourne and the Adelaide Festival Centre are perhaps more evident to the casual visitor. The Adelaide Festival Centre’s art collection is highly visible throughout the public foyers and precinct. There are ongoing performing arts and visual arts exhibitions and displays, while the art collection has continued to grow, albeit more slowly, with the support of the Adelaide Festival Centre Foundation.

Fred Williams’ 1973 suite of thirteen River Murray Scenes at the Adelaide Festival Centre can be compared with Boyd’s Shoalhaven series at Arts Centre Melbourne; meanwhile Sidney Nolan’s multipanelled Rainbow Serpent 1973 at the Festival Centre is closely related to Paradise Garden 1968–70 in Melbourne’s State Theatre foyer. There are also large paintings and tapestries by Sydney Ball, John Coburn and Leonard French, among others, located throughout the foyers in Adelaide. In addition, the precinct is populated by public sculpture, such as Bert Flugelman’s stainless steel forms, while the fate of Otto Herbert Hajek’s 1973 urban environmental sculpture in front of the Centre remains bound up with the anticipated redevelopment of the Adelaide Festival

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 19

Centre Plaza – now more than four decades after it was first created.[4] The inevitable ageing of these performing arts centres since the 1970s and 1980s has necessitated varying degrees of refurbishment to bring the venues up to current theatre technology standards, as well as to address changing public use and access requirements.

Arts Centre Melbourne’s Hamer Hall was closed for 18 months during 2010–12, for a major redevelopment led by Ashton Raggart McDougall Architects, before re-opening with great fanfare in July 2012. With respect to the Art Collection, this process of redevelopment required a delicate balancing between retaining the historical integrity of the Truscott-designed interiors and the role played by the ‘original’ works of art, while facilitating renewal in presentation through the inclusion of new contemporary works.

Major new commissions included John Aslanidis’s dazzling music-inspired painting Sonic Network no. 11 2012; and the sculptural-light works Silence 2010–12 in the St Kilda Road Entrance Foyer, and Falling Light 2010– 12 in the Velik Foyer, both created by Robert Owen’s production studio in collaboration with Melbourne lighting-design firm Electrolight. These new works respect the history of the building and its interiors while at the same time offering a contemporary perspective on the vital role that the visual arts can continue to play within Australia’s performing arts centres.

Arts Centre Melbourne’s Art Collection continues to chart a course in exploring the creative intersections between art and performance. The ongoing challenges in curating and managing the collection are to balance a reverence for the past without becoming a mausoleum; to engage with the present without becoming merely ephemeral; and to embrace future opportunities to ensure that the collection continues to engage and inspire visitors and patrons on their way to the theatre. []

left, top to bottom:

A selection of Fred Williams’ River Murray Scenes and other land and seascapes of 1973, in the foyers of the Adelaide Festival Centre (Image: Courtesy the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust) Sidney Nolan’s Paradise Garden 1968–70, currently installed in the St Kilda Road Gallery and State Theatre Foyer (Image: Carla Gottgens, 2014) Opera-inspired paintings by John Olsen and Charles Blackman with heritage furniture designed

by John Truscott, on display in the exhibition Show Time: The Art Collection of Arts Centre Melbourne, Gallery 1, 2014 (Image: Mark Ashkanasy, 2014) St Kilda Road Entrance Foyer with Robert Owen’s suspended sculpture, Silence 2010-12, during Hamer Hall re-opening celebrations in July 2012 (Image: Peter Casamento, 2012)

Dr Steven Tonkin is Curator (Contemporary & Live Art) at the Arts Centre Melbourne.

Citation for this text: Steven Tonkin, ‘Art on the way to the theatre: Arts Centre Melbourne’s Art Collection’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.16-19.

4 Sincere gratitude is expressed to Jenny Loughnan at the Sydney Opera House and Maggie Fletcher, Visual Arts Curator at Adelaide Festival Centre, for providing information regarding the respective art collections in preparation for this article.

20 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Australian performing arts heritage viewed through a regional centre

Performing arts heritage enriched through local histories: 2014 PAHN Conference in Ballarat

Alexander Sussman

T

he Performing Arts Heritage Network (PAHN) is by nature a collaboratively focused national network in its concern for performing arts and heritage. It also maintains strong international links to peer organisations in other countries and regions.

Formed more than two decades ago, in 1991, PAHN brings together individuals and institutions interested in collecting, preserving and providing access to the performing arts heritage of Australia. Every year PAHN members meet to share information on their current or upcoming projects and exhibitions, and to learn about new topics and potential research areas or collaborations.

PAHN conferences are held at both major city and regional locations. The regional gatherings, in particular, provide opportunities for new discovery, as experts from local areas highlight unknown performing arts history subjects in their region. In 2014, PAHN had the pleasure of gathering in Ballarat, Victoria – a city with an outstanding performing arts history nationally.

Performing arts heritage of the Victorian goldfields The first day of the PAHN conference was held in the impressive Mechanics Institute building, built in 1860, less than a decade after the discovery of gold in Victoria.

Following the first Institute founded in Hobart in 1827, Mechanics Institutes – often housing local Schools of Art and libraries – formed a vital part of the social and cultural life of early Australian communities. The Ballarat Mechanics Institute provided a perfect setting to highlight the rich performing arts history of the area, and to learn particularly how touring artists and companies visiting the Ballarat goldfields themselves influenced the larger performing arts history of Australia.

Keynote speaker, Peter Freund (Marketing and Public Programs Officer at the Art Gallery of Ballarat), presented a fascinating account of a production of Euripides’ Medea that launched in Ballarat in 1859.

Previously I would never have suspected that translations of Greek tragedies premiered in Paris would be playing on the Victorian goldfields within two years of their European premieres! Peter outlined the twists and turns around creating translations (French and English) of Medea, and adaptations of the Greek tragedy for audiences of the 1850s, which in the process created a tour-de-force role for the play’s heroine. In Australia the rights to that role were bought by Mary Provost, who rehearsed the role in Bendigo in 1858 and then performed to outstanding success in Ballarat

in 1859. The miners of Ballarat even named a goldbearing deposit after her!

Known throughout Australia, the Royal South Street Society was formed in Ballarat in 1879 as a debating society, and has long been considered host of the country’s premier performing arts Eisteddfod, soon providing competitions in all forms including dance, drama and music (most notably the venerable Herald Sun Aria contest, providing Australia’s richest vocal scholarship).

Digitising performing arts heritage Not surprisingly, over a span of 135 years the Royal South Street Society has amassed an extensive archive of material relating to its competitions and competitors. Dr John Clark, present Deputy Chair of the Society, provided details about the current project of preserving the Society’s extensive archive. Following a significance assessment published in 2010, work is underway on the digitisation of more than 10,000 photographs taken since the 1800s, and creation of digital entries covering the many chairmen’s books and records.

RSSS Board member, Peter Zala, provided further highlights of the fascinating history of the Society, including background on the many theatres where the Society’s competitions had been held over more than a century. Patrons of the South Street Society (the Royal prefix came in 1962) have encompassed dignitaries from all areas of Australian life, including Governors of Victoria and Prime Ministers of Australia.

Brass band competitions commenced in 1900, and choirs and chorale music competitions in 1897, and both proved to be immensely popular. In an era when music-making was part of daily life and even modest families owned a piano, almost every workshop, factory and office formed their own brass bands and choirs, and frequently sent contestants to Ballarat from all over the country, to compete fiercely for the highly valued prize of first place at the South Street Society competitions.

Tim Fisher, Senior Project Curator at the State Library of Victoria, shifted the focus to Melbourne, with a presentation on the major exhibition then showing at the State Library: Victor Hugo: Les Misérables–From Page to Stage (reviewed by Suzanne Bravery in the previous MA Magazine). In addition to early drawings and sketches of the characters, theatrical merchandise, and clips to form a montage of some of the 48 feature film adaptations of Victor Hugo’s story, the Melbourne exhibition notably contained much local material related to the musical’s first production in Australia – pieces drawn from the archive of local producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh.

above:

Alexander Sussman

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 21

Known throughout Australia, the Royal South Street Society was formed in Ballarat in 1879 and has long been considered host of the country’s premier performing arts Eisteddfod Dr Mimi Colligan and Peter Johnson, from Theatre Heritage Australia, then presented an overview of the holdings at the State Library of Victoria in the George Coppin and Bland Holt Collection. George Coppin and Joseph (Bland) Holt were both significant figures in early Australian theatre as actors, theatre entrepreneurs and producers. George Coppin (often called the father of Australian theatre) even managed a two-day stint digging on the goldfields! This specialist collection within SLV consists of more than 100 boxes filled with posters, programs, scripts, photographs, and related material documenting theatre history in Victoria.

An intricate task in heritage care: ‘disambiguation’ in performing arts records The first day concluded with a fascinating account

by Jenny Fewster on an intricate topic: the ‘disambiguation’ of entries in the AusStage database: (‘Who’s Who? Resolving identities and matching records across data sets in theatre research’). AusStage itself is an accessible online event database of Australian live performance, and includes information about performers recorded in events, venues, contributors, organisations, resources and particular works performed. With increased inclusion of entries on Australian performances outside of Australia, the need for disambiguation is of paramount importance – is it the Australian Mr Smith or a British Mr Smith?

Jenny also provided an overview of current methodologies and plans for future algorithms to attempt ‘non-manual disambiguation’ of these invaluable performing arts heritage records and sources.

Sovereign Hill and performance heritage The second day of the PAHN gathering was held at Sovereign Hill, which for people like me as first-time visitors provided a rich opportunity to explore and enjoy this venue and its unique heritage atmosphere.

PAHN events were held in the Retiring Room of the recreated Victoria Theatre, where two excellent papers were presented by Susan Pilbeam: ‘Five decades of innovation: the visual and performing arts at Sovereign Hill’; and ‘William H Bardwell: photographer’.

Susan’s first talk provided a fascinating history of Sovereign Hill and its development over 40 years, while also detailing how historic photos (like those made by William Bardwell) were used to inform and retrieve ‘authenticity’ in the construction of the current site for experience by contemporary visitors, local patrons and tourists.

William Bardwell produced remarkable 3600 panoramas of Ballarat in the late 1800s, one of which has been enlarged and is currently used as part of a geographic location display in the adjoining Gold Museum at Sovereign Hill. Naturally we were most interested in Bardwell’s photographs of the early theatres and theatrical celebrities, which formed a substantial part of his work output.

PAHN presentations concluded with Barry Kay (Interpretive Theatre Manager at Sovereign Hill) discussing the challenges of staging performances of nineteenth-century theatre today, and how these must inevitably be adapted for modern museum/ tourist audiences. As an interesting insight into social change over a century, Kay stressed that plays were not only wordier than our modern counterparts, but generally spoken much faster than in contemporary theatre – since audience attention historically was more geared toward language.

Being reminded how our attention-levels and expectations of performers and scripts have steadily altered through social history was a fitting note on which to conclude a rich investigation of Australia’s performing arts heritage, through one of its great centres of tradition and continued renewal of that heritage today.

Planning is already underway for the next PAHN gathering – in sunny Brisbane in October, at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (21–22 October 2015). Ideas welcome! [ ] Alexander Sussman is Library Manager at Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour Education Campus, NSW. <Alexander.Sussman@scu.edu.au> Citation for this text: Alexander Sussman, ‘Performing arts heritage enriched through local histories: 2014 PAHN Conference in Ballarat’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.20-21.

22 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Cross-cultural creativity explored at TarraWarra

The Embodied Line: A suite of three exhibitions at TarraWarra Museum of Art

above:

Victoria Lynn

right:

TarraWarra Museum of Art, near Healesville, Yarra Valley, Victoria. Architect Allan Powell, 2003. below:

The Drunken Buddha; introduction panels - Ian Fairweather, The Drunken Buddha, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2014

1. Endnotes

Victoria Lynn

T

arraWarra Museum of Art is located in the Yarra Valley near Healesville, just one hour outside Melbourne. Founders Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AC AO have been passionate collectors of Australian art since the 1950s, when they purchased significant works by the artists of their time. Not only did they gift the building that houses the museum, plus ten acres of land on a 99-year lease; they also donated a significant portion of their private collection for the enjoyment of the public. The Museum was established as a company limited by guarantee in October 2000, and opened to the public in 2003. The building was designed by acclaimed Melbourne architect Allan Powell, and won the inaugural Premier’s Design Award in 2004.

The TarraWarra Museum generates exhibitions of modern and contemporary art from both Australia and abroad. We present the important history of Australian modernism through the filter of the present, by bringing new developments in contemporary art to

the public eye through multidisciplinary thematic exhibitions, monographic exhibitions and presentations about the history of modern Australian art within the context of international art.

Our aim is to provide support for artists to present new work; to foster knowledgeable, passionate and critically aware audiences; to stimulate innovative and creative activities by providing exhibitions and public programs that make an original contribution to the fields of modern and contemporary art; and to promote access and encourage participation in the Museum while respecting the creative integrity of the artist and observing international museum standards and ethics.

This summer, we presented three exhibitions that addressed the dynamic art of the drawn line.

The works by Australian artists Ian Fairweather (1891–1974), Tony Tuckson (1921–1973), and Gosia Wlodarczak (b. 1959) rely on the dexterity of the artists’ hand. Whether it be Fairweather’s imagery inspired by the Chinese tale of the thirteenth-century Buddhist monk Chi-Tien, The Drunken Buddha, the abstract mark-making of Tuckson, or Wlodarczak’s celebrated drawing performances: each artist was presented as creating a visual energy and vitality in their work through the use of line. These three artists, shown in tandem, presented a unique opportunity to view the important stories of modernism from a contemporary perspective. In their work, drawing is not a representation, it is a process and an embodied experience.

The three exhibitions also highlighted the crosscultural interests of these artists. Fairweather was born in Scotland and spent many years living in China; Tuckson was born in Egypt and travelled to Arnhem

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 23

Land, Melville Island and the Sepik region, collecting art of Indigenous peoples while he was deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW; and Wlodarczak was born in Poland, immigrating to Australia in 1996. The ways in which culture can be translated in and through drawing was a key concern of the three exhibitions.

One of Australia’s most important and influential artists, Ian Fairweather’s style is unique. A combination of abstraction and figuration joined through a meandering use of line, Fairweather’s paintings use a limited palette of blacks, greys, blues, pinks and browns. Marks are made in and through layers of paint that are as much in conversation with Chinese calligraphy as they are with Aboriginal mark-making and mid-twentieth century abstraction. His was a life of journeys – China, India, Canada, Bali, Australia – and these experiences pervaded his art practice.

Most famously, on the night of 29 April, 1952, aged sixty, Fairweather sailed his homemade raft out of Darwin into open sea. The journey lasted 16 days until he collided with a reef off the coast of Timor and was eventually rescued. In 1953 he settled on Bribie Island, near Brisbane, where he built a Polynesian-style hut. This is where The Drunken Buddha paintings were created.

Fairweather began his study of Mandarin when he was a student in London at the Slade and he carried a Mandarin dictionary with him almost his whole life.

He translated from Mandarin to English the centuries-old Chinese devotional tale about a monk named Chi-tien, and though initially reluctant, eventually created a series of interpretive artworks to accompany the literary text. The University of Queensland Press published Fairweather’s translation of The Drunken Buddha in 1965, and an associated exhibition was held at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, from 12 to 24 May of the same year. Fifty years later, the book has been reprinted by University of Queensland Press, coinciding with our exhibition at TarraWarra Museum of Art, and is now available to a new generation.

The book comprises 20 chapters or short stories that describe various miracles or saintly acts by Chi-tien, an unconventional monk, irreverent and often inebriated. At one point he stood on his head in front of the Empress, without any trousers. Yet he healed the sick, moved logs great distances over the seas to build a monastery, and vomited gold to transform a group of degraded ancient religious statues into a glistening spectacle. He also wrote prophetic poetry whilst intoxicated.

Fairweather’s paintings depict great acts of the everyday that hold considerable weight in the story of an irreverent and saintly figure. In addition, they are in continual flux, exhibiting a rhythmic dynamism that seeks at once to express the character of this adventurous Buddha as well as the painterly exploration of skeins of lines and passages of paint on cardboard and

below:

Ian Fairweather Goes Begging 1964 Synthetic polymer paint on cardboard composition board 2 panels, overall: 89.4 x 150.3 cm Gift of Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AO, Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2008. TarraWarra Museum of Art collection

1. Endnotes

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Cross-cultural creativity explored at TarraWarra

below:

Tony Tuckson Black on white, large upright c. 1958-61 oil on composition board, 183 x 122.4 cm Gift of Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AO 2003,TarraWarra Museum of Art collection

1. Endnotes

hardboard. The figurative elements are almost like Chinese ideograms, while the layers of paint form a generative mosaic that periodically rises to the surface.

Tony Tuckson: Paintings and Drawings included a group of works that are related to the two splendid Tony Tuckson paintings in the TarraWarra Museum of Art collection: Black and White, large upright c.

1958-61, and Untitled c. 1973. Tuckson’s use of gesture and line is intuitive. The scale of his paintings corresponds with the size of the body, as one can feel the stretch of the artist’s hand across the canvas. This was

very much art of its time, partially influenced by the abstract expressionists. A number of works on paper were also included, which highlight his own interest in the art of Ian Fairweather, and his progression from figuration to abstraction.

Tony Tuckson was born in Egypt and spent his early childhood on the Suez Canal in the 1920s. His schooling was in England, where he also went to art school in London, in the years 1937-40. After the war, he settled in Australia and studied at East Sydney Technical College from 1946-49. Influenced by artists such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, it is significant that Tuckson also owned a small work by Ian Fairweather, acquired in 1954, which hung in his living room in Sydney.

Between the time that he joined the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1950 and the occasion of his first solo exhibition at Watters Gallery in 1970, Tuckson remained basically a reclusive artist, with his works seen only by family members and a couple of select friends. His first one-person show was held in 1970, three years before his untimely death – revealing his remarkable achievements to a wider public. The early works on paper however are saturated with colour, and distinguished by bold black lines that express semi-figurative forms. The large paintings and works on paper exhibited were primarily in black and white, with passages of a brown underlay. These are dense and energetic works, the lines forming into pictograms. At times, Tuckson scratches into the paint in a manner reminiscent of Cy Twombly. Like Fairweather, Tuckson was concerned with a truth to materials; a sense that the painting should exhibit a raw and haptic energy.

Like Fairweather, Tuckson also travelled extensively, both while he was in the Air Force, and when he was in Australia. As deputy director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Tuckson forged the collection of Aboriginal, Torres Strait and Pacific Island works at a time long before many museums considered these to be art works. As such, he was intensely interested in diverse cultures and their visual expression. Moreover much of the Indigenous work expressed in ceremonial form the spiritual dimensions of life and death.

Like Fairweather, Tuckson was inspired by Indigenous mark-making on bark, which was bold, direct and steeped in the colours of the land.

The third artist on display in the Museum was Gosia Wlodarczak. The TarraWarra Museum is distinguished by spectacular views of the Yarra Valley. On 6–8 February 2015, the artist performed a drawing on the iconic large window in the North gallery, framing the landscape of Long Gully; the work was entitled Shadow Drawing on Long Gully, Frost Drawing for TarraWarra.

This performed work built on the Museum’s engagement with the threshold between inside and outside, between culture and nature, between the history of art and the history of the landscape that surrounds us – its ecological, colonial, and Indigenous stories.

Wlodarczak has performed drawings previously.

For example, in 2013, between 10.30 am and 5 pm

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 25

daily for 17 days, the artist was enclosed in a specially designed sensory limitation cube in RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) Gallery, drawing without any exposure to the outside world – literally ‘drawing’ what she could see in the space around her. The project, entitled A Room Without A View, used the language of drawing to investigate what she describes as ‘an ongoing search for the reassurance, for the “material proof” of my existence’. The exhibition at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Found In Translation, featured the walls and ceiling of this room decon-

of interpretation and translation. As an immigrant to Australia (Wlodarczak arrived from Poland in 1996), the question of translation – of living between different aspects of language and culture – is of paramount importance in her work.

Wlodarczak’s performances engage with both a physical site and a social space. At times the artist conversed with visitors to TarraWarra, while incessantly drawing on the window. As she drew, we began to see the landscape through the window anew. As she created a schematic threshold between inside and outside, she

structed – Wlodarczak had placed her personal ‘room without a view’ in the Museum’s ‘room with a view’.

In addition, Wlodarczak formulated a response to the translations at play in Fairweather’s work. She created an ‘interpretation drawing’, employing an abstract alphabet derived from 29 small details derived from the Room Without A View performance, whereby each character represented (respectively) the 26 letters of the alphabet and three punctuation marks. This drawing visually translated or encoded on canvas a poem from Ian Fairweather’s The Drunken Buddha (1965), which was in turn the translation of a well-known Chinese tale. Not unlike a musical score, the work literally presented another way of ‘reading’ The Drunken Buddha, and sat on the cusp of language and art.

There were two instructions for the work: Instruction for the Maker (a manual to reconstruct the drawing) and Instruction for the Viewer (a key to decode the drawing and read the encoded poem). Looking at the three canvases that Wlodarczak created, we became the foreigner in the room, because the language is hers and not ours. We then were engaged in a process

showed us how to look afresh. Like her own translation of Ian Fairweather’s translation of The Drunken Buddha, the drawing performances recognised the living energy of discourse that is in turn translated into line. Rather than perceiving the world as a fixed system, Wlodarczak displayed an endless openness to an ever-fluctuating environment in which her forms and lines clustered and jostled into new combinations.

Each of the artists on display at TarraWarra Museum of Art was engaged with the embodiment of the drawn line and with the inspiration of having lived with diverse cultures. Keenly aware of the cultural dimensions of mark-making, the symbolic and haptic energy that the line can entail, Fairweather, Tuckson and Wlodarczak together presented a cosmology that is optimistic about the world-making activity of art. [ ] Victoria Lynn is Director of TarraWarra Museum of Art. Citation for this text: Victoria Lynn, ‘The Embodied Line: A suite of three exhibitions at TarraWarra Museum of Art’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.22-25.

below left:

Gosia Wlodarczak, Found in Translation 2014 Installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2014

26 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Exhibition review: Ian Fairweather at the Tarrawarra Museum

Fairweather, Tuckson and Wlodarczak: Translating the Lines of Abstraction

Pippa Milne

I

an Fairweather’s nomadic and adventurous life is tantamount to folklore in Australia. Its idiosyncratic drama, at times, risks overshadowing his contribution to the art world, which remains significant. Fairweather was an itinerant and hermetic polymath whose art garnered attention during his lifetime, despite his lack of interest in the art world. He was unfazed by the reception or longevity of his work, preferring to privilege the process of living and making rather than exhibiting and archiving.

Many have written about the eccentricities and achievements of Fairweather’s life – he is even cited as an inspiration for Patrick White’s protagonist in The Vivisector. However his biography still highlights the diverse cultural influences that shaped his work.

For the summer of 2014–15, TarraWarra Museum of Art compiled three exhibitions that paid homage to Fairweather on various levels. Each drew on notions of translating or disseminating a narrative, and explored the role of line within the artists’ work.

As a series, they presented a nuanced conversation between three artists and two curators, with Fairweather firmly at the centre.

The opportunity to see eleven works reassembled from Fairweather’s 1965 exhibition, The Drunken Buddha, decades after they were dispersed following the initial exhibition in Sydney, was exceptional; and their ability to relay both narrative and a sense of strong, calligraphic articulation was again remarkable.

Guest curator Steven Alderton, of the Australian Museum, re-curated the Drunken Buddha series by adding to the paintings a carefully selected cache of archival material from the time when Fairweather was translating the classic Chinese tale into English, providing glimpses into the rigour and process with which Fairweather worked on his literary rendition.

Within the works themselves, sensitive, loose lines reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy narrated the amusing antics of Chi-tien within layered fields of colour.

It was the strength of Fairweather’s lines – playful, expressive, drippy and tender – that drew the TarraWarra Museum’s three spaces together. This emphasis linked the central room to the two either side that held works respectively by Tony Tuckson and contemporary artist Gosia Wlodarczak – both of whom have credited Fairweather with some inspiration for their practice.

The dynamic art of the drawn line, and the ability to coax dialogue and narrative without direct representation, was intrinsic to each of these exhibitions.

Although Fairweather was the unsurprising and undoubted forerunner of this trio, each artist deftly explored the possibilities that line allows through abstraction, representation and narrative.

Tony Tuckson: Paintings and Drawings occupied the first of the three exhibition spaces and introduced a number of shared interests among these artists: in linear depiction, narrative and abstraction. The seventeen works by Tuckson were loose but strong in their intuitive strokes, suggesting the process of an artist limbering up before beginning in earnest.

Indeed Tuckson’s works stemmed largely from the

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 27

left:

Tony Tuckson: Paintings and Drawings Installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2014 Gosia Wlodarczak Found in Translation 2014 Installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2014

far left

visual exercises that he would carry out in his studio after returning from his work as assistant director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the 1960s.

Like Fairweather, Tuckson used materials that were unpretentious, always to hand (like newspaper) and ultimately impermanent — perhaps revealing both artists’ relish for the process rather than the product of their work.

Terence Maloon, Director of the Drill Hall Gallery and author of the catalogue essay for the exhibition Tony Tuckson: Paintings and Drawings, has noted that Tuckson was an ‘underground’ artist for a significant period, ‘with his works seen only by family members and a couple of select friends’. This eschewal of the traditional trajectory within the arts (making work, exhibiting, seeking collectors and aiming for further exhibition opportunities) aligns Tuckson with Fairweather, who rejected the trappings of the art world.

The connection between Tuckson and Fairweather is historical, as they were near-contemporaries in their development, and perhaps more accessible than that between Fairweather and Wlodarczak – separated by many decades. Polish-born Gosia Wlodarczak’s 2013 work, Room Without a View, filled the third gallery space, adjoining sumptuous views of the Yarra Valley. Her presentation at TarraWarra was a version of the ceiling and walls of the sensory deprivation chamber that she had earlier occupied in a performed work at RMIT, lasting for seven-and-a-half hours a day, for seventeen days, in 2013.

While inside the unnaturally silent, blank space at RMIT, Wlodarczak would draw sedulously, covering

all surfaces with illustrations of what she experienced within the chamber. Her lines depicted her environment and her hands; everything that she saw in the space. The forms appeared frantic, scrambled and disordered, covering every inch of her confined context.

From these cross-hatched, monochromatic maps, Wlodarczak has extracted 29 characters, and associated them with letters and punctuation to create a new alphabet. Using this code, she has re-translated one of the poems from The Drunken Buddha that Ian Fairweather illustrated in his own series of canvases – bringing the viewer back full circle to focus on the contemporary opportunity to re-experience Fairweather’s illustrations of this text in one place.

Separated by many decades, Tony Tuckson and Gosia Wlodarczak are just two of a great number of artists who have admired or drawn on Ian Fairweather’s vast gifts and achievement, and this finely balanced set of exhibitions provided a new opportunity of encounter with his enduring legacy. [ ] Pippa Milne is a Melbourne-based independent writer who will be the 2015 Australia Council Emerging Curator for the Australian pavilion, 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale. She is also a Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.

Citation for this text: Pippa Milne, ‘Fairweather, Tuckson and Wlodarczak: Translating the Lines of Abstraction’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.26-27.

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

The role of natural history museums reconsidered

The Natural Futures Museum Frank Howarth

I

s it reasonable to apply evolutionary principles to museums? This article is based on a talk I gave at the ICOM NATHIST meeting in Croatia in October 2014, where I speculated on the future of natural history museums, and argued that if such museums do not take a leaf out of the book of evolution and adapt, they will have no future.

Natural history museums of the 18th and 19th centuries European tradition are very much the product of the age of Enlightenment. Enthusiastic amateurs and professional scientists went out and sought to describe and make sense of the natural world, to order and classify it. The development by Linnaeus of a useful way of naming and classifying living things helped enormously, and Darwin’s work on evolution helped even more in making sense of the natural world.

Broadly speaking, the natural history museum view of the natural world split into two parts. One was the study of humans, and their immediate predecessors in evolutionary terms; the other was the collection and study of everything else in the natural world – the animals, plants and rocks. It was the practice of the time for ‘enlightened’ Europeans to incorporate the ‘primitive’ peoples they found in far-flung parts of the world with the exotic animals, resulting in museum displays and dioramas showing those ‘native’ peoples alongside extant and extinct native animals.

This dichotomy paralleled the birth of the science of taxonomy (the naming and classifying of organisms) on the one hand, and the inter-related sciences of archaeology and anthropology on the other. Both are the foundations of the natural history museum as we know it, whether in Sydney, Rio, London or New York.

During the twentieth century, natural history museums developed what I call their three supporting ‘pillars’: research programs, typically into biodiversity, geodiversity, and human diversity and origins; collections of nature and the cultures of first peoples; and public engagement, typically through exhibitions and education programs. The understanding and utility of each of these three pillars changed dramatically during the century, reflecting changes in how we perceive the world around us, and our place in it.

The first half of the century was marked in natural history museum research by attempts to more finely classify and bring order to the natural world, particularly through taxonomy. The last quarter of the century was marked by growth in the use of genetic markers or characteristics to better define species, and a growing awareness that the rate of species extinction was increasing and that humans were clearly the cause.

The reaction by the research community in natural history museums to this loss of diversity was not what might have been expected. The most strongly voiced reaction was to want to accelerate the rate of description of new species, of biodiversity generally, in what can be summarised as: ‘Describe them so we know what we have before we lose them.’ In a sense this is of course fine; but the reaction of some (including me)

was to prefer that we put more effort into combating the loss of species where we can do so (through different types of research, education and awareness raising); and into understanding the impact of species loss.

There gradually arose a discussion within natural history museums about whether their primary, or indeed only, role is to observe, catalogue and quantify – that is, to retain a certain neutrality. Or alternatively, whether their role might be more as activists and advocates, in addition to the observer role. To some, the activist role compromised the objectivity of natural history museums. To others, the observer role saw them as powerless and perhaps only marginally relevant to the main debate.

While these matters were being debated, another key and very positive change related to the second pillar, and this was the ‘unlocking’ of natural history museum collections, especially biological material, through digitisation of collection information, followed by the development of tools to access and analyse those collections. Australia’s Atlas of Living Australia is a world leader in this regard, with collection information being accessed by a wide range of users, including scientists, environmentalists, biosecurity experts, primary producers and natural resource managers.

The end of the twentieth century and beginning of the present century saw another suite of changes involving natural history museum research and collections. While many natural history museums retained and used their collections of the cultures of first peoples for research, there was a strong push from many first peoples in the latter part of the twentieth century for the return of human remains. There was a desire from those first peoples for the colonial attitude to be done away with – whereby they were literally placed alongside the native animals – and for first peoples no longer to be objects of study and research.

Natural history museums in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada led the world in changing responses to those requests. Europe, and much of the USA, lagged and are still lagging sadly behind.

Meanwhile several tangible changes occurred. Most pervasively, more progressive natural history museums stopped saying that they owned collections of the culture of first peoples. Rather, they acknowledged that they are custodians of that cultural material, primarily on behalf of creator communities and their descendants, with an obligation to work with those communities in how their stories are told. Museums moved from the stance, ‘We will study you and then tell our visitors about you in dispassionate scientific terms’, to the position, ‘We will discuss with you how we should tell your stories, then use that information to tell our visitors, but still in our words’. This change is good, but has not yet gone far enough.

This leads me to the third pillar, public engagement. In the early days of natural history museums, their role with respect to the public or visitors was fairly clear: ‘You will be enlightened, educated, and informed about the natural world.’

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 29

In this structure, the information flow was definitely one way: ‘We, the knowledgeable museum, will enlighten and educate you, the visitor, with facts and information, which you will gratefully receive.’ The age of the internet changed all that. The era of web one (basic websites; email) helped foster increasingly inquisitive stakeholders who wanted to do more than simply use the web to check opening times and locations. People wanted to ask questions and make comments, and expected a quick reply, perhaps even an email conversation. Some people disagreed with the museum’s authoritative views on particular issues; meanwhile others expected natural history museums, in particular, to take a position on issues, not just be neutral.

The era of web two and social media accelerated this process dramatically. As museums in general made more of their collections available digitally, so people engaged more with those collections. That engagement shifted from a simple dialogue between a museum person and someone outside, to a conversation: sometimes taking place on the museum’s own website, but increasingly often on a third-party social media site or a blog.

Sometimes the museum was not even part of the conversation. People began aggregating information and stories from multiple museums, adding their own stories and curating their own virtual exhibitions.

This is happening as much to natural history museums as to any other type of museum, but there are significant differences.

People began to use the scientific data from natural history museums directly from the museums’ websites; or through aggregators such as the Atlas of Living Australia. Natural history museums are increasingly being asked about how their research and collection data might be used to better understand the impacts of climate change, and to provide evidence to support efforts to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. This has added to the pressure on natural history museums to be more than curiosity-driven observers, and to focus their research on problems and issues – and here lies one of my greatest concerns about the future of natural history museums.

The early twenty-first century has seen natural history museums caught in the combined impacts of decreasing funds for research and decreasing numbers of scientists, while there are increasing demands for what research there is to be more relevant to the world’s problems. Relevance is the key to the future of natural history museums.

All three pillars of the natural history museum

Natural history museums need to stop being primarily detached, skilled observers and become active participants in their communities

are being shaken by the need for profound change.

Rapidly increasing biodiversity problems, resulting from human activity in general and climate change in particular, are forcing natural history museum researchers to ask whether they are primarily neutral, skilled observers, classifiers and documenters of the natural world, or whether they are agents of change focused on real-world problems and finding solutions.

Demands for the information held in natural science collections are increasing, and digitisation is creating the means to do this. First peoples are demanding at the very least digital access to their cultural material held in natural history museums, and demanding that human remains held in natural history museums must be repatriated. They also want their stories to be told in their words, not in the detached, authoritative, scientific museum voice.

The public face of the natural history museum has changed from being just a stone façade, a magazine, and a website. Digital in general, and social media in particular, are the new public faces of museums.

Virtual visitors, especially, are wanting a conversation with and about the museum, and are challenging the authority of natural history museums. Visitors want to be engaged and involved.

If they are to be relevant, natural history museums need to stop being primarily detached, skilled observers, commentators and documenters; and instead become active participants in their communities, working with them to understand and do something about the problems confronting the natural world, and the world’s first peoples.

With respect to animals and plants, natural history museum researchers need to move from a position: ‘My research is mainly about describing species, but may have some application in solving some problems’, to the attitude: ‘My research is solution focussed, applying science directly to solving these problems’.

Museums need to work within their communities, to focus on shared and involved problem-solving.

Natural history museums must be less about dispassionately describing the natural world, and more about engaging with and empowering communities, focusing science on solving the problems of the present to shape a better future. Those natural history museums that don’t change will be increasingly seen as irrelevant and not deserving of community support and funding.

My colleague Greg Farrington, former CEO of the California Academy of Sciences, coined the term ‘natural futures museum’. We should be looking forward and influencing the future. Natural futures museums will thrive. [ ] Frank Howarth is National President of Museums Australia.

He was previously Director of the Australian Museum in Sydney (2004—2014), and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney (1996—2003).

Citation for this text: Frank Howarth, ‘The Natural Futures Museum’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), , Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.28-29.

30 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Reconsidering science education in museums

Un-dead Science Ed: Zombies, Museum Learning, and Students’ Science Aspirations

Andrew J. Martin, Tracy L. Durksen, Derek Williamson, Julia Kiss (University of New South Wales) & Paul Ginns (University of Sydney)

T

here are worrying trends in science performance and participation in many nations, including Australia. For example, in 2012 the Office of the Chief Scientist reported in The Health of Australian Science that enrolments of Australian senior school students in science subjects had continued to decline.1] In international testing (for example, PISA), Australian students’ science performance remains generally unchanged while the performance of other (regional) nations increases – as also reported by the Office of the Chief Scientist.[2] When asked how relevant and valuable science is, many school students report a lack of personal relevance and little connection of science to their future.[3] Since it is evident that students’ future orientation towards science is not overly positive, educators are encouraged to find ways of fostering more positive future aspirations regarding science.

In a joint research project around these issues, therefore, we explored a self-paced museumbased program and the role of goal setting in the promotion of students’ aspirations and aptitudes for science. We report here, for the interest of the museums sector broadly, some results of our educational and psychological approach to studying museum learning – in this case, our project was shaped through a self-paced, ‘zombie-themed’ science education program. This work was recently published in Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist.[4]

Museums as motivating sites Museums are multi-faceted environments that can substantially enhance students’ motivation in learning.[5] According to one author (Gardner, 1991), museums have ‘the potential to engage students, to teach them, to stimulate their understanding…[and] to help them assume responsibility for their own future learning’.[6] A recent review of science engagement in informal settings found that museums play an important role in this process.[7] Although museums are positive sites for science engagement, there is some debate as to the best ways to promote motivation, engagement and learning in museums.[8] There is thus a need to better understand how to conduct education programs in museums that can optimise students’ motivation. Accordingly, we designed a research study that focused on goal setting in a selfpaced, museum-based science education program.

This study took place within a medical science museum – the Museum of Human Disease[9] at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The museum focuses on the changing patterns of disease in our society through specimen displays (housed in labelled and catalogued bays), separate special exhibition areas, an interactive medical computer discovery lab, and active outreach programs with particular emphasis on school students. During the school holidays of 2014, the museum conducted a self-paced educational program (about two hours in duration) for primary and high school students, which aimed at increasing their knowledge of health and human biology. In addition to providing important health awareness information (for example, on immunisation, and prevention of illness such as influenza), there was a fun and novel aspect that involved the popular theme of ‘zombies.’

above:

Andrew Martin

1. Office of the Chief Scientist (Prof. Ian Chubb), Australian Governmnet, Canberra2012 2. Office of the Chief Scientist, ibid.

3. Goodrum, Druhan, & Abbs, 2012; Lyons & Quinn, 2010.

4. Martin, Durksen, Williamson, Kiss, & Ginns, 2014.

5. See Schwan, Grajal & Lewalter, 2014.

6. Gardner, 1991,p.202.

7. Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009.

8. See Schwan et al., 2014, for a review; see also Cox-Petersen, Marsh, Kisiel, & Melber, 2003.

9. For more information, visit https:// medicalsciences.med.unsw. edu.au/community/museumhuman-disease/home

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 31

left and below right:

School holiday programs at the Museum of Human Disease, Sydney.

10 Locke & Latham, 2002.

11 Martin, 2006.

Goal setting

‘Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse’

We were interested in understanding whether personal best (PB) goal setting in a museum-based science education course would lead to more positive science aspirations. Goal setting plays an important role in students’ academic development, including their educational aspirations.[10] Our museum-based study therefore focused specifically on PB goal setting.

PB goals are specific, challenging, competitively self-referenced targets towards which students strive to match or better a previous best. Examples of PB targets include increased learning on a task compared with a prior task, and better performance on a test than in a previous test.[11] Through self-competition, PB goals energise students and lead to richer immersion and greater engagement with a learning task.

By investigating the role of PB goal setting in students’ science (biology, anatomy, health) aspirations, we hoped to contribute to current understanding about museum-based education practices in a way that may enhance students’ motivation in a given subject area. Through an interdisciplinary, collaborative research partnership between educational psychologists and museum education officers, we illustrate here how evidence-based support for science intervention programs can advance approaches to increasing students’ motivation and engagement in science.

There are also crucial lessons of value here to museum-based educators in other areas.

The museum’s school holiday program, ‘Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse’, was geared towards increasing the medico-scientific knowledge of primary and secondary school-aged students. Advertisement for the program was directed at all secondary schools in New South Wales via email, with follow-up advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, and mainstream media (including major radio stations). Younger students became aware of the program if part of a school that comprised upper primary and secondary students, or through older siblings, mainstream and alternative media, and social network channels.

The novel aspect to the educational program involved a contemporary popular theme of ‘zombies’ that students found enjoyable and engaging. Participation involved identifying some ‘symptoms’ of zombies as an amusing juxtaposition to symptoms of actual illnesses – such as influenza. Students visited information and activity stations in the museum to learn about health, health prevention, illness, anatomy, body systems, and human biology. There were ten stations, each providing reading material, images, diagrams, and minor activities (for example, anatomical models and puzzles) describing different illnesses, health practices, and body systems. Students were allowed to choose in which order to visit each of the ten stations (in addition to a station that provided information and activities on the disease ‘zombie-ism’).

32 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Reconsidering science education in museums

The study This museum-based study applied a pre-/post- experimental/control group research design. One group of students was prompted to set and record a PB learning goal prior to participating in the zombie program (experimental group), while students of the control group commenced the program without identifying any explicit learning goal. Each of the ten school vacation days during the Winter break were designated as a PB goal setting day (experimental day) or a no goal setting day (control day). Since we were interested in discovering whether pursuing a PB learning goal was associated with gains in students’ science aspirations and learning aptitudes, we assessed students using a survey and quiz prior to and following their participation in the program.

Upon arrival to the museum with a guardian, 71 primary and secondary school students (often accompanied by friends or siblings) agreed to participate.

Before beginning the program, participants within our experimental group (41 students) and control group (30 students) each completed a survey (using an on-site iPad) consisting of science aspirations questions (e.g., ‘I’m happy to study science subjects that involve human biology until I finish school’) as well as responding to a quiz on facts and information contained in the education program.

Students in the experimental group were asked to remember their PB goal as they did the program. In contrast, at no stage was the control group (no PB goal) asked to set a PB target. After completing the pre-test survey and quiz, the PB goal participants’ quiz score was displayed with a prompt to set a PB learning goal for the post-test quiz. All students could take as long as they needed for the program (participation typically ranging between 1-2 hours). Immediately after finishing the program, each participant was invited to complete another brief post-test survey and quiz (using an on-site iPad), comprising the same questions on science aspirations and scientific content knowledge.

What did we discover?

We found that the experimental group (PB goal setting) demonstrated greater growth in science aspirations than the control group, following the self-paced museum-based program. That is, when we compared pre-program aspiration scores with post-program aspiration scores for the two groups, we found that the PB goal setting group’s aspirations were significantly higher than the no-goal group. It is important to note that the two groups’ aspiration scores were not significantly different at the start of the program. This provides support for the proposition that PB learning goals are associated with motivational growth in students’ lives.[12] Our findings in this interesting project suggest that there may be a significant place for goal setting in museum-based education programs – particularly if these programs are predominantly self-paced, informal, and unstructured (as many are today[13]). As we

seek to explore new and better ways to optimise learners’ positive outcomes in their museum experiences, research such as this identifies some quite straightforward ways this can be achieved.

Although the days of setting narrow and often mundane exercises-and-worksheets as the sole activity for student visits to museums are gone, there is new research of value highlighting that supporting students to set goals for their museum experience is one useful way to build in some beneficial structure, sharpen their focus, identify what is important in their engagement, and raise their levels of self-expectation for a positive experience.

12 See, for example, Martin, 2006, ibid.

13 See Schwan et al., 2014.

14 Winerman, 2014.

What next?

An article in a recent issue of Monitor on Psychology[14] highlighted the benefits of collaborative partnerships between museums and educational researchers.

Since there has been growing concern about school students’ languishing science motivation, including their often low aspirations in science, it is important to conduct empirical projects that recognise the role informal learning environments (especially museums) may play in supporting greater motivation and ultimately aptitude in engagement with science.

Moreover, implementing and testing some straightforward motivational strategies in both formal and informal learning environments may be a way of extending the positive effects of museums.

Situated in a museum context, our recent study in Australia showed that encouraging students to set PB goals led to an increase in their science aspirations. This finding holds significant implications for education practitioners in museums and other informal learning environments that aim to enhance young people’s engagement and optimise their future pathways in scientific fields.

Museums are content-rich environments after all, and very different from a school classroom. Moreover, with increased digital engagement offered by museums to a diversity of audiences at any time, there are potential further gains in stimulating learning – including distance learning for remotely located learners – that can only increase if well provided. [ ] Andrew J. Martin (Professor of Educational Psychology) and Tracy L. Durksen (Research Assistant) are members of the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. Derek Williamson (Director) and Julia Kiss (Education Officer) are from the Museum of Human Disease (Faculty of Medicine), also at the University of New South Wales. Paul Ginns (Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology) is in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Their collaboration in producing this article has been as part of a research project (held by Andrew Martin) funded by the Australian Research Council under its Discovery Grant program. Profiles for each author can be found at their respective department and university.

Andrew J. Martin, Tracy L. Durksen, Derek Williamson, Julia Kiss & Paul Ginns, ‘Un-dead Science Ed: Zombies, Museum Learning, and Students’ Science Aspirations’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.30-32.

References Bell, P., Lewenstein, B., Shouse, A.W., & Feder, M.A. (2009). Learning science in informal environments. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Cox‐Petersen, A. M., Marsh, D. D., Kisiel, J., & Melber, L. M. (2003). Investigation of guided school tours, student learning, and science reform recommendations at a museum of natural history. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40, 200-218.

Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind.

New York: Basic Books.

Locke, E.A., & Latham, G.P. (2002).

Building practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57, 705-717.

Lyons, T., & Quinn, F. (2010). Choosing Science: Understanding the declines in senior high school science enrolments, National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, University of New England, Armidale NSW. Martin, A.J. (2006). Personal bests (PBs): A proposed multidimensional model and empirical analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 803-825.

Martin, A.J., Durksen, T., Williamson, D., Kiss, J., & Ginns, P. (2014). Personal best (PB) goal setting and students’ motivation in science: A study of science valuing and aspirations. Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 31, 85-96.

Office of the Chief Scientist (2012).

Health of Australian Science. Australian Government, Canberra.

Schwan, S., Grajal, A., & Lewalter, D. (2014). Understanding and engagement in places of science experience: Science museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums. Educational Psychologist, 49, 70-85.

Winerman, L. (2014, October). A beneficial partnership. Monitor on Psychology, 45, 38-41. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/ partnership.aspx

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 33

Social media tools in museum communications and access

Using social media to promote access to Queensland’s cultural heritage collections

Deannah Vieth

D

uring 2013—2014, State Library of Queensland (SLQ) and Museums & Galleries Queensland (M&G QLD) partnered to deliver social media training to the Galleries Libraries Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector across the state.

Queensland’s cultural heritage collections are dispersed across an area five times the size of Great Britain, with more than 400 museums and historical societies, 70-plus regional galleries and public exhibition spaces, 319 public libraries, and 21 Indigenous knowledge centres caring for the state’s historical collections.

In March 2013, SLQ undertook a survey focused on access to collections and digitisation. Feedback from more than 120 respondents assisted SLQ to better understand the sector’s needs around the digital presence and access of collections, and informed the development of appropriate programs including social media training.

SLQ approached M&G QLD to partner in the delivery of the workshops across the state. With M&G QLD’s knowledge of the museum and gallery sector, a shared purpose was developed: to increase the digital presence of Queensland’s history and heritage; to encourage access to collections; to build the capacity of organisations working with collections; and to create new audiences.

In designing the workshops SLQ focused on three guiding ideas: engagement, content, and context.

Engagement centred on encouraging participants to consider engaging new audiences and involving existing audiences in different ways. Social media platforms offer a variety of audiences ranging from the local to the global. Content and context focused on stories found within collections: untold stories; and the uniqueness of collections.

The aims of the workshops were to encourage participants to perceive the benefits for their

collections in using social media as a way to encourage discovery, visitation and use; to communicate value to visitors and community alike; and also as a stimulus for prioritising conservation objectives.

Beginning in August 2013, two-day workshops were delivered across the state of Queensland in seven locations: in Brisbane, Yungaburra, Rockhampton, Charters Towers, Cairns, Mackay, and Dalby. Attendees included representatives from libraries, galleries, museums, archives, historical societies and local government. A variety of individuals interested in history and heritage also attended.

The workshops content covered the following: • An overview of different social media platforms; • Ways to use social media within participants’ organisations; • Assessing the right platform for the right job; • Copyright information; • SLQ digitisation toolkit; • Research documentation and statistics; and • Examples of policies and usage guidelines.

Hands-on training in using particular platforms was also included. Participants had the opportunity to start work on a platform of their choice: to create a Wordpress blog, or to set up a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or Historypin account.

Examples were considered – particularly drawing upon SLQ’s strong social media presence – to illustrate how content is being used and shared, and on which platform; and how the various platforms can be utilised in an integrated way by both small and large museums and collecting bodies. Examples of social media being generated by local groups and organisations were employed, wherever possible, to encourage participants and provide opportunities for linking, liking or following.

Workshop presenters also included hints and tips around: • Finding an online voice with a sense of authenticity, to avoid sounding like marketing noise; • Managing the nature of social media: it is social; it can be a conversation; and people will talk back to you; • Awareness of the realities of managing social media, and ensuring that time and resources can be dedicated for regular updates or posts; • The value of being engaged in social media to advocate to local government, volunteers, boards – and to overcome trepidation about participating online.

Each participant in the social media training received workshop material electronically and in hard copy.

SLQ ensured that Creative Commons licensing already covered this material, to encourage sharing after the workshop at a local community level.

Consistent Internet and Wi-Fi access proved to be a challenge in most regional areas – but the impact of this was moderated with the provision of mobile hotspots for the workshops. Another challenge was the variation in participants’ technical capabilities, even though it had been a requirement that participants already have a practical working knowledge of

top:

Deannah Vieth

above:

Juan Iraola, Social Media Bandwagon, 2010

left:

Photo Giddy, Social Media and Donuts@ ThreeShipsMedia, 2012 Photo: Doug Ray

34 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Social media tools in museum communications and access

left:

their personal laptop, and experience beyond beginner’s level. Some participants were unable to set up accounts due to their organisational protocols. Workshop presenters also found that some organisations were fearful about putting content online, and used examples and statistics to try to allay those concerns.

Participants left with much information and knowledge to advocate for the use of social media in their own contexts. They had been provided with a variety of tools: clarification of terminology (e.g. tagging, BTW, Follow Friday); general troubleshooting information; and an understanding that social media is a suitable and inexpensive way to make collections available online.

All participants completed evaluation forms, and this feedback assisted with continual improvements to the workshops. It also indicated that participants developed a new level of awareness, and a positive appreciation that social media provides practical and useful tools to connect with audiences (new and existing), and to share local stories and collection information more widely. 100% of respondents said they would recommend the training to others.

What grew out of these workshops are some true success stories of social media use. These include the following examples: The Yugambeh Language Centre and Museum started a Twitter account at the workshop and one tweet was picked up by an ABC journalist, who re-tweeted it to his 10,000 followers. What ensued was an immediate and tangible rise in the

organisation’s profile.

A Charters Towers archivist, who previously was unconvinced about the benefits of social media, now blogs regularly and has had his blog linked to a local newspaper. Again, this has raised the profile of his organisation within the region.

A staff member at an historical village at Herberton was shown how to use Facebook more efficiently at a workshop, and now uses the platform as their primary means of promotion and communication – such is its success in reaching key stakeholders and the local community. [ ] ‘I’ll use what I have learnt today to … promote our service, to put an action plan in place for making better use of our digitised collections, provide new and exciting ways to access our collection, especially able to target specific user groups.’ —Participant, Charters Towers This article is adapted from a presentation at the 2014 MA National Conference, Launceston, by Deannah Vieth, Museums & Galleries Queensland, and Chrissie Theodosiou, State Library of Queensland.

Citation for this text: Deannah Vieth, ‘Using social media to encourage access to Queensland’s cultural heritage collections’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.33-34.

Screen shot: historypin

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 35

A long-range project supporting Indigenous culture in Western Australia

Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then and Now (2013—18)

Lynne Hargreaves

T

he Art Gallery of Western Australia’s (AGWA) project, Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then & Now (DRS), is substantively a six-year research program supported by principal corporate partner, Rio Tinto. The project is designed to map current and emerging Kimberley Aboriginal art practices, enabling the Gallery to build on existing collection holdings that have documented the visual languages and traditions of the region’s Indigenous peoples and their significant art movements over the last four decades.

The project’s full scope however is far more ambitious. The initiative, born out of close consultation with artists and art centres, involves the development of a digital portal <desertriversea.com.au>; an emerging leaders program; and a landmark exhibition celebrating the region’s art and culture. At its heart, the project has a focus on collaboration and partnerships, with an ethos of supporting long-term and sustainable outcomes for Kimberley communities.

The journey of this project began in 2011: when long-term Gallery supporter and financial partner

Rio Tinto funded the opportunity for a pilot program, Storylines, to introduce the Gallery to the Kimberley communities and artists. It was a unique and intuitive approach, recognising that the Gallery needed to listen not lead.

From a Broome-based outreach office, the inaugural community liaison officer Chad Creighton, a Bardi and Nyul Nyul man, met with nine major communities across the Kimberley, initiating and forming the relationships and networks that have become pivotal to the project’s ongoing success. Identified during this consultation, an Emerging Leaders group was formed as project advocates and conduits. Located across the Kimberley, they reciprocally receive training and mentoring, to strengthen their personal skills and capacity to initiate projects to support their communities. This is a journey along paths we are travelling together.

The research component is planned to involve film interviews with artists, documenting oral histories and stories within their artworks as well as cultural and contemporary influences. This responds to communities’ request for support to promote and give visibility to current practices.

below: On the road near Warmun Arts Centre, Kimberley country.

1. Endnotes

36 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

A long-range project supporting Indigenous culture in Western Australia

At its heart, this Indigenous project has a focus on collaboration and partnerships

above right:

Alec Mingelmanganu, Wandjina c.1972-1974, ochre on bark, 140 cm x 58 cm x 6 cm. State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased 1975. © Alec Mingelmanganu c.1972-1974.

In late 2014, AGWA brokered a partnership with the Western Australian-based Film and Television Institute (FTI) as part of their Indigenous Community Stories (ICS) project. This project uses high-definition digital video technology and professional film crews to create and preserve detailed records of the cultural practices and important historical accounts of WA’s Indigenous people.

Realising the project has brought together two institutions with different organisational skills and common goals.

Since its inception in 2008, ICS has recorded 65 stories, and is on track to reach a benchmark of 100 stories by the end of 2016. Through this partnership, FTI will be able to connect with more Indigenous communities in the Kimberley region to record their stories to be passed onto future generations.

(FTI Indigenous Community Stories Manager, Michelle Broun)

The two-week pilot field trip in October 2014 targeted the East Kimberley. The film crew, led by the very talented Indigenous Director Jub Clerc, a Nyul Nyul/ Yawuru woman from Broome, and coordinated by DRS Project Support Officer Geraldine Henrici, recorded more than 30 hours of footage, capturing stories from 22 artists working out of Waringarri, Warmun and Yarliyil Art Centres. This access to broadcast-quality film footage will enable us to celebrate the region’s culture in a very accessible, high-quality visual format through both the Gallery’s electronic portal and later public programs supporting the final exhibition.

The footage will be archived at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra, and the State Library of WA, with copies provided for the artists’ communities.

Short promotional videos are also being produced for the portal, to initiate a better cultural understanding

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 37

clockwise from top:

Waringarri Aboriginal Arts artist and staff member, Richard Bloomer, being interviewed by ICS Director Jub Clerc.

Artist Rosie Lala painting at the Yarliyil Arts Centre in Halls Creek.

‘Emerging Leaders’ training in Perth. (L-to-R back row) Ashley Hunter, Rachael Umbagai, Joseph Nugget, Fiona Gavino, Betty Bundamarra, Mark Nodea, Daniel Walbidi, Michael Torres. (L-to-R front row) Ben Ward & Natalie Hunter.

of Kimberley Indigenous art and culture in the leadup to the exhibition at the state gallery (AGWA).

Equally important, the videos will be used by the communities themselves: encouraging a sense of local cultural pride, acknowledging artistic merit, and for their own promotional use.

From its inception, it was felt important that the project had a regional base. Organisationally the coordination of a remote-locations, extended research project has inevitable challenges. Public sector interaction with Kimberley time and the bush telegraph has required flexibility and resourcefulness.

The Broome Office is supported by two officers who are at the heart of the operation. They have a core role of initiating and building on the relationships and informal networks indicated as an essential component of the project. The Kimberley region is vast, and communications are often difficult. As an example, contacting artists and our Emerging

Leaders means that it’s rarely just a simple case of making a phone call.

Usually contacting a small group of people can involve a combination of email, facebook messaging, contacting spouses, contacting workplaces, and most frequently contacting art centres to find out if someone is even in town. If it wasn’t for the bush telegraph technique of telling someone else to contact someone to get them to contact you, we’d never even chat, and the response is always on Kimberley time.

(Geraldine Henrici, Project Support Officer)

The research for the Desert River Sea project is structured across four distinct regions: East, North/ West, West, and South/Central Kimberley. Pragmatically we cut our field-trip teeth on the logistically simplest region, the East Kimberley, with its art centres conveniently situated along the Great

38 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

A long-range project supporting Indigenous culture in Western Australia

above:

Jan Billycan, Kirriwirri 2009, synthetic polymer paint on plywood, 90 x 60 cm each (3 boards) 92.2 x 182.8 cm. State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through The Leah Jane Cohen Bequest, Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2010. © Jan Billycan 2009.

Northern highway. We still have to adopt a very organic approach and it is important that our expectations are flexible, mindful, and adaptable to a host of changeable factors including personal relationships, trust building, artists travelling, and Sorry Business.

Despite careful advanced planning and scheduling of staff on the ground in Kununurra, Warmun, and Halls Creek, all of the schedules were later altered in some way because more artists presented themselves than planned, and quite different artists from those anticipated turned up, involving changes in the location and subject matter of filming.

A good example of ‘rolling with it’ was when the film crew arrived in Halls Creek to find the contact who had agreed to coordinate the artists was not in town.

Sourcing the location of one of the artists began with a brief discussion with locals at the service station, ending in the directions, ‘She’s in bottom camp’…and a gesture pointing west… driving further west and then stopping to ask another local, the directions increased to ‘Over the hill on the other side of the creek’.

(Geraldine Henrici, Project Support Officer) Targets in 2015 will see us reach out to and consolidate our leaders and their training. Philippa Jahn has joined the team as the Broome Office coordinator, with a broad range of experience in working in remote communities – most recently in the Kalumburu and

Ringer Soak. Philippa will lead the research into the North/West Kimberley this year.

Another key milestone has been embraced closer to home, through work on the State Art Collection. More than 300 Kimberley works have been photographed and will be loaded onto the website, mapping and making these works accessible back to their communities.

The launch of the desertriversea website has given visibility to the project, and we plan to publish on our journeys and experiences as the project rolls out.

Having opened the portal door, we are now looking for additional supporters and partners to help us scope and fully realise Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then & Now as a potential national resource, continuing to yield rich results for a broad public as well as the Kimberley artists and communities way beyond this project’s life. [ ] For more information, visit <www.desertriversea.com.au> Lynne Hargreaves has been Project Director of Desert/River/ Sea, and is Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.

Citation for this text: Lynne Hargreaves, ‘Desert River Sea: Kimberley Art Then and Now (2013—18)’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 23 (2&3), Museums Australia, Canberra, Autumn 2015, pp.35-38.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 39

Andy Warhol’s Jewish portraits series visits Melbourne

Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses – A conversation at the NGV in Melbourne

left:

NGV Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Max Delany, and guests Danielle Spera (Director, Jewish Museum Vienna), and, Rebecca Forgasz (Director, Jewish Museum of Australia) in front of entrance to National Gallery of Victoria, Nov. 2014.

Elysheva Elsass

T

he Jewish Museum of Australia’s Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses exhibition (on view in Melbourne until 26 May)[1] has been accompanied by a rich and stimulating public program series. Late last year the National Gallery of Victoria hosted an associated public event, In Conversation: Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses.

Guests were fortunate to experience a compelling conversation in the distinguished company of NGV Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Max Delany, visiting Jewish Museum Vienna Director, Danielle Spera, and Jewish Museum of Australia Director & CEO, Rebecca Forgasz.

Max Delany opened the conversation with a focus on Andy Warhol’s diptych of Australian Jewish philanthropist and supporter of the arts, the late Loti Smorgon AO. Loti Smorgon’s double portrait has recently been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria and is currently on display in the Jewish Museum of Australia’s Loti Smorgon Gallery, as an adjunct to the presentation of the Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses exhibition.

While Loti Smorgon is not one of the subjects in the Jewish Geniuses series (ten portraits by Warhol of figures such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Louis Brandeis and Franz Kafka), her generosity to many Australian cultural institutions made her an outstanding figure of support for the arts nationally, along with her husband, Victor Smorgon AC. In an interview with National Gallery of Australia Senior Curator, Deborah Heart, Loti Smorgon recalled her portrait-sitting for Andy Warhol at The Factory, his studio in New York, in 1980. She commented: ‘I said he shouldn’t make it too pretty, but he did the opposite. He did what he wanted, and seemed to see in me something that was quite serene.’

Rebecca Forgasz and Danielle Spera continued the conversation opened by Max Delany, discussing the contribution of Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses both to the art world and wider Jewish community. Their remarks began with a reflection on how the original 1980 exhibition in New York, titled Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, was received by art critics of the time.

Rebecca Forgasz cited the notorious critique of American art critic Hilton Kramer (1928—2012), asserting that ‘The show is vulgar, it reeks of

commercialism and its contribution to art is nil.’ The exhibition was similarly described by another critic as being ‘calculated to appeal to a specific market, the ‘synagogue circuit’, who would buy anything that signified Jewishness, even in the most superficial way’.

Noting these reactions, Rebecca wondered how such critique affected Danielle Spera’s recent pursuit of the Jewish Geniuses series for the Jewish Museum Vienna.

‘Fortunately,’ she explained, ‘Kramer’s really very nasty review was first issued in The New York Times during the weekend of Rosh Hashanah, when most Jews were out of town’. Warhol’s organiser and instigator of the original Jewish Geniuses series, art dealer Ronald Feldman, with whom Danielle Spera worked closely whilst curating the current exhibition, asserted that apart from Kramer’s infamous review, many other commentators were resoundingly positive.

The earlier exhibition of the Warhol portraits was first displayed at the Jewish Museum of Miami, and subsequently at other Jewish Museums around the world. The Jewish communities in the United States were positive about the series – especially because such a prominent artist as Andy Warhol had agreed to portray these individuals in a special series of portraits that highlighted both their Jewish heritage and their worldwide impact and achievements.

1. The Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses exhibition is showing at the Jewish Museum of Australia, in St Kilda, Melbourne (20 November 2014 – 26 May 2015).

40 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Andy Warhol’s Jewish portraits series visits Melbourne

Barbara Gilman, who was an art dealer in Miami when the original exhibition came to town, recalled: We took it as a meaningful thing for Jews, that an artist of Warhol’s stature would celebrate our history.

Not only that we take pride in these great Jews, but the fact that another great artist cared to portray the Jewish people.[2]

1. Endnotes

Rebecca Forgasz suggested that the sense of community and ethnic pride that the Jewish Geniuses exhibition evoked amongst the Jewish community in the United States aligned in many ways with Warhol’s own fascination with fame as an artist – and aligned with his own choice of many subjects for their celebrity status. ‘After all’, she remarked, with some irony, ‘how many communities possess a love of celebrity when it comes to people of their own ethnic background!’

Danielle Spera emphasised how the ten Geniuses in the present series shown in Melbourne represent figures that have made substantial contributions to their respective fields, within the lexicon of the twentieth century’s highest achievers. The influence of Martin Buber, for example, remains relevant today through his pioneering idea of interfaith dialogue. By representing these Geniuses through his art, Warhol has also contributed to ensuring their legacies are preserved in a new century, when their images continue to have impact in a wide public’s visual awareness.

Rebecca and Danielle also agreed that Warhol’s stature as an artist – his own fame – has provided an entry-point for a broader audience to appreciate these distinctive Jewish individuals and their culture than might otherwise have been the case.

Meanwhile, by displaying the works at a Jewish museum, such as the Jewish Museum of Australia, the series is given a particular context and meaning – which differs from what it might convey when displayed in an art gallery.

Aside from all the subjects being Jewish, there is no other single feature that unifies the ten portraits in Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses. An unusual cosmos is created by linking figures as diverse as Sarah Bernhardt and Albert Einstein. This not only amplifies the range of human achievements in general; it also conveys a quintessential element of Jewish identity: that there is no singular Jewish identity. If you ask one hundred Jews to comment on their Jewish identity, you will receive at least 120 answers.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 41

The ten Geniuses shown in Melbourne represent figures that have made substantial contributions within the lexicon of the twentieth century's highest achievers

opposite page, top: Installation view, Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses, showing portraits (L-R) of George Gershwin, Franz Kafka, The Marx Brothers, and Golda Meir. opposite page, bottom: Opening of Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses, Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne, 20 Nov. 2014. left:

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Loti Smorgon 1981 Oil and screen print on canvas Courtesy National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Gift of Ginny Green, Sandra Bardas OAM family, Vicki Victor OAM and Bindy Koadlow, in memory of their parents Loti Smorgon AO and Victor Smorgon AC, through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2014.

Rebecca further teased out the notion that there’s no single, ‘authentic’ Jewish identity. She discussed her fascination with Warhol’s selection process for the Jewish Geniuses, and questioned what qualified someone to have been considered ‘Jewish enough’ to be in Warhol’s series of portraits – after all, Bob Dylan was rejected on the basis that he’d become a born-again Christian, whereas Sarah Bernhardt was approved, even though she was baptised at the age of twelve.

Danielle observed that being baptised was a fact for many Austrian Jews at the turn of the century, as many drifted away from the shtetls and religion, and in this light, Sarah Bernhardt was representative of a large segment of Austrian Jewry at the time. However Danielle also noted that it was ultimately Sarah Berndhardt’s beauty and her role as an emancipated female actress – her celebrity status in her era – that motivated Andy Warhol to include her in the series.

The conversation concluded in a discussion about the experience of migration that was a common theme in the lives of Warhol’s ten Geniuses. This progressed from Warhol’s own background – not Jewish himself but from a family that had emigrated from Slovakia – to link closely with his collaborator, Ronald Feldman, and the Genius

subjects, each of whom shared a personal history of migration. Rebecca Forgasz referenced the Bible, when Abraham heard a command from God employing the term ‘lech lecha’, commonly translated as ‘Go for you’. Rebecca wondered whether the first moments of Jewishness are about ‘going’, about being on the move; and she speculated about the complex forces moulding a person and shaping one’s identity.

Whether, like Sigmund Freud, Warhol’s selected subjects had been forced to leave a homeland, or, like Gertrude Stein, had left voluntarily, the migratory experiences of the ten Jewish Geniuses had varying impacts on the development of their lives and influenced their ultimate contributions to twentiethcentury culture. In this sense their shared history of migration was suggestive of many other communities, as well as speaking to Jewish experience. [ ] For further information: <www.jewishmuseum.com.au> Elysheva Elsass is Marketing and Communications Coordinator at the Jewish Museum of Australia in Melbourne.

Citation for this text: ‘Elysheva Elsass, ‘Andy Warhol’s Jewish Geniuses – A conversation at the NGV in Melbourne’, Museums Australia Magazine, Museums Australia, Canberra, Vol. 23 (2&3), Autumn 2015, pp.39-41

2. Richard Meyer, Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered, Jewish Museum, New York & Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2008; p.28.

42 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

The process of branding and marketing museums

Artful museum marketing

Sergio Brodsky

From contemplation to sensation

A new art order

Back in the twentieth century, according to Paul Sachs, a Harvard art historian, museum director and member of the Goldman Sachs dynasty, the parameters for a good exhibition space were as follows:

A

s a general rule, an art piece is often as worthy as the last place where it was featured. Therefore, if a museum wall is what gives (commercial) value to a painting, then the brand is what encapsulates and conveys the efforts and ongoing reputation of individuals and organisations beyond the curtains being drawn on any one occasion.

Nevertheless building valuable museum brands that are strong in their own right, and not dependent on patrons’ donations, government funding or tax benefits, is a challenging and complex process.

Smart marketing programs can directly contribute towards artistic and financial success by designing experiences that capture the hearts and minds of today’s most coveted and challenging audience, the constituents known as generation Y. Gen Y’ers consume and often know more about ‘high art’ than any other demographic. And this is not due to formal instruction but the result of their constant usage and exposure to the communications and entertainment industries, as well as ready access to art supplies and classes. This ‘new art order’ has emerged through a fast-food/fast-culture frame of reference.

To address a youth that is more interested in hashtagging than being enlightened, snapchatting than being carved in history, or binge-viewing TV shows instead of sitting through a stage production, what could museums do to reclaim their role as society’s grand-narrators?

Frankly, they can’t. The game and traffic-routes of activity have changed, and so have many of our expectations. From high-definition and multiple screens to digital programming with great content and cheap broadband connection, almost anyone with some curiosity can become a connoisseur of almost anything.

The fact that art galleries and museums (for example the Tate Modern) have resorted to utilising the square metres that abound in old factories and industrial sites only corroborates the conditions where art has become more common and massively produced on a previously unimaginable scale. That ArtEverywhere, a charitable project led by Innocent (the food company) founder Richard Reed, has flooded UK streets with great artworks voted for by the public is possibly the strongest testimony that the marketing of museums and galleries might now be peaking. If everyone is an artist and art is everywhere, then art seems diminished in importance. But is this really the case?

• Great works of art; • Intelligent and seductive presentation with good lighting and labelling; • Highly accomplished, publicly spirited curators; • Substantial acquisition funds; • An endowment large enough to guarantee integrity and independence from market driven decisions; • Fully committed trustees; • Staff members who believe in authority and discrimination in judging and presenting art; • Ease of access through good physical amenities, and intellectually via programs that deepen the understanding and experience of art; • An unwavering belief in the primacy of the experience of art over that of the museum as agora.

However nowadays, it’s simply impossible to appreciate and deal with art like a turn-of-the-century dandy. Recognising the extent of social change that separates our world from Sachs’, to secure jobs today curators need to start embracing their brand management requirements and focus more on the journeys (read experience) than destinations (what they are actually going to show). Museums therefore may start behaving like TV channels, and their directors like programmers, when planning exhibits that can offer a deep grip on a contemporary consciousness.

Focusing on experiences is required because sensation rather than reflection is what increasingly earns media coverage; and such exposure is essential for driving revenue, subscriptions, and of course building a brand. This involves creating nodes of interactions, whereby audiences feel enabled to do things that are very different from the contemplative state of appreciation of art.

Some may oppose this invitation and insist that high culture is being diluted by marketing efforts that result in an overall dumbing down of quality art experience. Quite frankly, the opposite seems to be occurring. Branding and media are greatly invigorating our high culture by providing access and increased interest in previously unimaginable ways, and thereby making associated economic activity and business more feasible.

For example since 1971, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has been analysing their exhibitions’

above:

Sergio Brodsky

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 43

Museums may start behaving like TV channels, and their directors like programmers, when planning exhibits success, to help evaluate how to prepare subsequent exhibitions that both maintain marketing impact while also serving the institutional brand’s cultural purpose.

Hence upgrading business acumen in a museum does not have to entail an artistic dumbing down.

Building on the understanding of brand communications scholar James Twitchell’s book Branded Nation, the twenty-first century museum brand model is gradually replacing preeminent reverence for the object, with increased attention to the provision of experience. This entails the following emphases in the design, operations and strategic development of museums:[1] • Unique locations with urban interaction and easy access • Distinctive architecture • A hyped special exhibition • A hyped special exhibition, or exclusive Q&A with selected artist(s) • (At least) two shopping opportunities • (At least) two eating opportunities • State-of-the-art online user experience with an e-commerce platform and enriching hyperlinks • Economies of scale and best-practice exchanges via a global network • Interweaving of physical, digital and social dimensions • All emphases guided by what is unique and ‘ownable’ by a brand Accomplishing the above features will ensure that the intent of a transformational experience is not downgraded into a merely transactional one – back to buying a ticket, and just ‘seeing stuff’. The clear pursuit of goals that reinforce the brand will rather sharpen the worldviews that museums and their professional colleagues wish to communicate to their audiences.

Artful tactics

1. Paul Sachs, ‘Fine Arts 15a: Museum Work and Museum Problems’.

Possibly due to some lack of courage or inconsistent delivery, there isn’t yet a fully integrated, best-inclass museum brand model to showcase. However a select few organisations have done particularly well in different areas. Some of these can be highlighted.

1. Providing consultancy and educational services A pioneer is the Bronx Museum, which since the 1980s has been using its in-house expertise to teach others about the art business. A twelve-week course in career management – incorporating gallery representation, learning the role of the art critic, self-marketing, grant writing, insight into museum practices, how to pitch, what to look like, what to wear and how to be interviewed – has contributed to sharpening the skills of those interested in the art business. Besides giving the Bronx Museum a distinctive educational edge, this approach has invigorated staffers’ entrepreneurial spirit and created new and ongoing revenue streams.

2. Changing the way your audiences interact with you Last year, the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne staged the exhibition, ‘Les Misérables’ – From Page to Stage, presenting the journey of novelist Victor Hugo’s ideas and his political critique of France’s social injustice in the eighteenth century. From the habitual student wanting to get ‘in the zone’ and enjoy free Wi-Fi to those just accessing public toilets, the library created an opportunity for these and other audiences to change the way they interact with the Library’s brand. This certainly achieved a more impactful approach than an original manuscript displayed in a glass vitrine – which was there too!

Once a month, the British Museum now opens its doors to children and their parents for exciting and enriching sleepovers in proximity to the rich collections preserved nearby. Elsewhere in London, the V&A museum organises the Village Fête – providing a high-profile venue and interconnecting local makers to display their craftsmanship. Meanwhile in an attempt to better engage younger visitors, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo has created a special art gallery called the Haunted House <http://torafu.com/works/hauntedhouse>.

3. Disrupting the category There is no ‘museum-disruption guide’ since disruption isn’t disruptive when everyone is doing it. A sharper understanding about how museum brands are positioning themselves has enabled MUSA, Cancun’s

44 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

The process of branding and marketing museums

underwater museum, to carve a unique space becoming a true disruptor and re-inventor of a category through a refreshing new genre. MUSA presents 500 sculptures in three different submerged galleries. There snorkelers, scuba divers, and tourists in a glass-bottom boat are enabled to visit its subaquatic installations.

Even though the sculptors and sculptures incorporated are of great virtue and distinction, it is the sensations attached to the experience that help to establish and promote a memorable brand.

4. Stretching the experience across digital spaces The primary impact of experience is no longer limited to an exhibition visited. People make an event of their outings. They want to interact before and after a focal-point or destination, by interconnecting and expanding an experience through integrated products, games, or exclusive content that seamlessly converge the physical, virtual and social worlds. This can help turn a short-term memory into a long-lasting one.

In terms of converging environments, the London Science Museum’s Web Lab project (in partnership with Google), is a best-in-class case study. It exhibits five different interactive installations where both virtual and physical visitors can interact both with installations and one another, bringing web technologies to life and creating newly intensified experiences.[2] The science behind the art is represented by a ‘Lab Tag’, a visual code that can be scanned at each experiment presented, to enable users to keep track of their activity. Each Lab Tag is unique, and all museum visitors are given a high-quality card with their code printed on it. They can then scan their Lab Tag at home to re-access favoured artifacts and visit the exhibition again and again, allowing them to interact with and further share each experience with the Lab.

5. Connecting art collectors to connoisseurs When it comes to engaging exclusively digital audiences, the UK aggregator Culture Grid provides a unique online service that joins up UK collections information from different sources and makes it available for more use by more people. Moreover, by referring people back to the sources who contribute with relevant information, it acts as a marketing tool for any commercial services that individuals or organisations offer (for example, ticket- or imagepurchasing features on users’ websites), ultimately helping to generate a new income stream.

6. Engaging new audiences one-object-at-a-time The virtual exhibition, A History of the World in 100 Objects, a 100-part series curated by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, is a great marketing strategy for attracting new audiences that are heavy internet users, preferring light-touch experiences as opposed to the very immersive and at times intimidating museum tour. The exhibition provides snapshots of collection artefacts linked up to BBC’s Radio 4, an online radio station. By removing often-daunting barriers that might stop someone from becoming a visitor, the virtual exhibition format has the power to convert social media-attracted visitors and even ‘online loiterers’ to become long-term participants.

7. Communicating by servicing Europeana, a digital master-curator interconnecting millions of selected items drawn from a range of Europe’s leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums, provides strong reasons to believe in this brand’s ‘think culture’ value-proposition.

8. Socialising beyond self-promotion Social media has become an almost ubiquitous practice adopted not only by museums but most Arts & Culture organisations. The problem is that little-to-no value is added when museums only talk about their exhibitions and collections. Museums need to think more like publishers to truly add value across social spaces. Twitter handle <@nytimesarts> is one of the best resources for those interested in arts and culture, because it keeps its art topics always connected to the surrounding world.

9. Hacking the museum Instead of waiting for the arts to reinvent themselves, one alternative is to allow others to intercept the experience. Simple.com has done this within the financial services category by supplementing the customer with services for which banks are highly criticised. Museum Hack is doing a similar thing with highly interactive, subversive, fun, non-traditional museum tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, helping to re-energise a well-established experience.

Another option is EXplora Museum, an interactive app that augments the museum reality <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_cvAGUItU0> by providing guided tours, adding value for visitors while reducing the staffing costs associated with fully guided

2. http://www.sciencemuseum.org. uk/404.aspx?item=%2fvisitmuseum %2fgalleries%2fweblab&user=extr anet%5cAnonymous&site=scim>

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 45

tours, or even selling those rentable audio programs.

The app is currently available with both a front-end and backend interface. The front-end interface is for museumgoers, who have access to interactive audio, video, images and reading centred around items included in the app’s tour. The back end interface, for the museum staff itself, consists of iBeacon transmitters that connect with the iPad via Bluetooth. Museum staff design the interactive experience for each transmitter of the tour, each of which is dedicated to a specific item on the tour.

Logging software also tracks how many people access each transmitter, so the museum leadership can tell which exhibits are most popular.

The museum brand-building blocks Although there is not a single universal formula, three of the most tested and proven ways to bring a museum brand to life is through architecture and urban regeneration, hospitality and retail.

One of the easiest ways to attract large funds for a gallery or museum is to renovate or build impressive new buildings. ‘Starchitect’ Frank Gehry has made his mark on all three strands, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, New York’s Signature Theatre Company, and most recently, Panama City’s Biomuseo. Such efforts may represent a much more exciting investment or donation option than the more usually sought but possibly less-newsworthy endowment.

Architecture that well communicates the intent of a museum has the power to create a destination and immediate sense of affiliation. This can contribute in a variety of ways, from driving subscriptions to visitors engaging in free brand campaigns when sharing impressions via social media on a global scale. Nevertheless, in an increasingly urbanised world the creation of a sense of place cannot be a building’s isolated bet.

Many have tried to replicate the so-called ‘Guggenheim effect’, but few were able to achieve it. That is because a more holistic approach is required. From a financial standpoint it means orchestrated partnerships, allowing flexibility of cash flows and gradual transferring of intangible value (i.e. brand equities) between synergistically chosen players. From an urban perspective it is less about creating divides with iconic buildings and more about enhancing the symbolic value of a city’s appeal by using already existing assets – like, for example, Prague’s Museum of Communism provocatively built on top of a McDonald’s restaurant and next to a Casino.

In terms of hospitality, the Blue Bottle Café in San Francisco’s MOMA ensures that visitors’ eating experience remains long after the food has been consumed, by creating modern art-inspired desserts. From its Mondrian Cake to the Matisse Parfait, visitors will

remember and talk about shapes and colours of what otherwise could have been limited to mere taste without character.

In addition to being quirky, artsy eateries increase ‘dwell time’, attract top chefs, and soften price sensitivities – with most catering companies returning between 8 to 25% of their turnover back to their masterbrand.

Finally the store: that little piece of sophistication that one can experience at the entrance, the exit, at specific sections within, and again outside and of course online. The British Museum hits all bases with a true retail franchise, made up of: • Bookshop: ‘Books specialising in ancient history, archaeology and art history. Many titles written by curators.’

• Family Shop: ‘Games, books, dvds, puzzles, souvenirs and educational items for children of all ages.’

• Collections shop: ‘Souvenirs, replicas, guides, postcards, jewellery, stationery and inexpensive gifts.’

• Grenville room shop: ‘Luxury items including replica sculptures, jewellery, silk scarves and ties.’

• Online shop: where you can find most of the items from the above shops.

• Heathrow Airport shop: with specifically curated items to fly back home with you.

Business-savvy museums can perform like luxury brands and colonise prime real-estate in department stores. Conversely, recruiting top brands with exclusive ranges can also be a very smart move. It’s only a matter of time before Apple starts populating the world’s design museums, or Santiago’s Museo de la Moda (Fashion Museum) opens up its Chanel Shop.

In the case of both hospitality and retail operations, the museum brand portfolio needs to be organised in a way that tax benefits are not endangered. Stores are for profit and they pay related taxes, but overheads are carried as part of the masterbrand — underpinning a fine art of brand architecture.

In this highly networked and participatory model, our culture is shaped by all who want to be a part of it. Brands in the Arts & Culture space can invite their audiences into the flux and flow of ideas and become a more engaging platform than a TV box set. Now, more than ever, is time to be as artsy and gutsy with ideas as (most importantly) with marketing spend. [] Sergio Brodsky is strategy director at OMD Melbourne. He is an internationally experienced marketing professional and media commentator with columns at Marketing Magazine (AUS) and Merca 2.0 (MEX), and regular contributions for VICE. His experience in consulting for Arts and Culture institutions spans museums, art galleries and performance companies. Follow him on Twitter: @brandKzar

46 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Modelling mutual assistance in a regional NSW museums networking project

2014 Regional Museums Networking Project – Progress Report

above: left:

Debbie Sommers

Waterways Project Steering Group members: from left – Margaret Blight, Peter Ryan, Tom Plunkett, Barbara Waters, Debbie Sommers, Zsolt Newby, Phillip Bowman and Terry Tournoff.

Debbie Sommers

W

aterways is a collaborative project taking place in regional New South Wales, aimed at enabling volunteer-run museums to access and share professional support and expertise.

Funded under the NSW Government’s Regional Museum Networking Grants Program, Waterways was one of two projects chosen in the first round of grants in 2013 – and the only one devised and managed entirely by volunteers. It builds on previous collection documentation projects: to improve collection management and ultimately make local cultural heritage collections more accessible. The project, now nearing completion, will result in a water-themed heritage trail brochure and a web-based exhibition to showcase local museum collections to a wide audience in regional NSW and beyond.

Regional and volunteer-run museums elsewhere may find the model a useful one to consider when exploring ways and means to access much-needed resources and often lacking professional support. It is also a strong model of projects designed to build volunteers’ capacity and skills in regional heritage care and access.

As originally intended, the Regional Museums Networking Project in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales is being managed by a Project Steering Group. The group incorporates representatives from six of the seven participating museums, who have met on eight occasions since the project officially commenced in January 2014. Most meetings have been linked to workshops with either or both of the project consultants, Kylie Winkworth and Kevin Williams. Site visits to three museums were also conducted in 2014.

Regular project bulletins are issued by email – twelve so far – to keep all participants up to date with project expectations, progress, meeting dates, timeframes, deadlines, feedback, and other details.

Achievements to date include completion of 58 object assessments and statements of significance across 7 museums in regional New South Wales. This is considerably more than our original expectations of five objects per museum for the intended web exhibition; however the final exhibition will be greatly enhanced by the additional material gathered.

Such enrichments have extended the time-frame a little, while also giving museum volunteers more

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 47

right: Museum consultant Kylie Winkworth with Peter Ryan on a site visit to Kempsey Museum.

opportunities to hone their significance assessment understanding and research skills. Several volunteers have undertaken this work for the first time, and have done an exceptional job; meanwhile some museums have had limited capacity in these areas and have been assisted by colleagues from other participating museums.

The object research phase of the project has taken considerably longer than first envisaged. However we are very pleased with the results harvested, and believe the overall project outcomes and quality of the project will be greatly enhanced by this additional effort.

Object photography for the web exhibition has also been completed. And our museum consultant has started working on her outcomes report.

The group also successfully applied in 2014 for a MMAPSS grant – to enable conduct of condition reports on the objects identified and documented for this project. The conservator’s assessments took place in February 2015 and have recently been reported.

Our MMAPSS grant acquittal is in progress. Museums are being encouraged to follow through on the condition reports’ recommendations. Other potential future projects are now being considered for the next round of Arts NSW Project Funding.

Some months ago we entered the heritage-trail and web-development phase of the project. Branding and logo design were approved by the project group, as was the size and scope of the printed collateral. A style guide has been developed. Sites for the trail brochure have been identified and historic images sourced.

Our Heritage Tourism consultant is currently working on the final draft of the heritage trail brochure and web design. We are now close to production, and a launch date of mid-April 2015 is anticipated. The project is currently operating within budget and is forecast to remain so.

The Waterways Project is funded under the NSW Government’s Regional Museum Networking Grant Program. This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program, administered by Museums and Galleries NSW on behalf of the NSW Government. [] Debbie Sommers is Waterways Project Manager, MA MidNorth Coast (MNC) Chapter, New South Wales and President of the Port Macquarie Historical Society.

Citation for this text: Debbie Sommers, ‘Regional Museums Networking Project, Mid-North Coast: Interim Report’, Museums Australia Magazine, Museums Australia, Canberra, Vol. 23 (2&3), Autumn 2015, pp. 46-47

48 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Narrating community histories through film

Culture Through the Lens

above:

Belinda Ensor

right:

Bennetts Lane Jazz Club captured by photographer Laki Sideris.

Belinda Ensor

F

ilm can draw the extraordinary from the ordinary and challenge our perspective. Culture Victoria is bringing film and the collecting sector together through stories, in partnership with Museums Australia (Victoria).

Stories are the bloodlines of a community’s history.

Some are known well – marked by statues and monuments – while others lie sleeping; some are linked to long-forgotten photographs and objects, waiting patiently to be rediscovered. The space between the known and the unknown is what sustains a community’s sense of curiosity, often driving people to preserve and archive their collective memories.

Over the past twelve months, filmmaker Joel Checkley and I have been given the privilege of exploring this space, helping to bring such stories into the public realm by developing suites of film-based story content for the Culture Victoria website <http://cv.vic.gov.au/>.

These stories of individuals, groups and community matter. They connect us with people, events and places. Stories provoke thought, move us, inspire us and inform our world.

The current content held by Culture Victoria offers an eclectic mix of story suites that explore the personal, the universal, the unique, the micro, and the epic. What interconnects this content is its underlying intent and agency: a desire to engage audiences in a genuine and meaningful way whilst documenting and capturing Victoria’s cultural life, and in doing so elevating the importance of the role of each contributor and their collections.

This rich media content draws from the expertise and knowledge held by dense and diverse heritage collections from across Victoria. It serves to document and capture cultural snapshots as well as profile and elevate the communities, collections and their custodians. The content is complemented by the rapidly growing collective archive of community collection objects shared online via Victorian Collections <http://victoriancollections.net.au/>.

The complementary role of Culture Victoria’s younger, community-curated sister site, Victorian Collections, is worth noting. Victorian Collections is where audiences can see for themselves the thousands of hours a collecting oganisation has put into their collection management and care, or the place where an organisation can take the first steps of their documentation journey. It is the place where audiences can move freely within whole collection catalogues, fixing upon one object or browsing through thousands.

Separately each site serves a very different purpose.

However as sister sites, Victorian Collections and Culture Victoria are increasingly growing together and celebrating their different roles and cultural collateral.

Developing film and story content for Culture Victoria is an intensely rewarding process. At the conclusion of each project there is a tangible vignette that serves as a snapshot or gateway to a broader story.

Each collecting organisation sees their involvement as a way to showcase their committed engagement, to elevate and enhance their collections, to draw visitors and to find new audiences online. They all give freely of themselves, their expertise, time and resources.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015 49

left: Joel Checkley filming Australian Jazz Museum volunteers Barrie Boyes and Mel Blachford at the Museum, 12 February 2014..

Yet each project is entirely different and brings unexpected outcomes: for some, a subtle cultural repositioning; for others an invigorated interest in their organisation’s heritage and a cultural shift from within.

Victorian Jazz Stories is a series of three films as well as image galleries that explore Victoria’s underground jazz scene, past and present. The Australian Jazz Museum has the largest jazz related collection in the country and is a wholly volunteer-run organisation. The project allows audiences to dip into the State’s rich but largely unknown jazz tradition – if only for six-minute intervals – and comprises three films and associated images.

Each of the films can sit alone; but together they provide newcomers with a sense of what Victoria’s jazz culture is, what it means, and why it’s important. The first two films highlight the rich history of this world, whilst seamlessly providing a platform to celebrate the spirit, foresight and commitment that the Australian Jazz Museum has shown through its professional approach to collection management and care. This is reflected in its status as a MAP accredited museum,[1] despite being wholly volunteer run and managed.

The final film, Not For Discos, brings together the experiences of a contemporary jazz musician, Julia Messenger; Bennetts Lane Jazz Club owner, Michael Tortoni; and Australian Jazz Museum collection manager, Mel Blachford. This film subtly repositions the role of the Australian Jazz Museum in relation to Melbourne’s vibrant jazz culture, challenging the perceived disconnect between the role of collecting

organisations and a living contemporary culture. As it turns out, the project also documents the end of an era, as Bennetts Lane jazz club is set to cease operations in mid-2015.

World War One: Coming Home employs a personal narrative to explore the history of Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, which operated first as Bundoora Convalescence Farm and then as Bundoora Repatriation Hospital from 1920 until 1993. The project is as much the story of the Bundoora Repatriation Hospital as it is the story of a mother and daughter uncovering the history behind Wilfred Collinson, their father and grandfather respectively. Wilfred returned home from the First World War in 1919, but by 1937 his mental state had deteriorated and he would go on to spend the remainder of his life – more than 35 years – as a patient at Bundoora.

In developing the content for this largely-untold history of Bundoora Homestead, the project allowed us to work with the Centre’s curatorial staff: to extend their research and further cultivate the personal relationships they had developed in preparation for an exhibition on the same theme. With most of the paper records undiscovered and the story largely undocumented, the strength of the project was in in its direct personal content – formed by the recollections of one family.

There was a catharsis in the telling: an invitation to honour the life of a man whose own voice was missing but whose story was given dignity by the people who cared for him – the people he left behind. The project became a vehicle for retelling or collectively re-remembering. As a result of the film’s inclusion on the Culture Victoria website and within

1. The Australian Jazz Museum, formerly the Victorian Jazz Archive has been MAP-accredited since 2003.

50 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 23(2-3) – Autumn & Winter 2015

Narrating community histories through film

For Museums Australia, these projects are an opportunity to welcome non-traditional collecting organisations into the sector left:

2014 Anzac Day Memorial on Ballarat Main Street, 25 April 2014.

the Homestead’s exhibition, other descendants and former staff have also started to come forward to share and record their stories.

The latest suite of content MA(Vic) has been developing is entitled A Sensory Experience, planned for addition to the Culture Victoria website by early April.

This project uses the heritage collections of two advocacy and support organisations to springboard into a wider narrative around Victoria’s deaf and blind communities.

These projects are exciting because of the remarkable stories that have unfolded through them, but also because these non-traditional collecting organisations, whose core business is not museums, are being embraced by the cultural sector. This brings about subtle cultural shifts within organisations as to how their own heritage is managed, prioritised, and valued. As we finalise post-production on Deafhood, made in close collaboration with Vicdeaf, the organisation’s Information and Online Media Co-ordinator is preparing new catalogue item records on Victorian Collections.

Community collecting organisations are often driven by personal and local connections. They fill in the spaces left by the large cultural institutions in Australia, their relevance proven by the sheer number of organisations that are thriving across the country.

Culture Victoria and Victorian Collections give our

sector the opportunity to find a new and more diverse audience online, and to engage with our current audiences in alternative and more accessible ways. They allow us to recognise and celebrate the work and achievements of community collecting organisations, and to elevate content drawn from their collections to sit comfortably alongside state and national stories.

For Museums Australia, these projects are an opportunity to welcome non-traditional collecting organisations into the sector. It’s a personal honour to work alongside such inspirational organisations and individuals, and to be trusted in helping them tell their stories. Because stories matter. [ ] Belinda Ensor is an historian who makes films. She has worked for Museums Australia (Victoria) since 2012 in the role of Co-Manager of the Victorian Collections project and as a Culture Victoria Content Producer. Joel Checkley is the Director and Filmmaker whose commitment to telling meaningful stories has made these projects realise their potential.

Visit Culture Victoria: http://cv.vic.gov.au Visit Victorian Collections: http://victoriancollections.net.au Citation for this text: Belinda Ensor, ‘Culture Through the Lens’, Museums Australia Magazine, Museums Australia, Canberra, Vol. 23 (2&3), Autumn 2015, pp. 48-50

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