DIRECTOR’S WORD
Gooroo Burri, The new decade has already proved to be a testing time for us all. In just a few months we have dealt with the bushfires, the smoke, the hail, and then COVID-19 arrived and the world completely changed. Here at the National Gallery of Australia we had to close in March for the first time in our history. Seeing the black parsilk covers draped over the collection brought a sense of sadness as the art went into temporary hibernation and we realised we would not have visitors enjoying our galleries for several weeks. But it also represented a positive time, a moment for us to pause and reflect. Even though the majority of our staff have worked from their homes around the country it has been an extraordinary time of collaboration and working together. Running the National Gallery remotely has not been easy, but I have been so proud of how our staff adapted. We held weekly all-staff Skype meetings – with a record 180 people dialling in one week. Like the rest of the world, video conferencing became our new norm: by May we had participated in 26,543 Skype sessions and in 1728 organised conferences with a total of 90,812 minutes (or over 1513 hours) of talk time. This unprecedented pandemic meant we had to pivot our thinking as an institution. While our doors were physically closed we tailored our exhibitions and content to the digital space: our curators spoke about their favourite works in the collection from their homes, our Learning team transformed our onsite programs to digital excursions, and we created fantastic virtual tours of our galleries. Then there were the amusing social media challenges – the Vincent family’s take on Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles 1952 in LEGO for the #BetweenArtandQuarantine challenge became our most engaged social media post of all time. It was wonderful to see people continue having a dialogue about their favourite works of art. It’s been energising for us at the National Gallery – I love walking around our galleries and seeing how people respond to works of art, and now that’s been transported to the digital space. People haven’t left their beloved galleries behind – they are bringing art into their homes and using it as an inspiration to be creative. Not everything came to a standstill on site. The Body Electric was installed and is ready for visitors, and we took advantage of the closure to embark on an ambitious conservation project of Blue poles. This is the
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