More from this Issue
A Virtue of Necessity: Deaccessioning Without Guilt
De-accessioning is too often characterised as an ill-wind, blowing through the vast and mostly undisturbed reaches of our cultural store-houses capriciously violating the integrity of our collections.
Towards the Light: The story of One New Age Gallery's Quest for Purpose and Relevance in a Changing World
On 23 October 2002, yet another Council of Australian Museums Associations (CAMA) ran down. Conferees were already half deep in thought about melting credit cards and distant work site desks stacked high with urgent files. Well Not exactly CAMA...
Exhibiting Conflict - Who Dares?
Museum exhibitions tend not to challenge visitors with critical perspectives, contradictory points of view or subject matter which is controversial. I would like to explore different ways that conflict might be included in exhibitions and used to further our understanding of the past.
Spirit of Enquiry Refreshing
Exhibition review Moet and Chandon Touring Exhibition
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Hobart
12 February - 22 March 1992 and touring
A New Museum for Victoria
In the first project of its kind, private investors will provide half the money needed to build the Museum of Victoria at a new site on the Yarra River.
Sources of Synergy: Museums for Design
The Zandra Rhodes costume in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum holds unique significance within the design collection.
Whams and Whimms: An Exercise in Classification and Meaning
Interview with Louise Dauth about issues of gender. Dale Spender is a foundation member of the Women Heritage and Museums Group.
Museums and Technology: A Recession Boom?
With so many people feeling bruised and battered by the 1980s, it may seem cynical to point out that this unlamented decade also produced some new museums. These two 1980s legacies appear unrelated. On the face of it, museums are a quintessentially boom-time phenomenon, another emblem of 1980s extravagance.
Some Thoughts on Museum Futures
The quintessential purpose of Museums is to encourage and instil the joy of intellectual and aesthetic discovery. Abstracted partly from a public lecture entitled 'Ideas -Heresies even - for Museum Futures' given in Perth for the Western Australian Government Department of the Arts Task Force on Museums in August 1991.
Exhibiting the Museum
The recession led rash of public conferences on the theme of Australian identity raises questions about the sources of our national self-knowledge. The congregation of bureaucrats, economists, television personalities, writers and artists has a democratic ring to it but it also points to the failure of our cultural institutions - notably our museums, galleries and libraries - to embrace their responsibility to develop a regional self consciousness.
From Curiosities to the Hyper-Real: Notes on Context in Museum Anthropology Exhibitions
Daniel Thomas provoked a distinct murmur at the 1990 CAMA Conference when he suggested that art museums have a greater capacity to disturb and move people than other cultural museums. If this is true and I think it is.....