0
Favs
Login
Menu

To Have and To Hold: Art Museum Departments

One of the things which continues to fascinate me about museums is how, despite the vast amount of talk about displaying material culture, the often personal, often idiosyncratic, often haphazard decisions about departments are very rarely mentioned. Yet these decisions are central to much of the museum's collection, display, exhibitions and research programme.
Buy   or   Subscribe   or   Login

More from this Issue

Ordinary Otherness
Exhibition review Unfamiliar territory: Second Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 1992 Art Gallery of South Australia 28 February - 19 April 1992
Stephanie Radok
Independent Curators
Book review A guide for the Employment of Independent Curators by Alison Carroll Published by the Art Museums Association of Australia 1991
Elizabeth Cross
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.
Geoffrey Maslen
Background to the Project: Heritage Curricula and Multiculturalism (HC&M)
Background to the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia with the final report to be released by the Office of Multicultural Affairs OMA in mid 1992. See also the article by Helen Andreoni in this issue.
Amareswar Galla
Repatriation of Papua New Guinea's Cultural Heritage
Jim Specht of the Australian Museum Sydney, has written that "public and private collections of archaeological and ethnographic specimens around the world contain tens of millions of specimens yet only a minute fraction of this total is actually held in its countries of origin" ; most of this material he says, was acquired through colonial or military occupation.
Barry Craig
Cultural Diversity and the Challenges of Access
Cultural diversity has become a key issue in the 1990s for a number of reasons. In the United States we have recently completed a census. The results of that census indicate a dramatic change in the nation's demographics.
Claudine Brown
Victoria Moves Towards Museum Accreditation
Accreditation is set to become one of the significant features of the Victorian museum scene in the 1990s. At a time when Victoria might be perceived as out for the count it may seem unlikely to be introducing major developments in the operation of the State's 400 Museums.
Roger Trudgeon
A Continuum of Maori Art
Whatu Aho Rua - Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide Festival. The exhibition Whatu Aho Rua 'weaving with two strands' organised by the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui, New Zealand, is a departure form exhibitions usually seen in New Zealand Galleries.
Mina McKenzie
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.
Paul Carter
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...
John Neylon
Australian Art Museums and Public Galleries Directory
Book review Australian Art Museums and Public Galleries Directory published by the Art Museums Association of Australia Inc and the National Centre for Australian Studies Monash University 1991.
Naomi Cass
Aboriginal People and Museums: Restricting Access to Increase It
The South Australian Museum has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Australian Aboriginal material culture. It also has a vast archive of information about that material and about other aspects of Aboriginal life in the form of photographs, films, audio tapes, diaries and other records.
Christopher Anderson
View all articles in this issue