Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art. Exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney from 31st March 1992. Article by the co-curator Robert Leonard.
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.
Looks at the exhibition 'Terra Australis Incognita' at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand, to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Abel Tasman's discovery.
Helen Andreoni writes on matters which are addressed in the report commissioned by the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) by Amareswar Galla (also in this edition of Artlink).
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.
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.
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.
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.....
Guest editor for Vol 12 No 1 Museums on the Edge. This edition was founded on a perception of a lack of any quantity of readily available material on the Australian and New Zealand experience of museums.
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.