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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.

Louise Dauth

Museums on the Edge

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.

Des Griffin

Museums on the Edge

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.....

Philip Jones

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Urban Regions and the City Centre: A Changing Cultural Relationship

One of the curious things about very large cities is the gulf that exists between the inner city and the outer suburbs or hinterland.

Marla Guppy

Museums on the Edge

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.

Viv Szekeres

Museums on the Edge

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.

Alison Carroll

Museums on the Edge

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.

Dale Spender

Museums on the Edge

The Ownership of Cultural Meaning: Local Museums and Access

According the the Australia Council figures in 1990 a number of people exceeding the entire population of Australia visited the 187 Australian Museums that employed paid staff in 1989/90 at a cost, for maintence, development and operations in excess of $13.00 per head of population, excluding any charges imposed on entry to museums or exhibitions. And what does $13.00 buy for the Museum going public?

Shar Jones

Museums on the Edge

Implementing Aboriginal and Multicultural Policy in the Museum Sector

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).

Helen Andreoni

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

European Museums Make an Exhibition of Themselves

Report on the 3rd International Salon of Museums and Exhibitions (SIME) at the Grand Palais Paris January 1992

Philip Wright

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Designing for Interesting People

Andrew Andersons is, and has been, engaged to contribute to many of Australia's leading art museums as well as to other public buildings and spaces. His work might be described as adaptive; accommodating to the style and typology of the major buildings on which he has worked as well as responding to the varied views of curators with whom he has co-operated closely when designing galleries.

Judith Brine

Museums on the Edge

Abel Tasman at Dunedin

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.

Joanna Mendelssohn

Museums on the Edge

Local Conditions: New Zealand Art

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.

Robert Leonard

Museums on the Edge

Te Papa Tongarewa: Museum of New Zealand

Looks at recent issues for the National Art Gallery of New Zealand from the boardroom dismissals and judgments as well as the operations.

Ian Wedde

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Sources of Synergy: Museums for Design

The Zandra Rhodes costume in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum holds unique significance within the design collection.

Andrew Montana

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Charging to Disaster: The Introduction of Museum Entry Fees

Museums are complex social phenomena and valuable resources. There's an ecological analogy there; if you mess with even apparently trivial elements of a complex system, the results can be unpredictable, powerful and are most often catastrophic.

Patrick Filmer-Sankey

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

If you Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It!

I am particularly troubled about debates such as those illustrated by the publications 'What Price Heritage? - Finance 1989' and 'What value Heritage? DASETT 1990' and Professor Donald Horne's article 'Weekend Australian Jan 4-5 1992' on museums, because there is nearly always truth on all sides.

Nelson English

Museums on the Edge

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.

Charles Pickett

Museums on the Edge

Heritage Collections not Museums

In 1975 the Whitlam Government's Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (the Piggott Committee, after its chairman P H Piggott) unsuccessfully recommended setting up of a Museum's Commission.

Daniel Thomas

Museums on the Edge

Bad Names Improved

Suggestions for renaming many cultural institutions which are ambiguously named.

Daniel Thomas

Museums on the Edge

Conservation: The State of the Art Conservation - Access, Equity and Future Directions

Conservation - access, equity and future directions. Everyone is talking about the effects of the economic climate, some people are calling it a recession and others a depression.

Ian Cook

Museums on the Edge

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.

Christopher Saines

Museums on the Edge

CAMA Conference: An Overview

Conference review CAMA Something for Everyone: Access to Museums held at the University of Adelaide October 1991.

Susan Tonkin

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Museums Listings

Selected list of museums and art galleries around Australia.

Louise Dauth

Museums on the Edge

Here We Go Again

Life in Cyrus with all its charms and challenges.

Donald Brook

Museums on the Edge

A Dialogue with Richard Grayson

Exhibition review An Interrupted Dialogue. One of the first international experimental art exhibitions to be shown outside Hungary since the end of World War 2. Grayson worked with Suzy Meszoly of the Soros Fine Art Documentation Centre of Budapest in 1988 during the time when changes were sweeping through Central Europe.

Fotis Kapetopoulos

Museums on the Edge

Spirit of Enquiry Refreshing

Exhibition review Moet and Chandon Touring Exhibition Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Hobart 12 February - 22 March 1992 and touring

Sean Kelly

Museums on the Edge

Testing the Meaning of Heritage

Exhibition review The Heritage of Namatjira Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide South Australia November - December 1991 Curated by Angela Tidmarsh and JVS Megaw on behalf of the Flinders University of South Australia Catalogue edited by Ruth Megaw.

Janet Maughan

Museums on the Edge

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

Museums on the Edge

Arthouse and Beyond

Looks at Arthouse in Launceston Tasmania.

Gregory Kwok-Keung Leong

Museums on the Edge