Opportunity Knocks - Museum Mentorship presentations

On 26 February M&G NSW hosted a special presentation of the 2012 Fellowship & Mentorship recipients.

In 2012, eight people from museums and galleries across NSW participated in two-week professional development placements with cultural organisations relevant to their field of work.

Each speaker talked about the benefits of undertaking a mentorship or fellowship and how they plan to implement the things that they have learned into their own work practices.

Are you interested in a mentorship, fellowship or professional placement?

MUSEUM OF HUMAN DISEASE AND AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MENTORSHIP

DR BIRGIT HEILMANN, CURATOR
HURSTVILLE MUSEUM & GALLERY

Birgit wanted fresh ideas for developing public programs and promotional strategies associated with temporary exhibitions. In the first week of the mentorship, Birgit looked at public programs of the Museum of Human Disease, University of NSW, while in the second week she explored event and exhibition strategies at the Australian Museum.

AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MENTORSHIP

CINDY PRYMA, PROJECT OFFICER
BRADMAN FOUNDATION

Cindy undertook a mentorship at the Australian Museum to gain knowledge in education programming using video conferencing technology. Cindy’s mentor, Karen Player, ensured her involvement at every level and went out of her way to include Cindy in the VC community of Sydney.

This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program, administered by
Museums & Galleries NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

Opportunity Knocks

Last Tuesday on 26 February M&G NSW hosted a special presentation of the 2012 Fellowship & Mentorship recipients.

In 2012, eight people from museums and galleries across NSW participated in two-week professional development placements with cultural organisations relevant to their field of work.

Each speaker talked about the benefits of undertaking a mentorship or fellowship and how they plan to implement the things that they have learned into their own work practices.

Are you interested in a mentorship, fellowship or professional placement?

HOLLY WILLIAMS
PROGRAM COORDINATOR AND ASSISTANT CURATOR
UTS GALLERY

Recognising a need to expand her critical and conceptual understanding of contemporary curation in practice, Holly sought a mentorship at the Museum of Old and New Art. Working closely with the Museum’s curators provided Holly with a range of new methodologies, knowledge and inspiration as well as confidence to be ambitious in her own curatorial practice.

BEN MESSIH
ADMINISTRATION COORDINATOR
HAZELHURST REGIONAL GALLERY & ARTS CENTRE

In selecting a mentorship with the Education and Public Programs area of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Ben sought to develop skills and understanding across volunteer engagement, access and youth programming. Involvement in NGA programs such as the Big Draw, Art and Alzheimer’s and Touch and Draw, provided Ben with a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience to take back to Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre.

This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program, administered by Museums & Galleries NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

An Opportunity to Rethink my Museum

Samantha Sinnayah, 2011 M&G NSW Mentorship Recipient  
Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC), National Museum of Australia (NMA) and surrounding regional museums.

As I work alone at the George Hanna Memorial Museum (GHMM), and have done for the past two years, I was seeking to expand and refresh my curatorial practice. Now in its 16th year, the GHMM is running out of traditional historical topics to cover and will need to rethink approaches if meaningful exhibitions are to be developed in the future.

With this goal in mind, I applied for an M&G NSW Mentorship, funded by Arts NSW, at the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) and the National Museum of Australia (NMA).

At the WPPC I was very interested to see how this local government museum managed to continually engage its community with new perspectives on Dubbo’s history through exhibitions like People Places Possessions: Dubbo Stories, and Dubbo 10- Community Voices. Likewise, I’d hoped that my time at NMA would provide me with ideas on how to approach my future exhibition proposal, a social history of Botany Bay, from Captain Cook to the present day. Covering four local government areas, this will be a larger project than any I have previously researched and curated.

My placement exposed me to the different approaches, issues and responsibilities these institutions faced. One highlight was witnessing collection and curatorial meetings at NMA. As a curator of a museum that focuses on one small local government area, I assumed the NMA just had a wider area over which to cast its net. I had no idea how complex collecting for a nation is and of the issues that come with that responsibility.

I also discovered the importance of making history relevant in collection and curatorial practice. NMA actively collect the ‘past’ as it occurs in the present, and, during a trip to Wagga, I found that staff at the ,Museum of the Riverina also link their historical exhibitions to the here and now. At the GHMM, our exhibitions are tied to celebrating the past, partly due to our strong ties to our local historical trust. Linking the past to the present is certainly something I am going to consciously consider in the future, especially as I attempt to build new audiences.

During the two weeks, I also took the opportunity to visit a number of regional museums between Dubbo and Albury. Having the chance to see a wide cross section of museums in NSW gave me a strong sense of the sector as a whole and my organization’s place in it. On a basic level, it introduced me to the depth of collections across the state and the resourcefulness of some volunteer run organizations. On a deeper level, it is has made me think more strategically about the resources I have available to me. The volunteer run Cootamundra Heritage Centre was very inspirational and has opened my eyes to how I may be able to utilize our local historical trust. 

All in all my mentorship was an invaluable experience. Thanks to the frank conversations I had with museum professionals, and to the wide variety of exhibitions I saw, I gained far more from my mentorship than can be expressed in these condensed paragraphs.

Samantha Sinnayah
 

Volunteer Rusty in front of Cootamundra’s curiosity chest – the volunteer organization’s inexpensive but effective equivalent of the glass and steel chests at the Museum of Sydney.

A 3-d collage about the history of Cootamundra. These dioramas where produced in cigarette tins by Jack Mullins the local newsagent.