We're building a website: We want you now

The Museums & Galleries of NSW website will highlight your museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres to the public.

We want you now!

Our website will be nothing without your participation. The whole public facing side will be profiling your exciting places, exhibitions and events. 

Right now M&G NSW staff are putting basic information about every one of you into our website but we need you to add the colour. Contact us if you would like to be one of the first to get started!

Add content to your profile page

So let's take a look at the profile page. In this case we've built a profile page for the Lady Denman Maritime Museum in Jervis Bay:

Add pictures

Upload images onto your page and create a slideshow. You have amazing collections, objects, works of art, exhibitions and events. We want to see them. 

What makes you special?

Write a description that tells visitors what they'll see and hear and why you stand out from the crowd. How do you reflect your region and your town? 

Connect to your social media

Simply add your Twitter, Facebook or Youtube account and they will feed into these custom built modules.

If you don't belong to social media, no biggie because . . .

Later on: News, Events and Exhibitions

From early September we will want to know everything that's going on at your museum, gallery or Aboriginal cultural centre and how you're connecting with your region. You'll be able to easily send us information with an online form and it will become part of the state-wide Events and Exhibitions database.

We want to hear from:

Aboriginal cultural centres
Community and volunteer-run museums 
Regional public galleries 
Regional museums 

Artist-run initiatives 

We're here to help

To help you through the process we will arrange your signup and link you to your organisation profile page. We'll provide an easy to use Website Guide that shows you how to upload text and images onto your profile page.

If you would like to check out our website (that isn't live yet) and be one of the first to start uploading information please contact us.

Andrew or Katie 

ph: 02 9358 1760 
andrewb@mgnsw.org.au 
comms@mgnsw.org.au

We're building a website: Audience, assets and content

As promised, I’ll explain the evolution of this drawing by the super-smart Adrian Wiggins from Pure and Applied:

The Digital Engagement Framework

Adrian’s deceptively simple drawing is a variation of an online engagement strategy conceived by Jasper Visser from Inspired by Coffee who ran a Digital Engagement Framework workshop as part of the ICOM Australia 2012 Conference held at the Australian Museum. 

Adrian's picture posits a clear communication strategy for M&G NSW. Connect our audience (the smiley guy on the left) with our assets (all our resources) using content.

It’s no mystery that to successfully engage your audience you need to know who they are and what they want. Except the only way to know what your audience wants is to research them and ask them. M&G's website has two audiences (both with overlapping but also contradictory needs): the public and the sector. 

So what do our audiences want?

Pure and Applied looked at existing data about our audiences and conducted interviews with members of the public and sector. Based on the collected statements and data, we picked out key patterns in their cultural needs, demographics and online engagement and we built 'personas'. Like this one:

As you can see above, Fiona is 35, single, not very wealthy, engaged on Facebook but not Twitter. It's important to realise these personas are not supposed to represent accurate personalities with all their potential for contradiction, idiosyncrasies and subtleties of taste. Instead, they’re a summation of data that allow us to personalise broad generalisations about audience interest and meet those interests online (what would Fiona be looking for online: Opening hours? Educational tools? Collection information?)

Assets

Which brings us to the other side of Adrian's picture: the assets. Your assets could be your café, your educational programs, unique items in for collection, or the volunteers who tell stories. M&G NSW's assets are the aggregation of everything you are doing on a regional and state-wide scale. Our job is to describe the relationships between your organizations, their context, the nearby amenities and overall destination.

Connecting audience with assets: content

As you can see our assets are "wrapped" in content and its the multiple opportunities to display and aggregate this content on the M&G website that has driven the development of the user experience. Our original conception of the new website was a homepage displaying a massive google map of NSW. Instead, when users come to our front door they will be greeted by a selection of stories (interviews, onsite travelogues about regions, exhibitions, festivals, opinion pieces and videos highlighting programs). This content invites users to visit individual museums or galleries or highlights the connections between organisations. Simply put, the front door is like a "magazine" with articles rather than a  searchable directory.

But don't worry . . . 

Visitors will still be able to search for every museum, gallery and keeping place in NSW (by region) with a click of a button. And in the next blog, I'll be showing you exactly how we'll achieve both these aspects when we look closely at designing the user experience. 

Further information on the Digital Engagement Framework 

Digital Engagement Framework 

Audience research:

Arts Council of England's Arts audiences:insight 2011 

CONNECTING:// ARTS AUDIENCES ONLINE

Guess Who's Going to the Gallery? NSW State Report 2011

Culture segments New Zealand

We're building a website

For the rest of the year I will be writing blog posts about the process of building our new website. This is obviously to keep you in the loop though I also hope to develop a sense of the project's opportunities and pitfalls by articulating the whole journey. With these goals in mind, let’s start with the most obvious question.

Why?
For some time, there had been dissatisfaction expressed about our current website both internally and externally (in all fairness the designer built it in 2007). 

Our concerns with the website went far beyond the look or feel. They were about our online strategy and it’s expression in our style and content.

Clearly our strategic goal was to advocate the visitor experience of museums, galleries and keeping places throughout NSW and yet our current website seemed obsessed with our organisation. Even when it was blatantly obvious we should be communicating with you, we seemed to be talking about us to somebody else (I don’t know who). 

We have a dream
We envisioned an easily searchable website representing every museum, gallery and keeping place in NSW to the public. This website would tell the collective stories of volunteer museums, show the programing strength of public galleries and unveil the hidden stories of collections everywhere. Organisations would be able to update information themselves or in partnership with us. 

Original website ideas and concepts for reference committees and potential partners.
Design by Katie Duncan.

And we wouldn’t stop there. There’d be a new, improved sector facing site with accessible resources and online opportunities for collaboration and discussion. 

Simply put, we wanted to make a website that didn’t represent M&G, it was M&G.

Easy, right?

Nope
It’s taken a year from this original impetus to actually procure the design team. During this year, we researched “competitors”, developed a digital strategy with Stuart Buchanan from The Nest and consulted our wise and clear-headed reference committees to explore the project’s risks and opportunities. Late last year we finally procured the services of the Interaction Consortium, Toben and Pure and Applied. 

Adrian Wiggins from Pure and Applied has just completed the user experience and wireframes for our new website: a process that encompasses questions around everything from communication strategies, social media platforms to what exactly you should call the button that takes you to Exhibitions and Events (“Exhibitions and Events” as it turns out).

A few weeks ago, just after Christmas, Adrian drew this picture on our whiteboard:

And in my next post, I’m going to explain exactly what we’ve been doing with Adrian and why this picture is key to everything we’re planning on doing on the website.

P.S. I welcome comments, questions and ideas throughout this process. Also, we're currently looking for someone to be a big part of our online journey. For more information click here.

A Night to Celebrate: The 2012 IMAGinE Awards

All photography by Mimi Kelly.

By all accounts the 2012 IMAGinE Awards presentation was a huge success. With a 20% increase in the number of nominations, a revised presentation format and bubbly enthusiasm expressed by over 100 guests, who enjoyed the hospitality of White Rabbit Gallery – it was certainly a night to remember.

The evening commenced with an Award that recognised Uncle Roy and Aunty June Barker’s Liftetime Volunteer Contribution, having devoted their lives to the preservation and sharing of Aboriginal history and cultural knowledge. The award was accepted by members of their family following a moving tribute given by Steve Miller, M&G NSW’s Manager of Aboriginal Programs.  Queanbeyan and District Historical Museum Society were then announced as winners of the Volunteer Collection Management Category, closely followed by an Award given to the Corrective Services Museum, Cooma, in the Collection Management Category for 1-4 paid staff.

Western Plains Cultural Centre’s recently completed de-accessioning project saw some 1000 items removed from the collection. Such was the manner in which this project was undertaken and given the sustainable advantages it bestowed to ongoing WPCC programs, our judges had no hesitation in giving the Collection Management (5-20 staff) Award to Dubbo.

The exemplary programs developed by Port of Yamba Historical Society were acknowledged by giving the volunteer run Exhibitions & Public Engagement Award to their World War II at Home exhibition. Goulburn Regional Gallery won the same category for 1-4 staff and Sydney University’s The Nicholson Museum won the 5-20 staff award category.

The 21+ staff award for Exhibitions and Public Engagement was hotly contested. Following detailed consideration the judges settled on awarding it to The Australian Maritime Museum for their hugely popular Nawi – exploring Australia’s Indigenous watercraft exhibition.

Category 3, for Education and Audience Development 1-4 paid staff, was given to Grafton Regional Gallery for their Towards the Stratosphere drawing project. It involved six local schools in the production of a 25 square metre drawing that reflected known and unknown aspects of the environment. The 4-20 paid staff award in this category went to Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, won the 20+ staff category for their Bella Room project.

The individual achievement categories were also hotly contested with the paid staff category being shared between Dr Nick Lomb, from Sydney Observatory and Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, Director Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The volunteer award for Individual Achievement proved hugely popular for its recognition of the work of Ken Smith, Past President and Secretary of the Parramatta and District Historical Society.

The evening ended with hearty congratulations to all winners and a renewed enthusiasm for the way museums and galleries involve and support their communities throughout the state. 

From all of us at M&G a big thank you goes to all nominations for the way in which programs and projects are conceived and undertaken. 

Michael Rolfe
CEO

How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow at Orange Regional Gallery

This week was filled with busy preparation for the launch of our new touring exhibition, How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow. Opening at Orange Regional Gallery on Friday 23 March, the exhibition features the works of six contemporary Australian artists and collaborative partnerships who are all past recipients of the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship for emerging artists, presenting their early works alongside recent projects to exemplify how an artist's practice develops over time through research, experimentation and refinement.


With the artworks ranging from drawing to complex sculptural installations with multi-channel video projections, this proved to be a challenging task for the installation team consisting of myself, Mark Feary (Curator) and tech guru Paul Greedy from Artspace, and the staff at Orange Regional Gallery. The day commenced with laying out the works in the gallery space, taking into consideration sound and light isolation between the various video works while still encouraging a smooth flow for viewers to grasp the progression between the works of each artist.


Once the space had been clearly mapped out, we started tackling the installation of the exhibition and accompanying equipment. It began relatively easily with the hanging of framed drawings and photographic prints, followed by the assemblage of Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy's 1st Draft composed of 16 corkboards with coloured drawing pins inserted to form the central image. Then came the wall mounting of 3 plasma screens for digital video works, 3 more data projectors, media players and speaker sets, 2 sculptural installations with plasma screens attached for Ms&Mr's Frame Drag, and finally Todd McMillan's traditional overhead projector with a twist (featuring an incorporated video device and media player inside). Did I forget to mention Lauren Brincat's fantastic taxidermy cobra as part of her work The Quick and the Dead? Needless to say, there was plenty of drilling, connecting of cables, connecting of more cables, and screen testing.

After some final testing and the addition of theatrical like lighting, the exhibition looked fabulous and was all ready for the launch that evening. Orange Regional Gallery friends, patrons and public gathered to view the exhibition, have a drink and a delicious canapé. Brenda Gray, Assistant Director of the gallery welcomed all and introduced Blair French, Executive Director of Artspace who gave an erudite explanation of the show's concept and an insight into the curator's thinking. Blair outlined the impact the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship and similar opportunities afford younger artists and how this can be witnessed in their practice. After a round of thanks, in particular to the artists Ms&Mr who were in attendance guests once again viewed the exhibition but this time with renewed interest.


How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow is showing at Orange Regional Gallery from 23 March 2012 - 6 May 2012 before travelling to 6 other venues in NSW and QLD.

For more information, visit the M&G NSW website: http://mgnsw.org.au/exhibit/how_yesterday_remembers_tomorrow/

How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow is supported by the NSW Government through Arts NSW as a result of the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy. An Artspace exhibition toured by Museums & Galleries NSW.
A story by Lillian Lim, M&G NSW's Gallery Programs and Touring Exhibition Coordinator.

Image one: Todd McMillan, after the deluge, 2010
Installation view, courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

Image two: Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, 1st Draft, 2009
Cork board, drawing pins, 160 x 120 cm, courtesy of the artists and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney

RPG NSW 2011 conference an unqualified success

Over two days, commencing Monday 31 October,  55 regional and public gallery affiliated professionals, M&G NSW staff and M&G NSW Board members met in Port Macquarie at the 2011 Regional & Public Galleries NSW conference, titled, Currency: resilience, relevance, resourcefulness.

The conference program was structured around the theme of sustainability, with a range of presentations intended to provoke thought and generate ideas about tackling issues beyond (but also including) environmental concerns. Biripai Elder, Uncle Bill O’Brien gave a moving Welcome to Country and an inspired set of speakers was led by Lucy Neal, who ‘skyped’ in from the Outer Hebrides to deliver a key note based on her landmark Sustainable Ability report and Happy Museum project (see www.sustainableablility.com & www.happymuseumproject.org for more info).

Welcome drinks at Glasshouse Regional Gallery

Jason Smith, Director of Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art (www.heide.com.au) spoke about the greening of Heide and his holistic approach to the development of sustainable practices as they relate to his vision and re-imagining of the gallery, its collection, gardens and grounds. Alison Clouston gave an artist's perspective and described a number of projects she has initiated with partner Boyd, including one in response to the destruction (by lightning and fire) of their much treasured studio situated in the Burragorang Valley, between Sydney and Goulburn. Clouston is known for her sculptural installations based on environmental themes, and carbon audits and offsets are an integral part of her practice.

The conference was used as a platform to launch a report commissioned by Museum & Gallery Services Queensland (in partnership with RPG NSW) titled: Lighting and Energy Effectiveness. This report was produced by the engineering firm Steensen Varming and is soon to be published on the MGSQ website www.magsq.com.au. Following its presentation, a lively discussion considered a range of questions towards identifying strategies to achieve sustainability in a gallery/museum context.

Day two centred more on ideas and models for improved audience engagement with delegates being somewhat enthralled by Elizabeth Mead’s presentation on the approach Hobart’s MONA has taken to achieving outstanding (and distinctive) success in such a short time, since opening earlier this year. Krista Huebner, most recently employed at Sydney’s MCA, spoke about the use of social media and artist Jenny Fraser, co-founder of CyberTribe talked about web based and digital applications she has used to promote work by Aboriginal artists.

Belinda Hanrahan, Director of Hazelhurst (and M&G NSW Board member), Tristan Sharp, Assistant Director of Newcastle Art Gallery and Grainne Brunsdon, representing Arts NSW, spoke about funding in the context of generating partnerships and sponsorships, Federal Government programs and NSW State Government grant initiatives through their Arts Funding Program. Tristan also outlined plans for the $21m re-development of Newcastle Art Gallery. Work is expected to commence in early 2012.

  

In the final session, M&G NSW’s own Steve Miller spoke about outcomes of the recent Building Cultural Futures in NSW summit. He noted that over a long period (since the European invasion) NSW Aboriginal people had certainly reflected a resilient and resourceful approach to maintaining their languages, heritage and culture, and that the summit had firmly placed their desire for cultural relevance and profile on the agenda (and you can check out the summit’s wiki at www.nswaboriginalsector.wetpaint.com). New England Regional Art Museum Director, Caroline Downer, gave a fascinating overview of their Art Alive initiative, an online education resource based on connecting school audiences with the extensive NERAM collection, check it out at www.neram.com.au, and Sharni Lloyd finished proceedings with an overview of A Viet Life project, a residency and exhibition by Vietnamese artist Dinh Luc.

It was agreed by all that the conference was an unqualified success, breathing new life into the collegiate sharing of ideas and experiences across the sector. 

You can view a number of the presentations at our website's resources section here: www.mgnsw.org.au/resources/conference_papers/

Michael Rolfe

Chatting with the IMAGinE 2011 winners

Below short videos that showcase winners of the 2011 IMAGinE awards and recipients of the 2011 IMAGinE highly commended certificates.

In our first video, IMAGinE award winners share their stories of excellence and innovation with us.

In our second video we talk with M&G NSW board member and gallery director, Belinda Hanrahan, about the significance of Special Achievement recipient Edmund Capon AM, OBE to our sector. 

 


Bob McKillop from Willoughby District Historical Society talks about their winning exhibition, 'The Tales of Flat Rock Creek' that explores the impact of urban development on a pristine natural environment since the European settlement, through the eyes of Willoughby residents.

The Bundanon Trust briefly explain their digitisation project for which they won the IMAGinE award for Collection Management- 5-20 paid staff.

Sharni Lloyd from The Glasshouse Regional Gallery discusses the exhibition People Of the First Sunrise, winner of the IMAGinE award Exhibitions and Public Engagement 1-4 Paid Staff. This exhibition was made in partnership with Port Macquarie TAFE, MCA and the Gallery.

To download a special brochure on the winners and highly commended click here.

If you've published anything electronically about the 2011 IMAGinE awards we'd love to post it!

To see the article on the posthumous honour of Glen Johns click here:

http://www.boorowanewsonline.com.au/news/local/news/general/top-honour-for-boorowa-man/2316585.aspx

To see the article on the Australian National Maritime Museum win click below:
http://anmm.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/imagine-award/
  
And the Grafton Regional Gallery received a trophy and a highly commended:
http://www.artsmidnorthcoast.org/grafton-regional-gallery-wins-at-the-2011-imagine-awards/

Arts Northern Rivers e-magazine covered the award and highly commended picked up by Grafton Regional Gallery
http://www.artsnorthernrivers.com.au/pages/news-latest-news-news-grafton-regional-gallery-wins-at-the-2011-imagine-awards

An Online and Offline conversation on the role of Digital in the National Cultural Policy

Last Thursday Andrew Brettell and I attended a day of conversations and presentations on how the new digital worlds could feed into, and be integrated into, the new cultural policy. 

Organised by Senator Kate Lundy and her office, this was the third public sphere conversation. These conversations happen online and also in a real word meeting - usually supported by live presentations that are streamed. There is the use of hashtags on twitter and a wiki to collate and capture ideas before, during and after the event.
Though the biggest trending story on Twitter that day was the passing of Steve Jobs, #publicsphere was ranked third – showing a wider engagement than those who were just in the room.
There were presentations from 5 key areas followed by group discussions. They were:

• Games Development - the future of games development in Australia from independent to major studios and publishers.
• Film & Animation - the future of film and animation in Australia within the context of digital culture.
• Media & Music - the future of music and media culture creation in a digital world.
• Digital Arts - looking at digital arts, how they contribute to our national culture landscape.
• Cultural Institutions - exploring how cultural institutions right across Australia, from regional galleries, libraries, archives and museums to national institutions can collaborate on public access and participation in our culturally diverse heritage through digitisation, online engagement such as crowd sourcing and emerging technologies such as augmented reality.

Key issues that came up in the discussion with the participants from the GLAM sector were: 

• the role that digitisation plays in building engagement at a local level
• the provision of services to assist the small to medium organisations in Regional Australia who may have the will but not the resources
• the need for an over-arching peak-body  for the GLAM sector, as a balance to the roles Screen Australia and The Australian Council for the Arts play for their sectors as a policy advisor to government  and research voice for the sectors.
• the model of DigitalNZ http://digitalnz.org/ 

and

• the change in organisations’ roles as part of this process from Keepers to Sharers to Distributors to Facilitators.

You can read the collated notes at http://digiculture.wikispaces.com/ and contribute to the discussion until the 15th October when it will be closed and finalised as a submission to the National Cultural Policy consultation by the 21st October 2011.
Just a reminder that if you haven’t already commented on the National Cultural Policy, submissions for that close on Friday 21 2011 http://culture.arts.gov.au/discussion-paper/developing-a-vision

 Michael Huxley

Only Three Days to GO until IMAGinE night

With only three days to go until the fourth annual IMAGinE awards things are certainly hotting up. The delicacies are ordered, the wine is cooling, everyone has figured out what frock they're wearing, and, most importantly, the nominees are awaiting breathlessly for the judges' results.

As well as the awards night we are also running a day of workshops, presentations and seminars on marketing and tourism at the Australian Museum. Called Talk the Talk, this is an unmissable event if you want to hone that digital strategy or get more punters through the door.

This Friday will certainly be a day and night to remember!

If you wish to register for the IMAGinE awards night or attend Talk the Talk during the day then click here.

But without further ado we know why you're here. And the nominees for Education and Audience Development in alphabetical order are . . .

Albury Art Gallery

Meet the Maker is a monthly program profiling regional established and emerging artists in retail. It offers the public the opportunity to understand the total creative process. The program presents unique opportunity for artists to communicate their craft to the public, to generate income from their art practice and fulfill the public’s curiosity about the professional expertise required in producing handmade objects. This program has initially fostered relationships between regional artists, the community and the Albury Art Gallery. Over the longer term, the retail products will become synonymous with the Gallery shop and support strong relationships between the Gallery and the artist.

Art Gallery of NSW

Open Weekend: art+soul. For the past three years, the AGNSW has hosted an annual Open Weekend that celebrates a particular collection area. The 2010 Open Weekend (held over the 2010 October long weekend) focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and was one of the Gallery's most intensive and rewarding programs. The weekend celebrated art + soul, which is the title of a major exhibition of Indigenous art at the Gallery, the corresponding comprehensive catalogue, and the ground-breaking three-part ABC documentary series written and presented by Hetti Perkins, Senior Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and directed by award winning filmmaker Warwick Thornton. This landmark Open Weekend brought together 60 Indigenous artists, writers, musicians, performers and academics from all around Australia, many who featured in the exhibition and TV series.

Campbelltown Arts Centre

Edge of Elsewhere engages communities across Sydney to develop and produce a series of contemporary art projects in partnership with artists. Developed through an open-ended curatorial structure, the project is conceived not only within the framework of geography—that being greater Sydney, with a particular focus on suburban Western Sydney and Sydney’s Chinatown district—but also through the cultural demographic of these particular places. Edge of Elsewhere has emerged from a strong history of community engaged practice that Campbelltown Arts Centre has developed through continuing to test new models of engagement between contemporary artists and communities. Through this experience and ongoing commitment, Campbelltown Arts Centre has identified that if long-term relationships between communities and artists can be sustained, the significance of the outcomes and level of innovation in the work produced in such contexts extends exponentially.

MINTO:LIVE was a large-scale site-specific performance event presented as part of 2011 Sydney Festival in Minto. The event brought together national and international artists to work in collaboration with the residents of Minto to create eight new performance works that reflected and celebrated the stories and experiences of Minto residents. The event ran for three-days and was presented in the form of a walking tour, with local volunteer ushers who accompanied the audience through public and private housing estates to experience contemporary theatre, dance, song and film.

Chifley Home

The Chifley Home Education Centre has been purposely designed and constructed in the house adjoining Chifley Home which was purchased by Bathurst Regional Council in 2008 with the intention of developing an Education / Interpretative Centre to support the Chifley Home museum and its significant collection. The development of the new Centre has been assisted by grant money from the Commonwealth and NSW State Governments together with continued financial support by Bathurst Regional Council. Its aim was to enhance and engage a broader visitor audience to Chifley Home whilst not comprising the integrity and intactness of the house museum and its original collection.

Goulburn Regional Art Gallery

As part of the exhibition GW Bot: the long paddock A 30 YEAR SURVEY an education kit was designed to enhance student engagement with the exhibition and provide vital ideas for teachers in developing theoretical understanding and practical artmaking experiences. The education kit is a comprehensive resource for preschool, primary school and high school students and contains information about the artist that is informative to the general public or anyone interested in learning more about GW Bot and printmaking.

Grafton Regional Gallery

The Postcard Station project was produced by Grafton Regional Gallery in conjunction with the Friends of Grafton Gallery FOGG to celebrate International Museum Day 2011. The Postcard Station project was a community out reach arts project completed at multiple venues across the Clarence Valley. Each Postcard Station was equipped with blank postcards and a selection of materials to create a unique postcard. Finished postcards were ‘posted’ in the Postcard Station mailbox. At the completion of the project every participant was mailed a randomly selected postcard created by another participant. If you made a postcard you received another in the mail! 

Powerhouse Museum

Reveal is a Museum trail where visitors uncovered small, fictional yet empathetic stories about museum objects by children’s author, Morris Gleitzman. The trail is a series of texts, written in invisible ink in dimly lit places adjacent to a featured object and can only be revealed by a black light torch. Reveal was the basis of a successful holiday program, an associated Sydney Writers Festival Event – Writer Overnighter and now part of the Museum's regular offer. Reveal incorporated hand-made puppets in the vicinity of each object, an illustrated print trail, three writing stations for visitor responses and a journey throughout the museum. As a children’s program it hit the intergenerational sweet spot proving popular with all the family members.

Tocal Homestead

"Tales of Tocal - The Mystery in The Creek" built on the success of "Tales of Tocal" dinner theatre at Tocal Homestead in 2008 and 2009. The true story of the discovery of a headless body in a creek on the Tocal property in November 1874 was retold through audience encounters with characters around the farm. The audience made their way around the buildings and grounds at twilight before enjoying dinner in the re-used hayshed. This project was to build a new audience for this site and in that regard well exceeded expectations.

mail!

IMAGinE Exhibitions Nominations Part Two

The 2011 IMAGinE award nominations have closed and as always we have been inundated with entries from throughout NSW. With less than two weeks to go we continue to highlight the nominees in each category as we warm up for a glamorous night of canapes, wine and awards at the Australian Museum's Terrace Room.

This week we're highlighting the second half of the nominees for Exhibitions and Public Engagement. 

EXHIBITIONS AND ENGAGEMENT: 5-20 STAFF

Campbelltown Arts Centre

Edge of Elsewhere is a major contemporary arts project that commissions artists from across Australia, Asia and the Pacific region to produce new works in partnerships with communities across Sydney. The Project is committed to the development of long-term relationships between the community and artists, sustaining these relationships for the duration of the project and beyond.

The River Project was a major contemporary arts project held at Campbelltown Arts Centre and at sites along the Upper Georges River, Sydney, Australia from 21 August – 31 October 2010. The River Project brought together Australian and international artists to explore the contemporary relationship of cultures to, and the issues facing, river systems in Asia and the Pacific. The project comprised an exhibition, publication, performance and community engaged projects, education and public programs.

Casula Powerhouse

Body Pacifica was successful in cementing the Casula Powerhouse Art Centres’ commitment to the Pacific Communities of Western Sydney and the broader community whilst generating partnerships across the creative and cultural sector. Body Pacifica was a celebration of contemporary and traditional pacific island cultures and also featured seven exhibitions in collaboration with the Australian Museum and the National Rugby League.

Mosman Art Gallery & Community Centre

Australian Accent: The designs of Annan Fabrics and Vande Pottery in the ‘40s & ‘50s revealed a part of Mosman's heritage which linked closely with the development of Australian design history and a growing sense of a modern national identity. This exhibition strengthened relationships between the Mosman Art Gallery and the museum and industry design sector and broke new ground in Gallery programming. This exhibition was the first time that Mosman Art Gallery (in collaboration with Mosman Library) had initiated a design based exhibition.

Newcastle Regional Art Gallery

Curious Colony, a twenty first century Wunderkammer was an exhibition held at Newcastle Region Art Gallery (NRAG) in 2010 as part of the 200th anniversary of Lachlan Macquarie’s swearing-in as Governor of New South Wales which was commemorated with a statewide celebration program. The selection of exhibition items included colonial works of art and objects referencing the era as well as the commission of a contemporary Wunderkammer reflecting on the Macquarie Collectors’ Chest, created in Newcastle, New South Wales around 1818 for Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and currently held in the NSW State Library

Sydney Jewish Museum

Serving Australia: Jewish Involvement in Australian Military History commemorates the wars in which Australia has participated, recognising the roles played by Jews serving in Australia’s defence forces and those supporting the Australian war efforts from home. The exhibition draws upon a large collection of diverse objects donated by the community. Each item tells a story of service, commitment and courage representative of the significant contributions made by Jews to the Australian Military.

Sydney University Museums (University Art Gallery)

The Japan in Sydney project included a curated exhibition, a bilingual catalogue (hard-copy and online pdf) and an extensive public and education program. The exhibition featured the University's collection of Japanese pre-World War II modernist prints, and a selection of works by prominent European and Australian modernist artists, sourced from public and private collections. The fully-illustrated, bilingual catalogue presented concentrated research by Australian and Japanese art historians and scholars, on European, Australian and Japanese modernism in prints

Tweed River Art Gallery

Surface Tension: the art of Euan Macleod 1991 - 2009 was initiated and developed by Tweed River Art Gallery and curated by Gavin Wilson. It is the first major touring exhibition of work by an artist considered to be one the finest painters of his generation. This survey exhibition of 47 works traces Macleod's oeuvre from both the Australian bush and his homeland of the South Island of New Zealand. Surface Tension presents major works drawn from public and private collections, the paintings showcasing the best of Macleod's practice

EXHIBITIONS AND ENGAGEMENT: 21+ STAFF

Australian Museum

Rituals of Seduction: Birds of Paradise is a traveling exhibition and invites the visitor to consider - are we more like birds than we think? This exhibition looks at how both birds and people engage in a variety of decoration, display and dance to draw attention to themselves (for the birds this is usually part of courtship rituals) - and at the close relationship between birds of paradise and people. It features magnificent still photography, film footage and mounted specimens showing the species’ range of eccentric attributes. Also on display are items from the Museum’s anthropology collection including wigs made from human hair and several magnificent feathered headdress.

Australian National Maritime Museum

On their own – Britain’s child migrants' is a traveling and online exhibition that traces the history of child migration schemes from Britain to Australia and Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. This significant – and previously hidden – part of Australia’s history has not been explored in a major exhibition before. The story of British child migration is placed within the global thematic framework of immigration and child welfare policy. The personal experiences of child migrants are balanced alongside material illustrating the schemes, their motivations and their often tragic impact. 

MCA

The Begin-Again was a two-night art walk through Hurstville CBD. The event, created by Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, was commissioned by Hurstville City Council in collaboration with C3West. Mesiti created four site-specific videos and one performance that directly involved more than 90 local residents as performers in the story of their area. Each one of these works responded to community concerns such as the increase in high-rise development, traffic congestion and growing population, and how they affect Hurstville’s sense of connectedness.

The Museum of Australia Democracy

The Museum of Australia Democracy commissioned an artwork, in partnership with the Canberra Glassworks, to reflect the celebrations of Federation in 1901. Our aim was to create a work that embodied Australian communities’ celebrations of Federation, both in the artwork itself and, through community engagement, in the process of its creation. The resulting artwork, The Illuminations by Wendy Fairclough, is a collection of 20 blown glass vessels which echo contemporary domestic glassware, with a panorama of night-time celebrations sandblasted onto them. The panorama was inspired by research and hand-coloured photographs in an album in the museum’s collection

State Library of NSW

In 2010 New South Wales celebrated the bicentenary of the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie. The Governor: Lachlan Macquarie 1810 to 1821 project included a major exhibition with over 100 original items, presented at the Library in Macquarie Street; a touring exhibition with 40 original items hosted by regional galleries and museums; a display presented in western Sydney public libraries; public events held in 10 regional public libraries, presented by specialist Library staff and a display at NSW Parliament House highlighting the state-wide bicentennial celebrations.