Newcastle Museum set to open

The new Newcastle Museum will have its official opening this Thursday, 2 August. As a thank you to all those who've been part of this fantastic new development, the Museum held a "soft opening" yesterday evening. What a wonderful event! With a live broadcast from ABC radio Newcastle, the new museum was filled with people of all ages from new born babies to great grandparents. With smiles all round, the building was buzzing with happy laughter, no doubt helped along by generous glasses of bubbly and fizzy drinks for the kids.

The Museum is conveniently located adjacent to the Civic train station in the Honeysuckle precinct in a wonderfully gritty industrial building. The address (corner of Merewether St and Workshop Way) gives some hint to the former use of the building with references to its heritage continuing throughout the site. It's truly wonderful to feel the sense of the building's industrial past oozing through the edges of the very contemporary exhibition spaces. The exhibitions have been lightly placed over the industrial infrastructure and the staff and designers have clearly put a lot of thought into meshing the original use of the building with its new life as a 21st century museums.

The exhibition areas are divided into three main zones. The history of BHP in Newcastle is explored through an engaging exhibition that includes a light and sound performance involving an enormous smelting crucible and a great deal of smoke and noise! The exhibitions draw on a range of materials including life sized photographs of the smelting works by the likes of Max Dupain and Harold Cazneux, reconstructions of work spaces such as a chemistry lab and men's wash room and the personal belongings of people who worked with BHP.

Newcastle's story is shown through the main gallery which includes an audiovisual wall with faces from the Newcastle community including panels that change every few minutes. Many of the images have been given by local people and it is the museum's intention to continue to add to the wall. The more environmentally sensitive objects are displayed within two rooms created within the larger industrial space. These rooms are more intimate than the main exhibition areas providing visitors with a change of pace. Themes such as immigration, Newcastle's role during times of war and the local surfing culture are included.

One of the great delights of the Newcastle Museum is the SuperNova exhibition. Part of the original Newcastle Museum, SuperNova is an interactive science centre providing children and adults alike with a range of hands on science experiences. A giant blue globe of the world greats visitors as they enter the space. A series of science work stations are scattered throughout the space. Each station sits on a colourfully lit up base and explores a different scientific issue. A softplay area for toddlers is also located within this space.

Museums & Galleries NSW is holding an event at the Newcastle Museum on Tuesday 30 August to give participants an opportunity to hear more about what's involved in developing this and other new cultural facilities, for more information go to Bricks and Mortar

To learn more about the Newcastle Museum go to the Newcastle City Council website or visit the Newcastle Museum facebook page

You can also hear Acting Deputy Director Julie Baird being interviewed on ABC radio Newcastle

Broken Hill

Michael Rolfe visits the Daydream Mine

On a recent trip to Broken Hill and Wilcannia it was heartening to witness first hand the collegiate and supportive relationships that exist between Broken Hill Council museum and gallery staff, Broken Hill Historical Society volunteers and West Darling Arts.

As Gallery Director, Bruce Tindale leads a committed team that has, in recent years, overseen the redevelopment of the gallery within the impressive Sully’s Emporium precinct. That work continues apace, with construction of a new collection store now well underway. When completed, it will enable the gallery’s sizeable and historic collection to be housed in the one place. With easier access, environmental controls and improved security, this project will ensure that the gallery’s collection continues to grow its profile within the dynamic history of public collections in NSW. Equally, Angela Bailey, manager of the Albert Kersten Mining & Mineral Museum runs an impressive museum dedicated to the mining history of one of NSW’s most iconic destinations.

I was also fortunate to meet several members of the Broken Hill Historical Society and to visit The Silverton Gaol Museum, Broken Hill Synagogue and the Railway, Mineral and Train Museum. In particular I want to acknowledge the work undertaken by the society in bringing to life stories associated with the Synagogue and Railway Museum. Margaret Price (a society committee member) showed great delight in telling me about the commitment and work undertaken at the Synagogue and my meeting with Clr Christine Adams and Society Chair, Shorty Reville, at the Railway Museum was loaded with my own memories of train travel and of the significant capacity and great energy volunteers bring to the museum and gallery world.

In a meeting with Broken Hill Council’s General Manager, Frank Zaknich, it was clear that council is focused on the need to maintain support for the town’s symbolic arts and cultural infrastructure. Funding of course remains an issue and the sustainability of programs is demanding that an entrepreneurial approach be pursued. This is clearly evidenced through council’s involvement in the Broken Hill Film Studio development, which will transform Central Power Station complex into state of the art film studios.

I accompanied West Darling Arts RADO, James Giddey, on a trip to Wilcannia where he has been actively involved in plans to build a community focused arts/cultural centre. We met with a range of people including local artists Eddie Harris, Waddy Harris & Kevin Cattermole along with Wilcannia Central School Principal, Michelle Nicholson. While plans for the centre are still being developed the school is actively involved in supporting efforts to generate art making and skill development opportunities for artists from throughout the community. The Darling River was roaring through town, at maybe just a metre below the bridge. In fact there was so much water, bird life and green landscape throughout my visit that one can only believe that such positive forces act as a metaphor for what was also a dynamic arts and cultural landscape.

Glasgow Museums

Earlier this week I caught the train over to Glasgow and catch up with a few museums. To an outsider, the Scottish train system appears far more efficient than what we experience in Australia. Having a much more concentrated population probably helps with this. Edinburgh and Glasgow are only about an hour apart by train and there’s a train between the two departing every 15 minutes, stopping at several key towns in between.

I was met at Glasgow Central station by Chris Jamieson from Glasgow Museums who took me out to Nitshill where Glasgow Resource Centre is located. Although a much larger complex, it reminded me very much of Mitchell in Canberra, where the National Museum, Australian War Memorial and National Archives all have their main stores. This was particularly the case when the train back to town was delayed by 40 minutes due to weather and I was standing there with a number of staff from the Museum huddling together in an attempt to stay warm!

Glasgow Museums are part of Glasgow Life, a Trust set up to manage the recreational facilities of Glasgow Council. The Glasgow Local government area covers 175 km2 and 580,000 people (1.2 million in the greater Glasgow urban area). Glasgow Museums include 8 museums, the resource centre and the open museum program. The Glasgow Museums Resource Centre was built in two stages, the first housing much of the art collections from Kelvingrove and the second taking an incredibly diverse collection from the storage area of the Transport museums (currently being redeveloped at the Riverside Museum). As well as transport and industrial material, the collection includes design, ethnographic, natural science, archaeological, social history and ancient history materials. It’s estimated that there are something close to 1 million objects in the collection and approximately 400 staff across all the Glasgow Museums sites. The storage facility id divided into a series of pods each one housing collections of like materials. The pods are housed within an overall warehouse as buildings within buildings. This system provides an additional buffer between the collection and the outside environment, somewhat like the air pocket within double glazed windows.

The Resource Centre is open for tours which are run regularly either as general interest (highlights) or focused on a particular theme. The curators within Glasgow Museums are being encouraged to develop tours based on topics of interest to them. I was told about one recent tour focused on Shakespeare which highlighted paintings taken from Shakespearean plays, collection items from the Elizabethan era (of Shakespeare's time) and material related to the topics of the plays currently on the school curriculum. Another tour focuses on taxidermy and gives visitors the chance to see the taxidermy areas of the collection. Tours for preschoolers have been developed with one tour that focused on the beach including children lying on beach towels in the store imagining they were at the beach.As well as housing Glasgow Museums collections, the facility provides office facilities for many of the Glasgow Museums staff, conservation labs, exhibition design and production workshops and a learning area.

The Resource Centre is also the home base for the Glasgow Open Museum, a project led by Chris Jamieson. The project aims to bring the museum out to people in Glasgow and uses the collection as a focus. Over a 20 year period the Glasgow Open Museum has worked with people in various parts of Glasgow including setting up within a flat in a tall Housing Commission style block of flats. This provided an opportunity to work with migrant women on a project that started by taking them to look at the Glasgow Collections and selecting objects of interest to them to develop their own art work. The Open Museum collaborates with other groups throughout Glasgow including a foundation that works with refugees who have been victims of torture, a Pakistani community centre providing day services for elderly people, the storytelling networks, and a youth group in a housing trust area.

The Glasgow Open Museum provides small travelling exhibitions to libraries, health centres and shopping centres and has permanent displays in a children's centre, a mosque, and two mini community museums. They also have a loan service where groups can borrow resources including free standing exhibitions, handling kits, Reminiscence kits and tabletop displays.

The Gardener's Ark is the outcome of a two year project with a residential group from Leverndale Hospital and is an active rehabilitation project. The Open Museum worked with hospital residents, staff and community workers to develop independent living skills with a group of adult learners. The group were interested in gardening and visited to museum to look at artworks including still life paintings. They then created their own still life settings using vegetables they had grown and objects from the collection which were then photographed by the museum photographer who assisted with settings and lighting. The learners were then interested in a painting of a herring boat from the collection, which led to the construction of a boat filled with pots of flowers. The boat has been on display at different sites around Glasgow including Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, the People's Palace Winter Gardens and the Hidden Gardens at Tramways. It is to have a permanent home in the grounds of Leverndale Hospital from this November.

Summerlee, Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Last week I met with Clare Weir and Lu McNair from Summerlee, Museum of Scottish Industrial Life. Summerlee is an industrial museum focusing on coal mining and ironworks based in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Museum is another recognised collection and highlights the success of the recognition scheme in supporting the further development of collections across Scotland.

Summerlee opened as an ironworks and associated mine in 1836. Whilst the furnaces of the ironworks ceased operation in the 1920s, the site continued as an industrial operation until the 1980s at which time it was operating as the Hydrocon Crane company. The initial museum opened on the site in 1987 as a Trust or volunteer managed operation. The museum is located on a 22 acre site with a heritage tram delivering people around the site.

Today the site is operated by North Lanarkshire council and has been recently redeveloped following an investment of GBP 10 from a range of sources including the Heritage Lottery Fund, Museums Galleries Scotland, the European Regional Development Fund, North Lanarkshire Council, charitable Trusts and individuals. The site provides wonderful opportunities for engagement through interactives such as the mock up blast furnace that leads to a pig iron casting.

There has been a conscious effort to incorporate social history onto the site alongside the large technological pieces. This was reinforced by the local community who were closely involved in the redevelopment. Older people within the community wanted to be able to take grandchildren and show them something of the way they lived, hence the addition of areas focusing on dances, banners from marches and the local movie theatre.

The museum also contains a series of row houses set up to reflect changing lifestyles of the area. The first three houses depict the nineteenth and early twentieth century, where families rented one roomed attached homes in rows. The 1940s and 1960s homes showed a continued accumulation of belongings and the extension of the homes into the backyard and roof. The museum has also developed backyards for some of the cottages, showing the changing use of gardens from a source of food to a place of leisure, over time.

With the changing economic climate, the museum is looking at how they will operate in the future. They may have less funds to develop new exhibitions but are hoping that this will provide more time for continued involvement of the community in the development of their exhibitions. They are exploring ways of expanding opportunities for volunteers, including guiding through the museum. There has been a program of involving long term unemployed people in placements at the museum which may also expand over time, perhaps leading to traineeships or apprenticeships.

Recognised collections and the Perth Museum and Art Gallery

Museums Galleries Scotland manage a program that identifies and recognises collections of national significance to the people of Scotland that are held outside the national museums and galleries of Scotland. The Recognition process is extremely thorough and involves the organisation that owns the collection submitting a thorough report outlining not only why it is of national significance but why the theme of the collection is of importance to the people of Scotland. This is then assessed by experts and MGS staff and if it is felt to be an eligible collection it is submitted to an assessment panel who will then make the final decision.

To date there are 37 Recognised collections across Scotland ranging from archaeological material, through mining to the national football collection. Once a collection is recognised the organisation that owns it is able to apply for special funding to assist with the care, display and promotion of the collection.

One such collection is held by the Perth Museums and Art Gallery, located about an hour by train from Edinburgh. Perth is a beautiful town and I visited on a fairly rainy day- nothing like Perth in Western Australia. The museum is located in a purpose built 1930s building but the collection goes back to 1786 with the establishment of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth, followed by the Perthshire Society of Natural Science in 1867. The collection has an incredibly broad scope and includes an enormous oil painting and watercolour collection, decorative arts (with a focus on local glassmakers and silversmiths), ethnography (including Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand Maori material from the early nineteenth century), a strong costume collection, natural science specimens (including some fairly recent road kills) and social history.

In the 1993 Perth suffered a major flood which included much of the collection area (493,000 gallons of water entered the building). When I was walking by the river the wall reminded me a little of the walls that have been installed around Murwillumbah for similar reasons. Within the museum, there was much work done in the collection areas to improve storage and reduce the number of opportunities for water to enter the building (including special seals on doorways including the lift).

As the space in the building is quite tight, the museum and gallery have been given funds through the recognition scheme to install numerous compactus units to increase the amount of collection they are able to store on site.

A large collection of works by Scottish colourist artist John Duncan Fergusson was acquired by the museum and gallery in 1990. An old water tower was refurbished to house the collection and opened in 1993 as the Fergusson Gallery. In 2010 a large collection of work by his partner, the dancer and choreographer Margaret Morris was donated to the gallery. Her collection includes paintings, costume and set designs, costume and an extensive photographic collection. Some of this was on display when I visited as it's the 100th anniversary of the Margaret Morris dance movement.

During my visit we discussed the value of being a recognised collection to the museum and gallery. It was felt that this status was really helpful not only by providing access to specific funding but because it helped the museum and gallery to highlight the significance of the collection to the council. A civic reception was held when the museum and gallery received Recognition and this status is highlighted on the museum and gallery's website.