M&G NSW's journey to Tamworth

Michael Rolfe, CEO and the M&G NSW Board with volunteers from the Tamworth Powerstation Museum and staff from Tamworth Regional Art Gallery outside the Powerstation Museum.

Recently, the M&G NSW Board met in Tamworth and also visited Armidale and Uralla, as part of a packed two day visit and regional tour designed to familiarise members with a selection of galleries, museums and Aboriginal cultural centres within the region. Following the meeting, which was held at Tamworth Regional Gallery, the board visited Tamworth’s Powerstation Museum, the Historical Society’s Calala Cottage and well-known Country Music Hall of Fame. The Powerstation Museum celebrates all things electric, transforming an astounding historical fact (that Tamworth was the first city in the southern hemisphere to install electric street lighting) into a wonderful story about the impact, design and use of power generation in the region. Ron Greer and his associate volunteers have done a remarkable job carefully restoring and designing a set of displays of huge interest for visitors and residents alike.

Similarly, Calala Cottage captures the essence of early Tamworth life around the time of white settlement. The Historical Society, under President John Vickery, patiently volunteers time and resources to keep Tamworth stories alive. Their work, reflected in similar efforts all around NSW, is to be applauded for its commitment and contribution to the region. Similarly the Country Music Hall of Fame relies on the energy and commitment of volunteers to capture the history and storytelling that abounds in the town’s now world famous Country Music Festival.

Sandra McMahon, Director of the Tamworth Regional Gallery, helped organise a dinner to complete a busy first day. Board members were able to mingle with a range of local government reps (staff and councilors), local arts professionals and invited special guests. It was a great night and a chance for board chair, Professor Colin Rhodes, to acknowledge the commitment from a community that has produced a strong arts and cultural legacy in regional NSW.

The following day the board traveled to Armidale, visiting the Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place (during which they participated in a community charged celebration as part of Reconciliation Week) and then on to the New England Regional Art Museum for a tour of the collection and lunch with Director, Caroline Downer (and what a lunch it was)!

Kent Mayo welcomed us to the ‘must see’ McCrossin’s Mill in Uralla that features engaging displays in a beautifully restored three story granite and brick flour mill. Kent introduced the board to the planned developments of McCrossin’s Mill before returning to Tamworth and flights home.

Michael Rolfe, M&G NSW CEO.

Rapping at Walla Mulla

Museums & Galleries NSW continues its Reconciliation Action Plan journey and is on track to deliver its first ever RAP at the end of this month.

Our second workshop built on the importance of place and continuity of existence of people and culture in the local area of Woolloomooloo, where M&G NSW’s office is located. While our first workshop focused on the local people and culture pre-European contact, this time we looked at some aspects of contemporary Aboriginal life.

It was only a five minute walk from our office to those of the Walla Mulla Family and Community Support Centre around the corner in McElhone Street. Walla Mulla is a quiet achiever you may not have heard of before. The not-for-profit organisation has been around for many years offering counseling, family support, information, referral and advocacy on a range of issues including health, housing, education & training, employment and legal. It is there for the whole community but its work with the Aboriginal community and particularly court support and legal advocacy has drawn requests for the team’s help from across greater Sydney.

Walla Mulla means place of plenty in the local Gadigal language. Even so, we made sure we brought plenty of chicken, salad and bread with us to share with the Aunties. Food is important in so many cultures and for the mob even lunch becomes a relaxed celebration of stories, laughter and connection. The simple lunch was also our offering for the stories and knowledge the Aunties shared with us.

Everyone loved the Aunties for their strength and good humour as they shared stories of their lives and their current work at Walla Mulla. Although they receive some funding from the Department of Community Services, they provide critical Aboriginal perspectives at the grassroots case management level and go to great lengths particularly to try to keep children with their family wherever possible. Some of their stories made for difficult listening but are the reality of many Aboriginal families today, long after the assimilation and stolen generations policies have been abandoned and the impact of those policies echoes through subsequent generations.

After lunch we stayed on at Walla Mulla to work in teams on our RAP plan. The Reconciliation Australia website is fantastic with plenty of examples of successful RAPs, a toolkit with a RAP template and further advice only a phone call away. Working through the template we looked at what work we already embraced such as Welcome to Country at M&G NSW events and what more we could do in the three key areas Reconciliation Australia recommends: relationships, respect and opportunities. Happily everyone agreed we should engage more with the local community through places such as Walla Mulla and events such as the Woolloomooloo annual NAIDOC Week celebration and encouraging our arts neighbours at the Gunnery to join us. RAPs are very practical so we have committed, as one example, to some annual fundraising for the local community through Walla Mulla. Standby for news about the raffle!

Steve Miller, M&G NSW's Aboriginal Sector Programs Manager.

Survivor at Gosford Regional Gallery

Survivor: Dadang Christanto is a major art project by contemporary Indonesian-Australian artist Dadang Christanto. Initially developed in 2008 as a live protest against an environmental disaster that occurred in East Java which saw hot volcanic mud wipe out eleven villages and destroy many lives, Survivor has since transgressed beyond cultural borders, evolving into a universal, multi-faceted reflection upon human survival and what it means to endure tragic historical events, loss and death.

On April 1 Gosford Regional Gallery staged a two hour performance. Local volunteers silently occupied the gallery space in silent vigil, symbolically covered in mud and holding a photographic portraits of faces lost in the disaster.

Museums & Galleries NSW captured the whole day on video; interviewing artist Dadang Christanto, Aaron Seeto from 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sarah Samild from Gosford Regional Gallery and various participants in this extraordinary event. 






Regional gallery tour

Gosford Regional Gallery 

31 March - 20 May 2012

Lismore Regional Gallery 

20 July - 25 August 2012

The Glasshouse Regional Art Gallery
15 October - 2 December 2012

Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
1 April 2013 - 31 May 2013

Devonport Regional Gallery
1 June - 31 July 2013

Pinnacles Gallery
23 November - 15 December 2013

Presented by Kultour in partnership with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and toured by Museums & Galleries NSW. This exhibition is supported by the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments.

Report from Museums and the Web 2012

Last week, I returned home from attending Museums and the Web 2012 (MW2012) in San Diego CA – my eyes tired from a lack of sleep, and my mind abuzz with new ideas, new perspectives, and rich discussions with museum professionals from around the world.

Although the conference addressed plenty of technological questions, with workshops and sessions on social media strategy, web metrics, Augmented Reality for mobile devices, and the importance of analytics for continuous evaluation (see the Let’s Get Real report from Culture24), the discussions that dominated the event were less about technology, and more about what and how the museum should be in the digital age.

The name of Rob Stein’s excellent paper - Blow Up Your Digital Strategy: Changing the Conversation about Museums and Technology - captured this sentiment best. In a session on digital strategies, Stein implored all those in the room to “Be museum experts first, and technology experts second.” If the conversations at the conference were anything to go by, that is precisely what those at MW2012 were interested in doing, with the emergent issues including engagement and interpretation, leadership and institutional change and much more. Technology featured, but as a means and not an end.

A wonderful report from Rainer Mack, Manager of Education at the J. Paul Getty Museum, details this. He writes:

“Issues of interpretation and experience, visitor engagement, the broader social role of museums, and other topics close to the heart of museum educators were explored in ways wonderfully refreshing, vital, and new. What a delight! And what a conundrum. Why here? Maybe it's just that the field of museum digital media (is that a field?) attracts really bright and creative people. Maybe, too, it's that the pace of change in digital media means that you are constantly needing to think and rethink the why's and wherefore's of what you do. As new technologies bring new opportunities, so do they put pressure on taken-for-granted values, assumed constraints, and existing theoretical paradigms. If your tools are constantly evolving, your thinking about how best to use those tools - your meta-thinking - must constantly evolve as well. For digital media specialists, that means you are deeply involved with questions that are not necessarily digital at all, but common to all of us interested in how museums work for visitors (whatever that work, and wherever it "takes place")…

… If digital media started as a tech-y outpost in the corner of the museum, it's now - to judge from MW2012 - a whole lot more… If you all are taking up "my" issues in such novel and forward-looking ways, if indeed you are interrogating "my" taken-for-granteds in ways that are critical and constructive, then I'd better start paying attention. In short (and on the soap box), it made me feel that museum education needs to embrace digital media and the opportunities it presents for extending and enriching the work we do; and that it needs to embrace, in earnest, the ways in which digital media challenges us to think differently. We need to be part of your conversation.”

A session on Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art gained attention for the museum’s approach to audience engagement. As Robin Dowden from the Walker Art Centre wrote:

The museum’s unique take on audience engagement—including claims to remove the most popular work as evidenced in ‘O’ stats and restricting online collection access to visitors who have actually experienced the artwork—suggest this is indeed a museum visitors are unlikely to forget.

Meanwhile, the Walker Art Centre’s own approach to engagement online drew acclaim, with their new website winning both the Innovative/Experimental and Overall Best of the Web categories. The site draws news and content from sites external to the museum, taking a multifaceted publishing approach and acting as a hub for arts and cultural conversations. As popular museum Tweeter and blogger Museum Nerd put it on Artlog.

They’re not just positioning themselves as an arbiter of taste (the connoisseurship thing has long been in every art museum’s bailiwick): the Walker is also placing themselves at the center of the conversation that their mission is all about.

This approach to the museum website is a fresh attempt to make sense of the role and purpose of museum websites in the current technological landscape.

Similarly, Koven Smith, Director of Technology at the Denver Art Museum, ran an ‘unconference’ session that tried to deconstruct current thinking about online museum collections. His write up of the session included the fact that “the after-market for collections data may be the most important one”, that online collections should be attenuated to their audiences, and that online collection records should be actionable (shareable, comment-able).

The possibilities for the ‘after-market’ use of collections data was demonstrated in the MW “ hackathon”, a technology “build” event in which eager nerds mashed up collection data from cultural collections like the Powerhouse and Brooklyn museums with non-museum data to produce two games and a basic art-based music player.

The closing plenary of the conference – Epic Fail – was a closed-door session, with wi-fi turned off, and no live blogging or Tweeting allowed. This session explored a number of failures that can occur in museum technology projects, including poor organizational fit, feature creep, tech in search of a problem, no user research, no local context, no backup plan, and not knowing when to say goodbye. The session, which encouraged participants to “fail forward” and learn from their failures, was a cathartic way to finish the conference.

Although MW2012 is over, the conversations that started there are not. Read or participate in more reports and blog posts, or join the conversation on Twitter #MW2012.


Suse Cairns is a PhD Candidate at The University of Newcastle. She has been working in museums and galleries since 2008, and writes the museumgeek blog on ideas around museums and technology.

What is the Museum Standards Program

In December 2011, eleven museums from the East Coast region completed the Museum Standards Program. To celebrate their (and past participants) achievements Museums & Galleries NSW has put  together a video that highlights the strengths, opportunities, and incredible experiences for museums who have chosen to embark on the Program.

Access to Funding speakers' presentations

Successfully obtaining funds for museums, galleries and community arts organisations requires knowledge and creativity. On Friday 16 March, Museums & Galleries NSW, together with South East Arts, presented Show me the Money! Access to Funding, an invaluable workshop which delivered the essential skills and specialist knowledge to make accessing funds a reality.

Access to Funding was a full day workshop with a range of key arts funding bodies offering valuable insight into each of their funding programs. below are some of the Speakers including representatives from Regional Arts NSW, Community Heritage and the Powerhouse Museum.

Andrew Gray, Regional Arts Officer, South East Arts

Andrew Gray is the Regional Arts Development Officer for South East Arts. Prior to this, Andrew worked in museum education and public programs for The Australia War Memorial, Museum of Australian Democracy and The National Film and Sound Archive. In 2011 South East Arts supported the M&GNSW Museum Standards to run in the region and this year is supporting the Museum Advisors Program.

 

Dianne Dahlitz, Coordinator, Community Heritage Grants

Dianne has worked in the National Library of Australia for 20 years, and has experienced many different work areas. Most recently she has worked in the Oral History and Folklore area, the Preservation Services section and now in the Community Heritage Grants office. She enjoys this position as it allows her to liaise with external community groups and to provide them with advice about accessing funding to assist with their many and varied collections. 

 

Einar Docker, Assistant Curator, Regional Services, Powerhouse Museum

Einar has been at the Powerhouse Museum for 12 years working mainly in Collection Management within the Registration department in a variety of capacities, which includes in that period, over 90 international and local exhibitions. Last year he joined with the Regional Services division and co-ordinates the annual Regional Services internship program, the Movable Heritage Fellowship, research, contributor and technical support for the Australian Dress Register, and curating the latest travelling exhibition for regional events in NSW which will next show at the Hunter Valley Steamfest, Maitland, in April.

 

2012 Archibald Prize winner announced!

Announcement of the 2012 Archibald Prize winner
Courtesy Lillian Lim

Winner of the Archibald Prize 2012
Tim Storrier The historic wayfarer (after Bosch)
Courtesy Art Gallery of NSW

 The 2012 Archibald Prize winner was announced at midday today at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This year, the 91st anniversary of arguably Australia’s most popular award saw 389 entries and increased prize money from $50,000 to $75,000. The room was filled artists, subjects, friends and family members, all gathered with baited breath to see who would be the lucky one of the 41 finalists to enter the prestigious Archibald Prize hall of fame alongside winning names such as William Dobell, Margaret Olley, John Olsen and last year’s Ben Quilty. After much anticipation, Tim Storrier was announced as the winner for his self-portrait painting, The histrionic wayfarer (after Bosch). 

Congratulations to the artist who graciously accepted the award and even brought his pet dog, Smudge, up to the stage (you can find Smudge featured in the painting). 

Winner of the Packing Room Prize 2012
Raelene Sharp, A Strength of Character
Courtesy Art Gallery of NSW

The Packing Room Prize was awarded to Raelene Sharp for her portrait of actor John Wood, and Jenny Sages' painting, After Jack, was highly commended by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 

The 2012 Archibald Prize will be showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 3 June 2012. Museums & Galleries NSW will be touring the exhibition to 6 regional galleries across NSW: 

Newcastle Art Gallery
14 July 2012 - 26 August 2012

Cowra Regional Art Gallery

1 September 2012 - 14 October 2012

Western Plains Cultural Centre

20 October 2012 - 2 December 2012

Grafton Regional Gallery

7 December 2012 - 20 January 2013

Hawkesbury Regional Gallery

25 January 2013 - 10 March 2013

New England Regional Art Museum

15 March 2013 - 28 April 2013

For more information about the exhibition, please visit the AGNSW website: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2012/

For more information about the 2012 Archibald Prize regional tour, please visit our website: http://mgnsw.org.au/exhibit/archibald_prize_2012/

Story by Lillian Lim, M&G NSW's Gallery Programs and Touring Exhibition Coordinator.