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Country: Disclosing Through Curatorship the Cultural and Economic Development Potential of the Australian Regional Art Museum

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Country: Disclosing Through Curatorship the Cultural and Economic Development Potential of the Australian Regional Art Museum Cultivating the [New] Country: Disclosing Through Curatorship the Cultural and Economic Development Potential of the Australian Regional Art Museum Author Douglas, Craig Cameron Published 2005 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School Queensland College of Art DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2966 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/365856 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Thesis title: CULTIVATING THE [NEW] COUNTRY: DISCLOSING THROUGH CURATORSHIP THE CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN REGIONAL ART MUSEUM. Craig Cameron Douglas MA (Arts Admin) City University London, BA University of Queensland, Grad Dip (Special Ed) Griffith University Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 11 March 2005 1 SYNOPSIS This study utilising a “theory into practice” methodology, interrogates the phenomena of the Australian Regional Art Museum and establishes that curatorship, as a defined visual art practice can sustain the art museum as a viable cultural institution in contemporary regional Australia. It employs a case study of a new model art museum and the curation of selected collections-based exhibitions. 2 THESIS CONSTRUCTION: This doctoral study is comprised of five (5) interrelated parts and should be read in the following sequence: Part 1: The written thesis Part 2: The DVD / CD (Chapter 7, the final chapter of the thesis) that contains: • User instructions and Introduction • A four- minute audiovisual presentation on curatorship titled: The Art of Exhibiting Ideas. • A 35- minute audiovisual documentary exploring the exhibition Pride of Place: the CS Energy Gift & City of Ipswich Collection This exhibition was shown at Global Arts Link Ipswich from 23 July - 29 August 1999. This exhibition was curated by Craig C Douglas. • A 35- minute audiovisual documentary exploring the exhibition Engage - Collected Works: City of Ipswich & the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. This exhibition was show at Global Arts Link Ipswich from 28 November 2000 - 4 February 2001. This exhibition was curated by Craig C. Douglas • Images – folders of images that are of general support to the thesis Part 3: A catalogue that supported the exhibition - Pride of Place: The CS Energy Gift & City of Ipswich Collection, Global Arts Link Ipswich 23 July -29 August 1999. Part 4: A booklet entitled: Global Arts Link Ipswich: a new model visual arts museum for Australia. This booklet was published in 1998 as both a public relations document and vision statement for the forthcoming new public art museum Global Arts Link Ipswich that was launched on May 15, 1999. 3 Part 5: A 140 page publication entitled: Exploring Culture & Community for the 21st Century: Global Arts Link Ipswich - a new model for public art museums. This publication is not a catalogue but an anthology of over forty commissioned original essays by a lively mix of local, national and international artist, writers, community members, historians and scholars. Visually complementing, these essays are supported by more than 170 colour reproductions of artwork chosen from Global Arts Link’s inaugural exhibition People, Places, Pastimes: Challenging Perspectives of Ipswich, and selected works from the City of Ipswich and other collections. This publication was project managed by Craig Douglas. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many supportive colleagues, friends and family, have made the research and development of the thesis possible. I acknowledge their contribution and thank them wholeheartedly for their generosity and nurture. Their names are as follows: Queensland College of Art and Griffith University Staff Professor Mostyn Bramely-Moore, Associate Professor Anna Haebich, Dr Robyn Trotter, Dr Ian Woodward, Dr Prudence Ahrens, Dr Glenda Carriere, Dr Maree Cunnington, Sue Jarvis, Marianne Mitchell, Art Theory colleagues and Administration staff. Global Arts Link (1999- 2002), Ipswich City Council staff Louise Denoon (Foundation Director), Greg Roberts (Foundation Director- Ipswich Arts Foundation) Sharon Ford, Tim Lynch and GAL staff. Family, friends and colleagues Mary Douglas, Victoria Hayes (deceased), Currie, Anna Grega, Julie Foster Burley, Alice-Ann Boylan, Beverly Parrish, Robert Vallis, Harry’s Collar – Alex Shaw and Simon Turner, Museum and Gallery Services Queensland, Bendigo Art Gallery and staff of selected regional galleries throughout Australia. Craig Douglas 11 March 2005 5 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP This work has never been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university and to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Similarly, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my role in collaborative or jointly authored publications submitted here has been fully and accurately described. Craig Douglas 11 March 2005 6 ABBREVIATIONS GAL Global Arts Link Ipswich Pride of Place Pride of Place: CS Energy Gift & City of Ipswich Collection Engage Engage: Collected works – City of Ipswich & Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Exploring Culture & Community Exploring Culture & Community for the 21st Century: Global Arts Link Ipswich – A New Model for Public Art Museums 7 THESIS CONTENTS SYNOPSIS page 2 THESIS CONSTRUCTION page 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS page 5 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP page 6 ABBREVIATIONS page 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS page 8 APPENDIX page 9 CHAPTERS Introduction page 10 Chapter 1: page 26 Beginnings: A Selective History of the Modern Art Museum Chapter 2: page 44 The Emergence of the Australian Regional Public Art Gallery Chapter 3: pages 76 Cultivating the Country: Regionalism and the Public Art Gallery. Living with the Arts in Regional Australia Chapter 4: page 108 Framing the Regional Public Art Gallery or Museum Chapter 5: page 133 Towards the New Museology: Australia and a Century of Change Chapter 6 page 153 Global Arts Link Ipswich: Curatorship, and the City of Ipswich Art Collection Chapter 7: DVD – CD audiovisual presentation in 5 parts BIBLIOGRAPHY page 185 8 APPENDIX Pride of Place: The CS Energy Gift &City of Ipswich Collection, presented by the Ipswich Arts Foundation and Global Arts Link in partnership with CS Energy Swanbank (Exhibition catalogue) Douglas, C. C. (1998) Global Arts Link Ipswich: a new model visual arts museum for Australia, Global Arts Link Ipswich - Ipswich City Council. (Promotions booklet) Douglas, C.C. (1999) (ed) Exploring Culture & Community for the 21st Century: Global Arts Link Ipswich - a new model for public art museums, Global Arts Link, Ipswich, Global Arts Link, Ipswich. (Anthology) 9 INTRODUCTION It has been observed that art in the modern sense of the word has fabricated, sustained and transformed the world. Collections of objects, moreover, have been framed, opposed and transformed through many discursive practices including history, art history, anthropology and ethnography – “all of which are grounded in the epistemological principles, categories and assumptions of museology” (Preziosi and Farago 2004: 4). In recent years, these observations have been complimented by definitions that suggest art museums are: Performances pedagogical and political in nature – whose practitioners [curators] are centrally invested in the activity of making the visible legible, thereby personifying objects as the representations of their makers, simultaneously objectifying the people who made them and, in a second order reality that is part of the same historical continuum, objectifying the people who view made objects in their recontextualized museum settings. (Preziosi and Farago 2004: 5) While curatorship is primarily responsible for the art museum being described as a performance, Australian regional art museum curatorship, as an integrated discipline, evokes other descriptors and interconnected relationships with the culture and communities of a region and beyond. These evocations can be described as: history and memory, traditional and new museology, the visual arts, their interrelated disciplines and industries, sociology, government and its instrumentalities and the cultural industries. In its purest museological form, curatorship engages artwork and art collections. The thesis: Its structure and methodology It is the liminal zone of the regional art museum – the space of one reality that reveals another - that two exhibitions Pride of Place (23 July to 29 August, 1999) and Engage (28 November 2000 to 4 February 2001), together with the publication Exploring Culture & Community were developed. As a doctoral student at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane and a 10 guest curator at Global Arts Link (GAL) Ipswich between 1998 and 2001, I curated these exhibitions. An anthology of 42 essays, which I project managed and edited for GAL was published in May 1999 to coincide with the opening of the gallery. Both the exhibitions and the anthology contribute to this doctoral thesis and are acknowledged as practice. This practice - curating and writing, specific to the regional art gallery and as a museological craft worthy of investigation - is examined in Chapter 6 of this thesis. Pride of Place and Engage could not have been curated without acknowledging the history of museology, and the ever- changing cultural and social climate of historical and contemporary
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