Tag Archives: artsHub

Forum update 4: What’s past is prologue – arts leadership today

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Summer morning, 1916, Elioth Gruner. Image: www.museumsandgalleries.act.gov.au

Summer morning, 1916, Elioth Gruner. Image: www.museumsandgalleries.act.gov.au

By Shane Breynard

Just a handful of years has seen a generational shift in arts leadership for my part of the world, and I am including our showy big sister Sydney here with us in Canberra.

Almost a mini-bus full of our most senior arts directors, often after 25 or more years of experience, have either left or are about to leave their posts. Many will have held their coveted and suitably well-paid jobs for over a decade. These are senior arts professionals who do what they do very well. They usually retire when they must, either when the next gilt rung of the institutional ladder reveals itself, when retirement looms, or when the challenges within an organisation require a new broom.

Andrew Sayers, for example, left in 2010 after 12 years at the helm of the National Portrait Gallery, for a short stint at the National Museum of Australia (NMA). Edmund Capon resigned in 2011 after 33 years as Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Then came Steve Gower, resigning in 2012 after directing the Australian War Memorial for 16 years. And in just a few weeks Ron Radford will step down as Director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) after 10 years in office. Ron started out as a Director at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery in 1973.

It is a disturbing fact that our outstanding women directors, in the museums sector at least, don’t appear to be reaching the decade of service in the one institution as often as the old boys do.

In comparison, a more spectacularly rapid change of guard has taken place among our smaller, Canberra-focused arts organisations. Gorman and Ainslie Arts Centres, PhotoAccess, M16, ANCA, Megalo Print Studio, Canberra Glassworks, Belconnen and Tuggeranong Arts Centres, the ACT Writers Centre and Strathnairn; not to forget the Australian National University’s Drill Hall Gallery and Schools of Art and Music, which have all switched leaders in just a few years.

So what are the implications of these big changes in art leadership? And what does it mean for the public our museums serve, and arts activity our organisations support?

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Keep reading over at ArtsHub, where this piece was first published on
19 August 2014.

Arts advocacy in the era of the barbecue stopper

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bbqWe all do it: watch the television or listen to the radio or scroll through our Facebook and Twitter feeds waiting for news of a politician who has spoken in an informed, energised and convincing manner about the value of the arts to Australian society.  Of course, it does happen – for example, in April this year the Australian Government launched Creative Australia, the national cultural policy – but it’s fair to say that it happens all too infrequently.

Contemporary political discourse tends to focus on what some have deemed to be the ‘barbecue-stoppers’: immigration, taxation, interest rates, and, most recently, the National Broadband Network and the alternative proposed by the federal opposition.  In this context, discussing challenges faced by artists and proposing solutions does tend to get drowned by what are considered issues that matter to ‘working Australian families’ – as if artists don’t have families and don’t have work to do!

With the federal election looming in September this year, how can all those with an interest in the arts make a difference?

Keep reading over at artsHub.