October 2011
2 posts
“How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wineglasses, nails,
Serve us like...”
– Jorge Luis Borges from ‘Things’, In Praise of Darkness 1969
Thinking about things
Thinking about museums is always thinking about things – objects – and how they behave in the world, the memories and stories that are embedded in them and how they will bear witness in the future.
On the Shore has been a record of random thoughts and ideas as I tackled my first year as director of the National Museum. The blog will now be archived and I am closing with a quote from the...
September 2011
4 posts
“When I think about what we do in museums, the three spheres of activity – song...”
The quote is from a talk I gave recently to the Music Council of Australia. It was an opportunity to think about the important role of music in the Museum and the common roots shared by the worlds of music and museums.
August 2011
7 posts
Museums and culture
I have had a lot of feedback from the opinion piece I wrote in response to the National Cultural Policy Discussion Paper recently released by the government. I’ll be having more to say in coming months about museums and their role in fostering cultural literacy in this country.
“Art is unexpected youth. It always takes a direction you could not have foreseen...”
– Richard Serra, 2011
The Art Newspaper (July/August) carries an interview with the great American sculptor Richard Serra. In the context of thinking here about a national cultural policy I find the following statement of Serra’s profoundly insightful: ‘I know sculpture is not going to change the world but I do think the way we understand different countries is by the expression of what arts they put forward and how we...
July 2011
4 posts
How ethical is Australia?
I always wanted to hear Peter Singer talk at the National Museum and his appearance at the second of our Platform Conversations was brilliant. When I took up the role as Director of the Museum I said I wanted us to be relevant, coherent and responsive. I could not think of three better words to describe Peter Singer’s insights into the question ‘How ethical is Australia’.
“Narrative is another way of making a moment indelible, for stories when heard...”
– John Berger, Bento’s Sketchbook, 2011
June 2011
6 posts
I lament the loss of the Flint restaurant in the fire of 23 June. I most recently ate there with journalist Jacqueline Maley of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Flint was a fine and civilised restaurant where one could carry on a conversation (and be heard, easily). The building was formerly the Library of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). Many...
Natural forests
Opening the exhibition Natural Forests in Bermagui, I paid tribute to the photographers whose images are included: ‘In the nineteenth century, colonists looked upon the forest as a place of melancholy and as a limitless resource. Yet, even in the 1870s, when Nicholas Caire took his camera through the forests of Gippsland, where he photographed ancient and giant trees, there were voices of concern...
My first post was about the heart of Phar Lap. Now, it’s great to see the heart on display again – in our newly opened Landmarks gallery.
May 2011
7 posts
“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
– Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, 2009
“he executes with the greatest desire to imitate nature so well as in his power,...”
– von Guérard writing in 1870 about his own art
Divine poetical feelings
The exhibition devoted to Eugène von Guérard at the National Gallery of Victoria is the best experience I have had in an art exhibition in a long time. I well remember the first major von Guérard exhibition in 1980 – the feeling then was one of a rich, almost dense profusion and telling detail. The new exhibition brings out von Guérard’s unique sense of limitless landscape space. And it’s a...
April 2011
6 posts
“Do you know George Inness, our great artist? … We have a collection of his...”
– Walter Burley Griffin, 1913
Canberra in winter
After visiting the site of the future capital in the winter of 1913 Walter Burley Griffin evoked the paintings of the American landscape painter George Inness he remembered from the Art Institute of Chicago. In an interview Griffin said Inness ‘would catch scenes of storm cloud or sunset glow, or mountain view, and the changing colour and mood, and especially the atmosphere after a storm. That...
“Walking, in particular drifting, or strolling, is already – within the speed...”
– Francis Alÿs, 2007
Walking to work
April is the best month of the year in Canberra. Bright yet cool. Sharp light in the morning; tending to melancholy and deep shadows in the evening. Perfect for walking.
March 2011
4 posts
“And this is the purpose of our National Museum: to tell our stories, to be...”
– Address to the National Press Club, 16 March 2011. Listen to podcast or read the address.
In the lead-up to the opening of our exhibition Not Just Ned: A true history of the Irish in Australia I’ve been reading Tony Moore’s excellent Death or Liberty. It chronicles the lives of rebels and radicals transported to Australia from 1788 to 1868.
“So strange in times like these that we seldom pause to remember the political...”
– Tony Moore, Death or Liberty, 2010
February 2011
3 posts
The human dimension
The Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Valour was officially opened on Monday 21 February. The execution is carried through with the Memorial’s customary polish and attention to detail.
Architect Richard Johnson has designed another superbly refined and appropriate setting. There is probably no other architect with his particular sensitivity to scale and proportion – qualities that are so...
“In the words of Faulkner, “the past is never dead, it is not even...”
– Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, 1961
January 2011
12 posts
The opening of MONA in Hobart, 21 January. Excessive, spectacular, gothic – a new kind of museum for Australia – a museum with the stamp of its maker on every wall.
