Читать книгу A Companion to Australian Art - Группа авторов - Страница 31

By the time of Federation in 1901 – with Melbourne selected as the new country’s “temporary” capital – each of the colonial state capitals had a dedicated fine art collection, in most cases signified with the word “national”, and generally linked to library and museum (natural history, ethnography, anthropology and science) facilities. In some cases they shared joint management, and in others were legally and constitutionally separate though physically integrated, or at least proximate. The cultural complex in Melbourne came to look rather like the British Museum complex in Bloomsbury, with a huge library octagon (completed and opened in 1913) occupying a central courtyard, and galleries for museum exhibits and fine arts collections occupying the lateral spaces. It remained in this configuration until the National Gallery of Victoria moved to a new building immediately to the south of the river in 1968, followed much later by the Museum of Victoria, which only occupied its new building in 2001, leaving the State Library of Victoria as the sole occupant, reverting therefore to the situation at its original founding in 1853.