Читать книгу A Companion to Australian Art - Группа авторов - Страница 36

Australia’s new national administrative capital – essentially a compromise between the ambitions of Melbourne and Sydney, with a separate capital territory (ACT) carved out of NSW in 1909 – was named “Canberra” in 1913, and planning began under the aegis of the modernist American architect, town planner and landscape designer Walter Burley Griffin, in partnership with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin. Two world wars, with the Great Depression between, meant that, notwithstanding the federal parliament physically moving to Canberra in 1927, housed in a temporary parliament building, with foreign embassies and high commissions following gradually, Canberra only came into its own in the 1960s and 1970s. Gradually, national institutions were constructed: the National Library (opened 1968), the High Court of Australia (opened 1980) and a new Australian National Gallery opened in 1982 (ANG, but renamed the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 1993). The NGA is an essential part of a campus of key institutions flanking the south-central shore of Lake Burley Griffin, within the parliamentary triangle, which might be described as a kind of smaller equivalent to the Mall in Washington DC.

In 1967 the government of Australia accepted a report²⁶ handed down the previous year recommending the creation of a national gallery, and construction began in 1975 (the year of the Act of Parliament creating the ANG/NGA as a national institution funded by government). It opened to the public in 1982. The founders of the NGA were determined to create a national institution which reflected a national and international cultural agenda, with collecting policies quite distinct from the major galleries in the state capitals. In addition to a requirement to acquire and display definitive collections of Australian visual culture, it would also concentrate on the modern period, meaning the late nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. The collections should also reflect global developments, including recent and contemporary art from both Europe and North America. But what was radical and visionary about the foundation document was the requirement to collect the visual culture of Australia’s own region, the Asia-Pacific, with an emphasis on south and especially south-east Asia, with less emphasis on China and Japan (given the strength of those collections in Melbourne and Sydney), and a particular requirement to collect the visual culture of the Pacific.

The NGA was vested with a special responsibility to share its collection with the nation, and since its opening hundreds of generally medium-sized exhibitions drawn from the collections have traveled around Australia, often displayed in small regional towns. By the end of 2018, 11 million Australians living in regional, and often remote, areas had participated in the program.

Since the early 1990s, the NGA has displayed dozens of major blockbuster exhibitions drawn from around the world. Conversely, it is increasingly lending exhibitions of contemporary Australian art, particularly the Indigenous schools to overseas venues, as part of the government’s informal program of cultural diplomacy. With strong government financial support for acquisitions, and many private donors nationwide, the NGA has built up the largest fine art collection in Australia with rich holdings of global distinction in painting and sculpture, prints and drawings, design and decorative arts, photography and the moving image. In the 1970s, under the guidance of its inaugural director James Mollison, the New York School became a special focus with exceptional collections built up representing all its key participants, and subsequent movements, from Pop to Minimalism and beyond, making it one of the finest anywhere outside the USA itself. The 1973 acquisition of Jackson Pollock’s masterpiece Blue poles 1952, for the highest price ever paid for an American work of art, ensured global attention. The collection of mid-late twentieth century American prints, generously supported by American master printer Ken Tyler, is close to definitive.

A new wing, completed in 2010, provided a suite of large galleries dedicated to displaying the contemporary Indigenous art movement, from the first central desert paintings of the early 1970s to now, and the NGA holds the largest and deepest collection anywhere. Its educational outreach is significant and national, and it has become a key destination for school groups from around the country visiting the national capital. The 2010 wing might be considered de facto as the national collection of contemporary indigenous art, and the National Museum of Australia, (opened 2001) also has distinguished collections, though with different emphases; the NMA shares its lakeside site with the National Centre for Indigenous Studies.

Over the years, proposals for a separate national museum of indigenous visual culture have been suggested for Canberra, but have never gained ground, given the large costs involved, and the current generous provision. It has been noted above that similar proposals are being floated (in 2018) for a national Indigenous art center in both Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, and in Adelaide in South Australia.

The NGA has conceptual plans, awaiting federal government approval and financial support, for a new wing, which will provide double the existing spaces for the collections, dedicated not only to Australian art, but also with a significant provision for global contemporary practice.

A National Portrait Gallery (NPG) for Australia was established in 1998, originally occupying space in the vacated first Parliament House, following the construction and opening in 1988 of the permanent Parliament House, designed in a classicizing post-modern style. One of only four national portrait galleries in the world, the concept and plan were particularly driven by the collectors and philanthropists Gordon and Marilyn Darling, and a new permanent building was opened in 2008, adjacent to the NGA and the High Court. It has quickly gained enthusiastic recognition as the national repository of portraits of prominent Australians, and tells national stories around the portraits, and its active and innovative program of commissions in different media, with innovative installations and exhibitions, have ensured a high reputation.

As in London and Washington DC, all of Australia’s national, government-funded cultural organizations offer free entry to the permanent collections, and this currently applies to the state institutions as well, though in the past, under political pressure, some have been obliged to apply an entry charge. In Melbourne, for example, the NGV has free general admission, while the state-funded Museum of Victoria applies a fee. All museums and galleries in Australia impose entry fees on their major exhibitions, first and foremost to recoup the usually substantial costs.