National Gallery of Australia director Ron Radford made a rare appearance at the Press Club yesterday to outline the future of the institution, which is now on the eve of its 30th anniversary.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
An ambitious building project, named Stage Two - The Centre for Australian Art, will include bold spaces to showcase non-indigenous Australian art and Pacific art.
Dr Radford said ''cultural cringe'' in previous decades had prevented local works from being shown at their best, which was ultimately an insult to those artists who created them.
''The gallery made a fundamental mistake in its 1970 decision to relegate our Australian art to secondary status in the building plans,'' he said.
''That is, Australian art was consigned to the low-ceilinged, less accessible upstairs gallery, frequently referred to now as 'the attic galleries of Australian art'.
''Some visitors never find these galleries of their Australian art. A National Gallery of Australia should show Australian visual culture in pride of place - much more accessibly, attractively and comprehensively.''
Dr Radford said US galleries, as well as those in London and Ottawa, displayed their local art with great pride, giving it a privileged place within the exhibition spaces.
''The 1970 decision to relegate Australian art to the attic was a terrible display of cultural cringe,'' he said. ''In stark contrast, stage one of our building program provided a showcase for our Indigenous Australian art collection, at the front of the building in spacious, beautiful, accessible galleries.''
Stage two would do the same for non-Indigenous Australian and Pacific arts, allowing much of it to come out of storage and onto public display.
''Our current small and awkward space for contemporary art is an insult to living Australian artists,'' Dr Radford said.
''One only has to compare it with the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, the new John Kaldor space in Sydney or the contemporary spaces in Federation Square in Melbourne.''
Stage two would involve galleries for Australian art that would flow from the new galleries for indigenous arts and would arrange the works on display in chronological order. ''They will enter an introductory gallery showing 18th and 19th-century European exploration art in the Pacific, from there it will be organised from the colonial period onwards.''
Dr Radford said he was optimistic of finding the funding for the building project, but indicated he would not lean heavily on the federal government for it. ''This is not the time - when the government and the opposition are trying to repay the deficit - to ask for new building projects,'' he said. ''But it will come.''
