Sasha Grishin's top five art exhibitions of 2016

By Sasha Grishin
Updated April 24 2018 - 10:41pm, first published December 22 2016 - 9:45am

It is impossible to look back at the visual arts in Canberra in 2016 without mentioning the elephant in the room – the Turnbull government's cuts to the funding of public collecting institutions in the nation's capital and cuts to the funding of the Australia Council. After the cuts were announced a year ago in the Turnbull government's first MYEFO statement (midyear economic and fiscal outlook), there was uncertainty as to what would actually happen. Now in fact the sky has fallen in: the flagship research tool in the humanities, the National Library of Australia's Trove online archive has been compromised; there have been severe staffing cuts at the National Library and the National Gallery, and lesser cuts at the other cultural institutions. The exception, the Australian War Memorial with the former Liberal Party minister, Brendan Nelson, at its helm has been immune from the savagery. Some artists have also lost meagre streams of income from organisations once funded by Oz Co as well as experiencing cuts to small grants and small projects.

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