Blog

New Year in the culture wars

By | January 1st, 2018|Categories: Blog|

Welcome to 2018! It’s certain to be a year of battles for appropriate funding and resources to support public institutions, schools and colleges, and the communities they serve. Just before Christmas, while most people’s attention was on shopping or packing, two developments spelt trouble ahead [...]

Exemplary submission on Sydney Modern

By | December 14th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

A group of distinguished professionals has lodged an impeccably detailed objection to the Sydney Modern Project Development Application (DA) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Running to 40 pages, it has been prepared by urban designer and architect David Chesterman AM, horticulturist Ros Andrews, former chair [...]

Enough is enough – stop the war on culture

By | December 13th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

By Judith White It’s been a difficult year for many public institutions in Australia, but as it draws to a close we can take heart from the growing numbers of people ready to speak out against the governmental idiocy responsible. When writer and former Wallaby [...]

Sport, art and the vanity project

By | November 26th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

Infrastructure spend and the corporate lobby  Rebuild Sydney’s sports stadiums at a cost of $2.3 billion? Gladys, you can’t be serious! It’s yet another ill-considered cash splurge of a kind all too familiar to supporters of cultural institutions. This isn’t just about sport – it’s [...]

Time to rethink Sydney Modern – Have YOUR say

By | November 17th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

By Judith White The NSW government is on the brink of making another expensive blunder in arts policy, and it’s time for concerned citizens to speak out. On 15 November the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) revealed the final design for the massively ambitious expansion [...]

Sydney Modern under fresh scrutiny

By | November 5th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

Criticism grows over Gallery expansion plan A fresh obstacle is confronting plans to spend $344 million to build the grandiose Sydney Modern gallery near the current site of the historic Art Gallery of NSW. A distinguished group of architects, environmentalists and arts professionals is calling [...]

Tim Storrier and the Art Gallery “cabal”

By | October 19th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

Postmodernism and art prizes Tim Storrier, on winning Australia’s richest art prize (above, October 18), couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). They were, he said, a “postmodernist cabal” driven by fashion, identity [...]

Funding galleries and museums – the real issue

By | September 17th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

It’s a sad reflection on the level of discussion about culture in the New South Wales Coalition government that when arts funding is mentioned to its representatives, they assume that you’re talking about a new building. Preferably one to which the dreadful words “iconic” and [...]

Lessons from the Powerhouse debacle

By | September 4th, 2017|Categories: Blog|

Pointed questions at the parliamentary inquiry Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s Coalition government in NSW is under increasing fire over its arts policy following the latest hearing by the Upper House Inquiry into Museums and Galleries. The public inquiry, which has again postponed its reporting date (now [...]

The Powerhouse scandal: A case study in cultural vandalism

By | August 22nd, 2017|Categories: Blog|

Beware governments that talk about community consultation, but in practice fall in with the wishes of the developers. At the end of July, after months of speculation and in flagrant disregard for her own government’s community consultation process, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that the [...]