A MUSER'S TALE

Thursday, 11 August 2016

LINK: https://nswmuseumsinquiry.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/a-musers-tale_11.html

A muser's tale

As an 11 year old boy who had been presented with “an alligator’s voice box”, an Aboriginal stone axe head and various ‘interesting rocks’ as curios, my arrivals at the entrances of Sydney's Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the Australia Museum and the Art Gallery were filled with all kinds of expectations. 

Moreover, as a ‘bush-kid’ from Mullumbimby and I arrived to these places mostly by tram having travelled to Sydney by steam train. So both the journey and the arrival were always destined to be memorable. 

Except for one exhibit at MAAS, a Scythian bridle – CAT# 14299 – I remember relatively little. About the bridle however, I did wonder why anyone would put such a thing on a horse – thinking about the horses at home it didn't make much sense at all. And of course there was the Strasburg Clock . 

I recall my first musingplace visits as being somewhat overwhelming but I was to return to them whenever there was an opportunity. 

Between that first time and the age of 16 I travelled to Sydney three or four times. That first visit was a sensory blast as after the museums there was Vaucluse House and Taronga Park – a bush kid discovers musing. Mullumbimby didn't have anything like a museum in those days but Lismore did. Lismore’s museum and art gallery, albeit almost as far away mentally as Sydney's in opportunity terms, was a modest affair but still worth a visit when and if 'in town' – family histories of a sort could be found there.

I do remember quite well a yellow rush seated chair in Lismore plus a whole lot of Aboriginal stone artifacts along with various 'local' mineral specimens. The 'yellow chair' stands out in so much as it's image seems to have become stuck as I've become aware of things that I couldn't possibly have known about at 11– Van Gogh's 1888 painting of the yellow chair in particular and the coincidences to do with 'New Italy' on the Richmond River.

My newly graduated Sydney school teacher cousin had given herself a job to do on that visit of mine and she left relatively few stones unturned. Somehow she managed to get me to the Jenolan Caves and to a bush walk of a kind near Katoomba in addition to the city musing. During those couple of weeks, festooned as they were with trips here and there by ferry tram and trains, I got to see new things rather than ‘old relatives’. 

Within five years of that first visit to Sydney I was living and working in Sydney and I was to become a very regular visitor to MAAS Harris St. given that entry was free and that as a part of my apprenticeship course I was to attend drawing classes there as well. In retrospect these visits were designed to subliminally broaden the minds of us ‘tradie apprentices’. 

Beyond that I became a regular muser as I took on additional study at the National Art School and maintained a schedule of musingplace visiting that included the Mitchell Library and the Botanical Gardens. Yet as other things take precedence in one’s life musingplaces tend to slip into the background. Then you take your children along to broaden their minds. Also, when you get to travel, and you get into the habit again, musingplaces figure in itineraries. Alongside that you get to have students and trainees who you encourage to visit to see this or that first hand. 

The more widely you travel the broader your musing experiences become. The number you become aware of grows with each journey as does your expectations – and you get to meet more and more collectors. Then you find your own and your colleagues work being collected by musingplaces. Along with that you find yourself working with musingplaces in the delivery of exhibition projects etc. 

In addition to all this you find yourself on committees and panels with musingplaces on the agenda one way or another. Somehow museums, art galleries, heritage buildings, libraries and other manifestations of musingplaces become culturally embedded in whatever it is that you do. 

Rather than even out, the opportunities to get into musingplaces 24/7 grow as the Internet figures more largely. Yet somehow as expectations grow delivery upon them seems to fall away. 

After a wet weekend you know the world has changed when you overhear a conversation in a coffee shop about going to museums. You overhear a couple of grandparents chatting about the weather, looking after grandchildren and keeping them from being bored. The conversation goes along much as one might expect, except for a loudish exclamation 'and museums ... they're no longer an option on wet Sundays … as it was in our day ...'. 

One grandparent even reported trying to get the children mustered to go to the museum and finding being "totally uncooperative and resistant". Apparently the children absolutely refused to leave the house because “our computer has more interesting things on it than the museum has.” 

Nowadays older muser find this to be true too it seemed from the follow on conversation. 

Add caption

Speaking personally, I often go to museums and art galleries these days as much to see who else is there as much anything else. Quite often visitors are outnumbered by the staff most of whom are standing around making sure that the visitors are not doing anything untoward. From time to time you have to wonder when the day will come when robots will be filling this role and many others at the same time given that technology may very soon allow for that. 

Anyway, much of my musing is ‘Internet facilitated’ and even though my physical musing laboratory is at the bottom of the hill upon which I live, I’m not constrained by my physical geography – and haven't been for quite a while. 

Quite often I can find what I’m seeking online if I've got something in particular in mind. My computer means I can usually visit without the need to navigate the in-house cultural landscape. As often as not a great deal more can be gleaned online. It’s increasingly frustrating to witness many musingplaces trying to hang on to the past when the ‘musing experience’, potentially, has so much more to offer. The possibilities of the status quo were over yesterday but musing in the presence of real things is still unequalled.

_________________________
Ray Norman – Artist, Metalsmith, Networker, Independent Researcher, Currently a Launcestonian, Cultural Theorist, Cultural Geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories ... Ray is Co-Director of zingHOUSEunlimited, a lifestyle design enterprise and network offering a range of services linked to contemporary cultural production and cultural research. Ray is also engaged with the nudgelbah institute as a cultural geographer. That institute's purpose is to be network of research networks and to be a diverse vehicle through which place oriented scholarship and cultural endeavours can be acknowledged, honoured and promoted.... LINK