POWERHOUSE SUMISSIONS

SITE LINK https://nswmuseumsinquiry.blogspot.com.au

SUBMISSION #1

SUBMISSION #1

FUNDING MUSEUMS ART GALLERIES,
HERITAGE BUILDINGS AND 
THEIR COLLECTIONS
http://nswmuseumsinquiry.blogspot.com.au/p/funding-museums-art-galleries-and.html

• AUTHOR: Ray Norman • CLICK HERE TO LINK TO PERSONAL BACKGROUND
• STATUS: Independent Researcher, Artist & Cultural Geographer
• DATE: August 14 2016

SUMMARY

FOREWORD 
• Submission made against my background and the experiences as designer-maker, academic and independent researcher.
• I believe that the inquiry is timely long needed and that it is of national significance.
• I’m aware of the fact that musingplace collections are an important component of ‘national estate’.

POLICY AND FUNDING
• Public institutions’ are generally assumed (rightly & wrongly) to receive their prime source of funding, for recurrent funding at least, is from government and that they “cannot make a profit” … thus imagined as Govt. ‘cost centres’.
• A ‘cultural landscape’ without musingplaces would be as impoverished as it might be without the ‘pragmatic institutions’.
• If cultural development has any kind priority in the determination of government budgets –Local State & Federal – it is increasingly clear that modes of funding and the paradigms ‘musingplaces’ operate within need to change away from current ‘status quo’ models and modelling.

HOW MIGHT FUNDING CHANGE LOOK
• The foundations of contemporary museums and art galleries were laid down in Medieval Europe’s wunderkammers and kunstkammers
• Currently governments maintain bureaucracies of various sizes and complexity to oversight expenditure in the cultural arena … government needs to ensure accountability.
• n the short term change is more likely to be achieved ‘at arm’s length’ from governments bureaucracies rather than from within them.

A CULTURAL TRUST FOR NSW
•  It needs to be acknowledged that it is possible that exemplars exist and move on … the research needed here is for another time once the context for it is clear – or at least clearer.
• An in depth examination of the State Government’s and NSW’s Councils’ financial and in-kind commitments to their cultural collections and musingplaces in order to establish just what the current financial investment is.
• This aspect of ‘cultural development’ is needed Irrespective of impending council amalgamations … it is an exercise worth the effort to provide a snapshot of the State’s ‘cultural estate’.
• There is a credible case for a ‘purposeful’ State-wide trust cum devolved arms-length ‘funding agency’ to set up … a ‘compounded cultural collection’ that is managed rhizomatically rather than hierarchically and located throughout the State albeit strategically placed.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 
• The status quo relative to musingplace funding and management is both unsustainable and undesirable, revitalisation becomes a more viable proposition.
• A changed paradigm, is likely to initiate change purposefully or otherwise.
• Looking ahead, it will be important, for individual public collections and musingplaces to establish a corporate identity, and a distinct entity, out from under the direct administrations of Local Govt. in particular.