Tag Archives: Cultural heritage

Covid-19 – what have you done to us? Defederating Australia

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I used to be an Australian, but now I’m not so sure. Who knew that a virus called Covid-19 would be enough to tip state and territory leaders over the edge, taking Australia back 120 years to a colonial mindset? I’m thinking back to a time when I did some work in Canberra before our lives were changed so dramatically by a pandemic.

In early 2019, The National Archives of Australia (NAA) had an exhibition about the Australian Constitution and the Federation of Australia at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra while renovations were being carried out on their own building located nearby.

Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra ACT

It was interesting to survey visitors to the exhibition and ask them some questions about our Constitution. (Anecdotally I’d say that other than law students or political scientists that most people passing through the exhibition had not spent time dissecting the document in question.) The NAA wanted to understand – whether visitors to the exhibition had actually read the Australian Constitution; what they knew about the creation of the Constitution; what they knew about the Federation of the colonies/territories and whether or not they thought that the Constitution needed to be changed in some way. If they did think that the Australian Constitution should be changed moving forward – they were asked how it should be changed and why? Imagine carrying out this survey in the different states (particularly WA and QLD) and territories right now in 2021 to see how people’s views have changed over the past 18 months. 

Surprisingly, it took 10 long years to draft the Constitution before it was given Royal assent by Queen Victoria (Queen of the United Kingdom) in 1900. The passing of the Constitution enabled Australia’s 6 British colonies to become one nation – the Commonwealth of Australia, on 1st January, 1901 – twenty one days before the death of the Queen.

Western Australia was the last colony to decide whether or not it would accept Federation. Strangely, in the early 1890s, New Zealand had considered becoming part of Federated Australia ahead of Western Australia’s decision but the fact that the Maori had the Treaty of Waitangi in place (and our Indigenous Australians were not similarly recognised) and the difficulty of protecting two island nations from a military perspective proved to be too much of an issue in the end.

Royal Assent

The other colonies had each held special votes or referendums in 1898 and 1899 – and in all of them the majority of voters said ‘yes’ to the Constitution Bill, accepting the new Australian Constitution. Western Australia had only just become a self-governing colony in 1890 and did not have its referendum until the end of July 1900. By then, Australia’s Constitution had Britain’s parliamentary and royal approval and arrangements for the new federal system were already in place.

Under the new Constitution, the former colonies (now called states) would retain their own systems of government, but a separate, federal government would be responsible for matters concerning the nation as a whole. For the most part, this system works, but also there could be benefits to having a consistent national approach to areas such as health and education and the management of utilities such as gas and electricity.

The Federation of Australia

Historically, secession has been discussed in Western Australia on more than one occasion. It has been a serious political issue for the State, including a successful but unimplemented 1933 State referendum. The Constitution of Australia Act, however, describes the union as “one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth” and makes no provision for states to secede from the union.

WA’s unimplemented referendum

Federation in 1901 was no cause for celebration for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who after 60,000 years were dispossessed of their land and forcibly removed from country onto missions and reserves. The only recognition of First Australians in the new Constitution was discriminatory. Federal laws could not be made for them, they were not counted in the census and most could not vote (although Indigenous Australians in South Australia had the vote pre-Federation in the 1890s). Sadly, the authors of the Constitution believed that Indigenous Australians would die out and so didn’t require recognition or special laws.

The process to change the Constitution is very different from the way other laws are changed. The Federal Parliament may pass a law proposing changes to the Constitution, but a change will only be made if it is approved by the people through a referendum. From the National Australian Archives resources:

The power of the Australian people to make change to the constitution is given to them by Section 128, ‘Mode of altering the Constitution’: ‘… a proposed law is submitted to the electors [and] the vote shall be taken in such a manner as the Parliament prescribes’.

For a referendum to be successful and the alteration to the constitution to be passed, a double majority vote must be achieved, which is:

  • a majority of voters in a majority of states (at least four of the six states)
  • a national majority of voters (an overall YES vote of more than 50 percent).

If the double majority is achieved and the proposed alteration to the constitution is approved, ‘it shall be presented to the Governor-General for the Queen’s assent’ (Section 128).

The 1967 referendum – in which over 90% of voters agreed that First Australians deserved equal constitutional rights – remains the most successful referendum in Australian history. But this achievement, framed by campaigners at the time as ‘equal rights for Aborigines’, did not occur in isolation or without a long history of agitation, action and appeal.

Successful 1967 referendum to change the Constitution

The decades following 1949 brought about several changes to the Constitution Act. According to Helen Irving, (Department of the Senate Occasional Lecture Series. 2001) “In 1967, changes gave the Commonwealth the power to make special laws for the Aboriginal people. Australia’s formal constitutional and legal ties with Britain were severed. The White Australia policy was ended, and multiculturalism was introduced. Australia increasingly looked to, and invoked, its international obligations in passing and upholding Commonwealth laws. The notion of citizenship began to stretch beyond Australia’s nationalist concerns, to a wider, international set of values.”

The Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1948

I’ve often wondered if some of the attitudes that Australians held arose because before 1949 Australians held the status of being British subjects. This remained true until the enactment of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 which came into effect on the 26th January, 1949. Did this sway people to think as if they were British first rather than Australian? I know that many older Australians referred to England as “home” even when they were born in Australia. The legacy of British Imperialism had seeped into the minds of many Australians and “white-washed” their views on historical events and attitudes to Indigenous Australians and newly arrived migrants from non-British counties. It is not surprising that non-English speaking European migrants new to Australia also kept their country of origin allegiances for the first and second generations before they became “Australian”. Migrant families like my own suffered Australia Wartime internment during WWI and WWII based on family name and occupation even though they had arrived as indentured migrants from Germany in the 1850s. These people were not always overseas residents but were naturalised citizens and even born in Australia.

Internment camps in Australia

Realistically, most of us are migrants to this country. We have all brought with us bits of the cultural heritage that we came from to add to a growing population – making rich and diverse communities Australia wide. I hope that moving forward we are strengthened by the community values which can’t be broken by a pandemic. Australia made it through the Spanish Flu and can do the same now, remembering how we have joined together to form a single nation – Australia.

Strangely enough there are quite a few parallels with the pandemic today and the Spanish Flu more than 100 years ago. You get a sense of déjà vu reading about the border closures, quarantining, development of a flu vaccine by CSL,  blame gaming between the states and last but not least that the Spanish Flu reached WA much later than the other states. 

“In Australia, while the estimated death toll of 15,000 people from Spanish Flu was still high, it was less than a quarter of the country’s 62,000 death toll from the First World War. Australia’s death rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded of any country during the pandemic. Nevertheless, up to 40 per cent of the population were infected, and some Aboriginal communities recorded a mortality rate of 50 per cent.”

I hope that at the end of this Covid -19 pandemic I will still be an Australian and not a person defined by my State, Local Government Area or my vaccination status. I will look forward to seeing what the National Museum of Australia records on its online Bridging the Distance Facebook page after the success of Momentous – an audience driven participatory evolving record of recent events in Australian history compiled after the devastating 2019/2020 bushfire season.

Extra reading

https://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-was-always-meant-to-be-difficult-heres-why-119162

https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp0203/03rp11

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/Practice7/HTML/Chapter1/Constitution_alteration

https://www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/government-and-democracy/constitution-and-referendums/referendums-and-changing-australias-constitution

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/influenza-pandemic

https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/pubs/pops/pop37/irving.pdf

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/00_-Infosheets/Infosheet_13-_The_Constitution

https://www.moadoph.gov.au/democracy/australian-democracy/#

What does Australia look like in cultural institutions overseas? Part 1

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https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/beauty-rich-and-rare

I read a post on LinkedIn about the first major Australian exhibition at The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Beauty Rich and Rare was developed over a two year period by The National Library of Australia (NLA) and digital storytellers AGB Events (creators of Sydney’s Vivid festival) and is on show until 5th July 2020. It marks the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s arrival on Australian shores and is an immersive sound and light display featuring original illustrations, charts, and a digital version of Joseph Banks’ journal. The exhibition was shown at the NLA in Canberra concurrently with Cook and the Pacific which examined the legacy of Cook from different angles – “the great navigator, sailor and commander” and from the perspective of the Indigenous people of the Pacific. Cook’s Pacific encounters were a two-way exchange with island nations – nations that had different languages and a unique cultural heritage. Today Cook and the impact of his voyages continues to resonate powerfully across the Pacific.

Beauty Rich and Rare Exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC on December 18, 2019. (Photo by Richie Downs / Asico Photo)

Recently I’ve undertaken a FutureLearn course (online) called “Confronting Captain Cook: Memorialisation in Museums and Public Places” by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The information presented has led me to think more critically about Cook’s voyages and their unresolved impact on the history of the  Pacific region (including Australia), and the way in which such historical encounters and Pacific peoples are represented in cultural institutions around the world.

As an Australian, I’d like to know more about the way that Australia is viewed by curators and visitors in museums overseas. The representation of Australia in foreign collections started with Cook and other foreign explorers and the need to gather evidence of “the natural world” and human civilisation (or lack thereof according to European standards) on their voyages. Explorers kept journals and gathered a variety of objects and specimens – both cultural and scientific (including flora, fauna and geological specimens). Curiosities from other lands were collected by institutions in both a “wunderkammer” and scientific sense, without the benefit of context, cultural interpretation or significance to living cultures – without the input which we demand for objects acquired in museums today. 

Art Gallery of NSW collection. The English Channel (2015) Michael Parekowhai. New Zealand. Cook reflecting on his legacy in a contemporary world.

Historic collections should be open to further research, interpretation and rethinking because artefacts are meaningless without specific scientific research or cultural knowledge being attached to them. In particular, Indigenous Australian objects were taken or sourced without Aboriginal voices and meanings, without knowledge of cultural significance and importance attached to them. Some items would still be relevant in 2020 to living Indigenous cultures and should be considered for repatriation rather than remaining stuck in glass cases and conservation stores across the world.

It is shocking to realise that for more than 150 years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ancestral remains and sacred objects were removed from their communities and placed in museums, universities and private collections overseas. Jennifer Beer from the Aboriginal Heritage Council of Victoria sums it up in these words:

“Secret and sacred objects are a big part of who we are. They carry stories that shape us, and we, and future generations, in turn shape them. They need to be with their rightful custodians so they can keep carrying our stories and our connection with them.”

I want to see Australia’s rich cultural heritage represented in cultural institutions around the world. I’d love to see historic figures, artworks and artefacts given the respect that they deserve on the world stage but honestly this is not occurring in many cultural institutions without appropriate staff, policies and procedures for reviewing historic collections in the contemporary world.

Looking at museum collections online to examine the way Australia is viewed in cultural institutions internationally is an enormous project in itself and would take many years of research. In this post I have sampled a handful of museums presenting Indigenous Australian cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) – one of the oldest in the world dating back 60,000 years. 

The National Museum of Australia has published some work on the subject for Australian Museums under Understanding Museums: Australian museums and museology called “Indigenous People and Museums” which speaks critically about indigenous collections, culture and art and repatriation of objects under certain circumstances. Perhaps the information needs a further push to curators and conservators of Indigenous Australian collections in other parts of the world as well as Australia. 

Secret or sacred objects are secret or sacred according to Aboriginal tradition. Aboriginal Traditional Owners determine which Aboriginal objects are secret or sacred.

Secret or sacred objects include items:

  • associated with a traditional burial
  • created for ceremonial, religious or burial purposes
  • used or seen only by certain people
  • sourced from or containing materials that only certain members of the community can use or see

There are some brilliant offerings and interpretation in Australian museums and galleries and there are a number of articles and guidelines available online which have thoughtful discussion regarding Indigenous engagement, Continuous culture and ongoing responsibilities, 

Indigenous Australian Artwork by Ningura Napurrula ( Western Desert artist) at the Musee du quai Branly

I had great hopes for Musee Quai Branly in Paris, but in spite of Architect Jean Nouvel’s original concept for the museum, the more I read about it, the less convinced I am that the museum hits the mark for the people that it was supposed to champion. One of the most interesting articles that I’ve read is written by Alexandra Sauvage in reCollections, Vol 2,Number 2 called  Narratives of colonisation: The Musée du quai Branly in context. Sauvage points out that:

 “Whereas museums tend more and more to collaborate with Indigenous peoples in the preservation of collections and the development of exhibitions, the Musée du quai Branly proposes a complicated, marginalising and (most) un-traditional way for Indigenous communities to benefit from their cultural heritage. Clearly, everything indicates that it was a political choice to ignore the 30-year-long fruitful dialogue between anthropologists, curators and Indigenous peoples that has taken place worldwide, a dialogue ‘between cultures’ that has informed museum policies for the last decades. Instead of following this general path, the efforts of the MQB are directed to promoting the ‘aesthetics’ of the collections.”

Musee du quai Branly – Indigenous Australian Artworks

On a more positive note, The Indigenous Repatriation Program has so far led to the return of more than 1,480 Indigenous Australian ancestral remains, with more than 1,200 coming from the UK. In 2019, the ancestral remains of 37 Aboriginal people were returned to Australia from London’s Natural History Museum. Narungga community representatives were part of a delegation receiving the remains of an ancestor who will be cared for at the South Australian Museum until the community is ready to conduct a reburial ceremony. The Museum will also look after another seven repatriated ancestral remains. The remaining 29 ancestral remains will go to the National Museum of Australia until the Ngarrindjeri, Far West Coast, Kaurna and Flinders Ranges communities are ready to lay them to rest.

Sacred Indigenous artefacts have been returned to traditional owners in Central Australia after spending almost a century in United States museums. The objects were displayed in Illinois after being taken in the 1920s. Due to their nature, the  items cannot be revealed or seen by the public for cultural reasons. Elders spent months liaising for the return of 42 Aranda and Bardi Jawi objects, which arrived in Sydney from the Illinois State Museum.

The items were the first of many to be returned as part of a project that coincides with this year’s 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia. Project leader Christopher Simpson, from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), said the goal was returning items to country, not putting them on the shelf of another museum.

The Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples at AMNH, New York

In The American Museum Of Natural History , New York City, Australia is represented within The Margaret Mead Hall Of Pacific Peoples. The museum has more than 25,000 ethnographic objects from the Pacific in its online database. Of these, 3,400 have originated from Indigenous Australian communities.

I was surprised to cross reference the objects with the registration catalogue to see who had donated the objects and the year that they had been donated – many items donated in the early 1900s. There was often a lack of useful information recorded and provenance was even more surprising. Objects had been exchanged from other museums including The Australian Museum, Museum of Florence, etc. as well as from private donors, often anthropologists and archaeologists who had worked in Australia with Indigenous communities.

  • Australian Museum exchange from registration catalogue 1912
  • Dilly bag. Kimberley region, NW Australia. Exchange Museum of Florence 1907
  • Museum of Florence exchange from Registration catalogue 1907
  • Arunta Shield. Exchanged Australian Museum 1912
  • Arunta Shield. Australian Museum Exchange 1912

There are still many contentious items in museums all over the world. I am not an Indigenous Australian, but I am a museum professional who sees no sense in objects which belong to living cultures being placed in storage or incorrectly displayed when they have significance and a part to play in modern day Aboriginal Australian cultural practice and heritage. How do we, as professionals, continue to raise awareness in cultural institutions around the world about the significance of these objects which need further research and evaluation?

Useful references:

Augustus Earle (1793─1838), Portrait of Bungaree, a Native of New South Wales, with Fort Macquarie, Sydney Harbour, in Background c.1826, Rex Nan Kivell Collection, NLA.GOV.AU/NLA.CAT-VN313278
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Practice note: The Burra Charter and Indigenous Cultural Heritage Management. https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/Practice-Note_The-Burra-Charter-and-Indigenous-Cultural-Heritage-Management.pdf

Narratives of Colonisation:The Musée du quai Branly in context. https://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no2/papers/narratives_of_colonisation

Under Western Eyes’: a short analysis of the reception of Aboriginal art in France through the press. https://journals.openedition.org/actesbranly/581?lang=en

The Creation of Indigenous Collections in Melbourne: How Kenneth Clark, Charles Mountford, and Leonhard Adam Interrogated Australian Indigeneity https://journals.openedition.org/actesbranly/332?lang=en

Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council Annual Report (2018 – 2019). https://www.aboriginalheritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/victorian-aboriginal-heritage-council-annual-report-2018-2019

Indigenous People and Museums. https://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/_lib/pdf/Understanding-Museums_Indigenous_people_and_museums.pdf

Continuous Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities. https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/3296/ccor_final_feb_05.pdf

Reuniting Indigenous ‘sticks’ with their stories: the museum on a mission to give back . https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/04/reuniting-indigenous-sticks-with-their-stories-the-museum-on-a-mission-to-give-back

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). The educational role of the museum. London: Routledge.

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (2000). Changing Values in the Art Museum: rethinking communication and learning, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 6:1, 9-31, DOI: 10.1080/135272500363715

Hodge, R., D’Souza, W., & Rivière, G.H. (2009). The museum as a Communicator: A semiotic analysis of the Western Australian Museum Aboriginal Gallery, Perth.

Helena Robinson (2017) Is cultural democracy possible in a museum? Critical reflections on Indigenous engagement in the development of the exhibition “Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23:9, 860-874, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2017.1300931

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/indigenous-artefact-repatriation-nt/11677810

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-11/british-museum-battle-for-stolen-indigenous-gweagal-shield/11085534

Concept – Museum of Parramatta

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I like to visit museums when I travel. Some of my favourites have been specific museums unique to the place that I’m visiting like The Little Museum of Dublin , The Museum of Liverpool and the New York Historical Society Museum.

The Little Museum of Dublin. Picture by Lonely Planet

What I know about Parramatta is that it’s not just about stadiums, new high rise development, Parramatta Eels and Western Sydney Wanderers. In my opinion, the City of Parramatta has a rich cultural heritage which could be a more significant tourist attraction and contribute greatly to building the community and economy of Western Sydney.

The City of Parramatta Council has a culturally significant collection of objects and archives dating back to the earliest days of council (1861), and archaeological evidence dating back to much earlier times. Parramatta’s historical layers provide the perfect inspiration for its own unique museum which I’m calling “The Museum of Parramatta”, not to be confused with the new MAAS Museum (which is a completely different concept) coming to Western Sydney in the future. 

Kaolin Pipe stems and bowls from the collection of the City of Parramatta

In my mind, Australia has three distinct layers of history which make it what it is today. It is too late to undo the colonisation of Australia by the British, but we can look harder at our history, dissect it and present it in new and better informed ways. History is not fixed – it is open to further research and interpretation from primary sources and definitely open to further discussion. I would say that the City of Parramatta is the perfect place to examine and discuss Australian history by exploring further its Indigenous layer, Colonial layer and its waves of migration or the Multicultural layer.

I envisage that The Museum of Parramatta would use 4 spaces to present the Parramatta story – past and present – a story of its First Nations people dating back 40,000+ years, to the arrival of Europeans and the successive waves of migration from 1788 until the present. The museum will also need a functional space for permanent exhibitions, travelling or changing temporary exhibitions and for the public to access Parramatta’s history using onsite digital resources similar to and building upon those available in the existing Parramatta Local Studies Library.

Aboriginal Warriors by Joseph Lycett (1815-1822). National Library of Australia Collection

Space 1. Our First Australians

Starting at the beginning, I have imagined that Space 1 would need to be created in consultation with local Indigenous groups. We need to know Australian history from an indigenous perspective – we are all still learning the facts about our past. How did Aboriginal people live in Parramatta? What were their totems? What animals and foods were special to them? What was the impact that Colonial settlement had on the cultural practices on Indigenous groups already living in Parramatta and surrounding areas. The story goes back much further than Colonial settlement in Australia to more than 40,000 years ago. Who were the standout Aboriginal characters – individuals who were important local leaders and who managed to straddle both worlds at that time of first contact? Some of the stories will be hard to hear but they need to be told. Australians must think more critically about the past rather than continuing to look at history from a Eurocentric perspective.

Two Aborigines spearing eels by Joseph Lycett (c1817). National Library of Australia collection.

What about Indigenous Parramattan communities today? Where are the communities? What are the local languages spoken? Which part of local cultural heritage are the communities willing to share with us today? Are there objects in the City of Parramatta collection or in other cultural institutions that may be appropriate to use to tell their stories? Several Indigenous cultural experiences are already available through Discover Parramatta and perhaps these could enhance the museum experience in Space 1.

I recently participated in an online FutureLearn Course called Confronting Captain Cook: Memorialisation in Museums and Public Spaces which examines both sides of Captain Cook’s encounters with First Nations People in the Pacific and and how various societies related differently to his legacy. This reinforced my ideas about a need for Space 1 in the Museum of Parramatta.

The English Channel (2015) by Michael Parekowhai. Captain Cook reflecting on his legacy in a contemporary world. How do Pacific nations view him now , 250 years after their first encounter?

Space 2. The Colonial Years and birth of Parramatta Council

This area would be used to unpack Parramatta’s Colonial layer. There is plenty of archaeological and archival evidence to support learning about the built environment, but sadly there has been a significant loss of the “intact’ heritage buildings from Colonial times as a result of neglect, “progress” and development. Much of this destruction occurred before the Heritage Act was introduced in 1977. There are a number of significant sites in Parramatta which could be cross promoted through The Museum of Parramatta such as Old Government House and Experiment Farm Cottage (National Trust of Australia), Elizabeth Farm (Sydney Living Museums), Hambledon Cottage, Parramatta Female Factory Precinct, Lancer Barracks ………and the list goes on (see more detail at the end of this post).

Space 2 could utilise the objects from the City of Parramatta’s collection of archaeological and culturally significant material as well as its Archives. It will be a great space to tell the stories of Parramatta’s early history using the collection as tangible evidence of the past. 

One of the many Expeditions for the City of Parramatta DigiVol project

The current City of Parramatta DigiVol project has a team of 120 volunteers transcribing the Parramatta Council Minutes from 1862-1945. The minutes tell of the everyday issues facing a new rapidly growing town. When the minutes become searchable primary source, it will bring the Councillors and the people of Parramatta’s past to life. TROVE is also a wonderful resource for reading news from the early days of Parramatta via the old newspapers in digitised form.

The team at Parramatta Heritage and Visitor Information Centre has researched so much about the city’s past which is available via their blog posts. Another significant body of work was researching all the Parramattans involved in the Great War . The team has produced a range of publications on the subject and also a travelling touchtable resource for the public to access.

Space 3. Waves of Migration

Successive waves of migration have shaped the culture and identity of Parramatta. It is home to many people with different pasts, and it is important to recognise that there are connections between the city of Parramatta and the new migrant communities that now call Parramatta home. We know that Chinese people migrated to NSW in the earliest days of the colony. Indian and Lebanese people also came very early on when the colony formed and have participated in the growth and cultural heritage of Parramatta and NSW.

Australia Day at Parramatta

The ‘Waves of People’ report was produced by Western Sydney University for the City of Parramatta. The research recounts the history of Parramatta’s inhabitants – from the generations of Darug families living along the Parramatta River and Australia’s first inland European settlement, to the waves of migrants and refugees from all over the world who made a home here.

“It is the accumulation of stories and experiences inscribed in built form that gives a place its distinct identity. Such stories are not only for the culturally sensitive: they drive real-estate investment too. When a city is rebuilt from scratch, we risk losing these stories and connections.” (The Conversation : Reimagining Parramatta)

As well as connecting to the past, Parramatta’s calendar is filled with festivals such as – Parramasala, Diwali, Lunar New Year, ParraLanes and Winterfest to name just a few. These festivals build on Parramatta’s Cultural Heritage and help to bring the community together in the present.

Celebrating Holi at Parramatta

Space 4. Changing exhibitions

This space is essential for presenting temporary exhibitions or travelling exhibitions from other cultural institutions to engage with local and wider audiences of The Museum of Parramatta. The area would provide a safe meeting place for discussion on contentious issues, talks and events. It needs to have banks of computers to be available for research and discovery. The area would be well supported by the existing Local Studies Library, allowing visitors to research in depth information about Parramatta and their connections to the area. It should also host a searchable map of Parramatta to showcase all the amazing historic buildings, house museums and small volunteer run museums in the local area (some mentioned previously and also see the links below).

Final Words

Maybe I’m dreaming, but I believe that Parramatta is worthy of its own purpose built museum (or a museum reimagined in an existing heritage space e.g. Fleet Street Precinct, Old Kings School, Willow Grove) to showcase the history of this city. Parramatta deserves The Museum of Parramatta as well as a satellite of the Museum of Applied Arts and Science (Powerhouse Museum – an existing cultural institution being transplanted in Parramatta). It deserves a well thought out museum of its own to take a more critical look at Australian History from a Parramatta perspective.

Want to think  more critically about Parramatta’ history and cultural heritage? Explore the links below.

City of Parramatta Archive Council Collection

City of Parramatta Heritage Centre

City of Parramatta Collections

Parramatta Stories

Old Government House, Parramatta

Elizabeth Farm

Hambledon Cottage

Experiment Farm

Fleet Street Heritage Precinct

Parramatta Park

The Dairy Precinct

Lancer Barracks, Parramatta

Brislington Medical and Nursing Museum

Female Factory, Parramatta

Female Orphan School, Parramatta

The Conversation : Reimagining Parramatta https://theconversation.com/reimagining-parramatta-a-place-to-discover-australias-many-stories-100652

The NGV Triennial Giving Art to the People

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Pae White’s colourful installation drawing in all ages

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is Australia’s oldest and possibly most well loved museum of art, founded in 1861. Its mission statement  – “To illuminate life by collecting, preserving and presenting great art” and perhaps the unwritten mission of “giving it to the people”.

NGV Triennial 15 December 2017-15 April 2018

In 2016 the NGV was the 19th most popular art gallery in the world with more than 2.6 million visitors across its two campuses. The ranking places the gallery in the company of Paris’s Musee d’Orsay and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Visitors flock to the NGV Triennial in Melbourne

The NGV is not only Australia’s most popular art gallery, but one of the top 20 most visited art museums worldwide as revealed by the U.K’s  The Art Newspaper in its latest survey of global art museum attendance. Not a bad effort for a small country on the world stage. Australia’s population is around 24.8 million compared with the U.S.A.’s 326.8 million and U.K.’s  66.6 million people. This ranking was based on visitation to “Van Gogh and the seasons” from the 2017 Winter exhibition. (Note that another Australian art museum on the list was the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art with its 2016/17 Summer exhibition – Sugar spin: You, me, art and Everything.)

Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Rooms are always popular with visitors

The NGV held forty-nine exhibitions during 2016-17, including major retrospectives of international and Australian artists and designers, as well as focused displays of works in the NGV collection. The quality and variety of audience engagement initiatives presented in support of these exhibitions was extensive. They offered guided tours, audio tours, mobile phone apps, talks, lecture series and workshops as well as social events – such as the Friday Night events (aimed at capturing more of the younger audiences after work), the Summer Sundays music series and the NGV Kids Summer festival and supporting Kids spaces for some of the major exhibitions. For example – as part of the exhibition Andy Warhol / Ai Weiwei (2015-2016), NGV Kids presented Studio Cats, a large-scale installation especially for children and families to draw upon creative connections between the two artists and their mutual love of cats.

The Gallery aims to present programmes that engage visitors in meaningful cultural experiences and to keep them coming back.

According to their audience research data, The National Gallery of Victoria enjoys one of the highest community participation rates in the world. 70% of their visitors are local from Melbourne and regional Victoria unlike many other international art museums where the majority of visitors are incoming tourists. This also indicates that the locals keep coming back which is what every cultural institution needs to strive for. This is what Nina Simon talks about most recently in The Art of Relevance but also in The Participatory Museum and her Museum 2.0 Blog.

For any Cultural Institution, the collection remains  fundamental to the audience engagement and education strategy. The thoughtful curation and presentation of historical and contemporary collections is a key museum management strategy for continuing and ongoing audience engagement. Colleen Dilenschneider regularly writes about this in her Know Your Own Bone Blog (most recently in Special Exhibits vs. Permanent Collections (DATA) and previously in Death by Curation).The NGV strategy is to ensure that its collection is accessible to the widest possible audience who may be unable to visit the museum through the ongoing work of the NGV Digitisation Project which is still progressing.

I have to disclose that I am already a big fan of the NGV and the way that they design their spaces. I visit the NGV each time that I am in Melbourne, so over many years have enjoyed both Summer and Winter exhibitions as well as taking time to learn about the permanent collection shown across both campuses (St Kilda Road and the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square). On my recent visit I took in the inaugural Triennial at the National Gallery Victoria which on the surface (without actual audience data analysis) appears to be a great success. What I enjoyed most about this free experience was seeing the diversity of visitors attending the exhibition and the way that the work of 100 contemporary artists, architects and designers from 32 countries was juxtaposed against the existing works from the collection – which was great exposure.

Audience engagement with the art at NGV Triennial

I think that there is currently a cultural revival happening worldwide despite Government funding cuts trying to choke the Arts into submission. Creativity and cultural heritage feed the soul when so much about modern life seems to do the opposite. Now is a better time than ever for cultural institutions to offer their prospective audiences something new and different, to  re-energise and maybe even reinterpret their collections to be more inclusive, to build community and feed the souls that are weary of modern life and meaningless 24 hour connectedness to media, social media and globalised sameness. Keep leading the way National Gallery of Victoria and hopefully other cultural institutions in Australia will follow or at least just lift their game a notch.

Interesting reading:

Cultural Heritage and the City

Cultural heritage as a driver of economic growth and social inclusion

Creative Country

The value of culture

The Heritage Dilemma

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I worry about the preservation of the world’s “cultural heritage”. To me, it’s a dilemma on a grand scale. I personally value cultural heritage – not just my own, but what I have seen in my travels and learned from others with different backgrounds. I also value art galleries and museums and all kinds of cultural institutions, but what about all the people who don’t? Is there a way to connect a higher proportion of world’s population to their heritage and does it matter in the long term?

Blue Mountains National Park, NSW, Australia

I have just completed an online course with FutureLearn called Cultural Heritage and the City from the European University Institute which got me thinking about cultural heritage in the first place. What does it mean to people and how can policy can be developed or improved in order to protect heritage for future generations? Ask yourself – “Who is responsible for protecting the world’s cultural heritage?” The course defined heritage as “the past which informs the present and the relationship that a community constructs with that past”. This includes specific places, religious or cultural practices and traditions where heritage provides a framework within which people are socialised.

Washington D.C., USA. The Post Office has been leased to Trump Hotels for 60 years. This heritage site has been renovated and repurposed but will not be lost to the State’s heritage portfolio.

On the world stage, cultural heritage is about more than just protecting sites, buildings and objects. There is also an “ intangible” facet which helps to build community through language, music or ritual which may be part of the local way of doing things (e.g. food preparation, welcome ceremonies, wearing of significant clothing etc.) I believe that everyone has a stake in the protection of heritage whether it’s on our doorstep or far away in places which may more vulnerable to destructive forces outside the control of the local population and heritage authorities.

Bluestone Lane cafe has started business in a New York church.

I concede that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs comes into play when considering why people value and connect to cultural heritage. People are time poor, under financial and personal stress, others are barely surviving in war zones or refugee camps or living in areas where they feel disconnected to their surroundings. Why would the preservation of cultural heritage be at the the top of their “list of priorities” even if UNESCO says so? Why is heritage important to us anyway?

Brighton Beach, Melbourne. These heritage beach boxes have become valuable real estate but are also a big tourist draw card.

In a homogenous society like Japan where the greatest proportion of residents have shared cultural values, is it any easier to develop protection and promotion strategies for the preservation of cultural heritage? The culture in Japan is ancient and deep rooted but after the Great Fire in Tokyo and WWII, the process of modernisation conflicted with some of the old values set by the declining aristocracy and religious authorities. Emiko Kakikuchi Ph.D writes, “After WWII, Japan’s heritage was treated as a national asset, but remained a relatively small part of society for a long time. However the importance of heritage values has recently been increasingly recognised and protection measures diversified as Japan has matured in terms of its society and economy. Today heritage is being integrated and linked closely with community development, and its protection is being carried out not only by government but also by various stakeholders.”

Indigenous Australian Rock Art in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia dates back thousands of years before Colonial settlement.

In my own country, Australia, there are contentious layers of cultural heritage and so who takes responsibility for its preservation overall? The Indigenous Australian layer dates back more than 40,000 and possibly 60,000 years. Aboriginal cultural heritage has historically been inextricably tied to the Australian landscape with Indigenous Songlines having been coded and embedded into the natural environment and passed down over time through stories, dance and song by community elders.

Carriageworks, Redfern, Sydney – repurposed train sheds now used  for events, as an exhibition and for weekend markets.

A second colonial heritage layer was laid down after the British established a penal colony in Sydney in 1788. Over time, other settlers arrived and became established, adding to European cultural heritage and introducing an ever changing built environment which is less than 230 years old. Such changes have directly and indirectly caused major damage to Indigenous Australians’ heritage (“tangible” and “intangible”) in inverse proportion to the growth of the European population in Australia.

More recently, a third layer has come into play – a newer migrant layer represented by many different cultures including Greeks, Italians, several waves of Lebanese migration, Maltese, German, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian and others from Afghanistan, Syria, Africa, Iran, Sri Lanka etc (too many to mention actually). I’m calling this the multicultural layer of heritage. Each group has brought distinct languages and their own cultural heritage to be worked into the existing Australian heritage tapestry.

The course modules explored ways to protect, enhance and engage with communities in the future, as urban environments change and eat into historic built environments and significant natural landscapes? How can newly arrived migrants and refugees be connected to the heritage of the country that they are now living in, the country that they now call “home”? Have they brought their own heritage values in the “intangible” sense and left the “tangible” behind? Will they be willing to engage with new values in the future?

Some migrant connections to Australian history are real and “tangible”. For instance, both Parramatta and Sydney can demonstrate historic connections to Indigenous Australians, Colonial Australians and other migrant communities. There is both archaeological and material evidence to support these historical links in found objects, social history collections (clothing, utensils, letters etc.) as well as written research (newspapers, photographs and paper records from the past). We know that many First Nations people were well known in the colony. Bennelong and King Bungaree slipped back and forth between two cultures. Pemulwuy was notorious for his resistance activities against colonial settlement.There were Chinese market gardens in Parramatta and Sydney during colonial times and the colonials imported tea, silks and porcelain from China.They also accessed Indian cottons, muslins and spices for everyday use. There is evidence that Indian nationals came to Australia from British colonies in India as staff of the Colonial Government Officers. The Lebanese also came to Australia in colonial times as hawkers and traders who sold ribbons, lace and cloth for women’s and men’s clothing.

The trick is to find ways of connecting contemporary life with existing cultural heritage and formulating appropriate policies for the protection of heritage into the future. There may be special places which merit absolute protection under law, such as “intact” wilderness areas or particular and significant built areas. In urban settings, I believe that it is also possible to develop heritage strategies which allow for new urban development through the repurposing of some heritage spaces, finding new uses and new connections with the past enabling the community to value heritage in a more vibrant and attractive city.

There are many examples of cultural heritage capacity building using events which have been integrated into the strategies of cities. These may range from large events (such as the Olympics, World Expositions, Biennales and Triennals) to smaller events such as festivals held in Australia, for example – Chinese New Year, Parramasala, Festival of Sydney, Sculpture by the Sea or the Vivid Light Festival. The increased number of festivals in Australia and overseas demonstrates ways that we can celebrate our existing heritage as well as creating new cultural heritage for the future. Such events can be compared to an exhibition in a museum or art gallery. You may have regular attendees but you want to be more “inclusive” and attract new audiences to share with you. The “festival audience” is attracted by the content or theme, but in attending that festival might learn more about a different culture or heritage place which they would not normally embrace. Inadvertently, some of that cultural heritage may be infused into festival goers but it was not the original draw card.

“Disruption” is a buzz word heard in the business world but it can also be applied to heritage places and cultural institutions. I like the way that the “Off” movement was created in parallel to the European Capital of Culture programme in Marseille in 2013. “Off” challenged the official discourse of the ECC project, running grass roots and paradoxical programmes harnessing the cultural heritage of Marseille. The aim was to direct the audience towards appreciating Marseille’s cultural heritage by being “inclusive” rather than elitist.

I think that more cultural institutions, heritage organisations and festival organisers need to think about opening their doors to wider audiences to start conversations about heritage without making people feel uncomfortable about attending events. Museum Hack has been a disruptive force within the museum sector in the USA by enticing a new and different kind of audience to visit cultural institutions. They have managed to break the mould and attract “atypical” visitors into a range of institutions who were not reaching out to millenials.

A number of public events and festivals are open to the public free of charge. Behind this idea is the fact that cultural heritage belongs to everyone and should be accessible to people regardless of the socio-economic status of the community being focussed on. Even institutions that rely on permanent entry fees and special exhibition fees to stay afloat, occasionally offer free entry days to the public in an effort to broaden their audience reach. Communities that have faced the heritage dilemma head-on have reported that developing a strong heritage policy has helped them to build community by educating local people to feel a part of their history and to build a common future. Heritage protection has contributed to regional job creation and economic growth worldwide. There is growing emphasis on the economic impact of heritage activities and that by protecting cultural heritage, cities can boost their local economy through the provision of hospitality as well as cultural services.

Harbour Sculpture Exhibition at Clarke’s Point, Hunters Hill connecting business and community. Artists aim to present, support and encourage contemporary Australian sculpture that reflects the history and place of sculpture in Australia.

Celebrating Chinese New Year 2017 at Sydney Opera House. Bringing the population of Sydney together with overseas tourists to the heritage icon to celebrate the year of the Rooster on Sydney Harbour.

Chinese Year of the Rooster at Sydney Opera House 2017 attracted many visitors to the city.

Repurposed  Industrial heritage at Ballast Point Park, Birchgrove. Between 1788 and 1800, the point was used as a fishing and hunting ground for European settlers and as a source of ballast for ships returning unladen to Europe. The A$16m project included demolition and decontamination of the derelict industrial site with construction of steel stairways, recycled building rubble walls, artworks, shade structures, wind turbines and Australian native gardens.

The Tramsheds at Harold Park in Sydney, Australia – a repurposed industrial site which housed the former historic Rozelle Tram Depot. This restoration includes a dining precinct as well as 7 community-based retailers. The site now attracts local community as well as visitors from other parts of Sydney.

The heritage dilemma must be faced head-on if we are to manage the sites and traditions that remain in an uncertain world under pressure from an ever increasing and shifting population worldwide. I guess that the heritage dilemma can not be sorted out in a single blog post.

Useful further reading: UNESCO report on Culture and Sustainable Urban Development – understanding how the tension between heritage preservation and urban development has been resolved in practicehttp://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002459/245999e.pdf