National Portrait Gallery signage makes clear they are on a break. June 2019; photo ArtsHub
Last month, ArtsHub took a look at museums that are under reconstruction – part of a series that unpacks the why and what as Australia’s cultural sector faces the largest building boom in its history.
But this phenomenon is not exclusive to museums. Arguably the gallery, or art museum sector, has been onto the trend since Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum transformed a run-down Spanish town into a global cultural destination, which became known as the Bilboa Effect.
It celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017 – demonstrating that building for bolder programming and greater audiences is hardly a new concept – but arguably one that has escalated, especially in the last five years.
Since 2017 we have seen major new galleries open in Jakarta, Malta, New York, Abu Dhabi, Scotland, Hong Kong, South Africa and beyond. Artnet reports that South Korea is aiming to build 186 new museums by 2023, while Forbes magazine, also this week, reported the staggering figure that 451 opened across China in 2012 alone – a boom that continues and is leading to a swath of ‘ghost museums’, institutions with limited collections but plenty of space, or never open at all.
While Australia is not sitting anywhere close to those numbers, for our small country the building impact is enormous. Ours is a percolating cultural economy and it demands buildings to match.
In sync with that global trend, domestically we saw the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) get the go-ahead on its Sydney Modern Project in 2017, with the State Government confirming a $244 million funding injection to realise the conversion of buried WWII-era oil tanks to double the gallery’s public spaces.
While the project had been forecast by former director Edmond Capon and his deputy Anne Flanagan, it was incoming director Michael Brand who has championed the project since 2013 when plans were first publicly slated, and Japanese architectural firm SANAA appointed to realise the vision.
Before Sydney, Brand spearheaded the US$150 million redevelopment of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (USA) and also was on the working team for the new Agha Khan Museum in Toronto, again demonstrating the professional boon these projects offer to top tier CVs.
In 2013 when he took over the reigns Brand told ArtsHub: ‘We will no doubt need more staff than we have now but it’s not doubling the staff, it’s more hiring the right people.’ He emphasised Sydney Modern is not just a building project, but also about reimagining what the gallery can do and, in particular, how to better use resources through increased collaboration and global engagement.
Construction of Sydney Modern is scheduled to start this year, to be completed in 2021 for the Gallery’s 150th anniversary. Its provisional pricetag is $450 million, and has been estimated to grow visitors numbers from 1.2 million to 2 million people per year, and add $1 billion to the economy of New South Wales over the next 25 years.
In progress image of Sydney Modern Project, view from north-east, produced by Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA. Image supplied.
What people forget is the time involved
Any major building project is a complex pathway, and often when announced and at the pointy end of scrutiny, it’s forgotten that the project has already been long in conversation between stakeholders and government. From that concept to design competition, to getting shovel-ready, then settling into climate adjustments and hanging the new space, is often a decade long journey.
All this time requires additional work by an organisation’s Board, Executive Team, Development Departments and Collection staff. Planning a build is not just about bricks and mortar – but more about the pre and post build – clearly a consideration not accounted for in that booming graveyard of Chinese art museums.
Speaking of that increased capacity, Karen Quinlan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery told ArtsHub that she increased the number of all staff meetings to fortnightly when she came into the role, adding that it was important to create a culture of collective ownership over the build while working towards the countdown, and to keep everyone on top of the sea of details.
The challenging of staying active during closure
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Canberra recently closed its doors to undertake a major retrofit – a necessary disruption but one that Quinlan viewed as an opportunity.
‘Many of our colleagues have commented how lucky we are. I think that was also in my mind when I applied for the job – a time for review, and to use that period to your advantage,’ she told ArtsHub.
‘We are not closing in the sense that we pack up shop and do nothing – we have lots of programming and are getting the collection out on the road. We are also sending our staff out with the collection, and then of course our online engagement we will push to keep us on the radar, she continued.
While one of our youngest national institutions (opened December 2008) there have been much-needed capital works including rectifying failed waterproofing, load-bearing floorboards, as well as other maintenance works.
The works were noted by outgoing Director Angus Trumble in his exit interview with ArtsHub: ‘When the building was handed over there was a large number of defects – as always is the case. The vast majority were attended to by the builders and the Department of Finance. But there were a number of things which we have fixed in the past ten years with a modest capital allocation.’
It is common that implications of a build will need to be ironed-out after throwing the doors open again. It is just another one of many contingencies – both physical and financial – that need to be considered before getting started.
Fighting the culture of forgetting
Keeping an organisation activated when its door are temporarily closed is another challenge, especially when we live in an environment of fast forgetting and trending moments. What it does do, however, is to force staff to rethink how they engage with their audiences and collections outside of the building. NPG has an increased program of touring exhibitions and a series of videos following the touring artworks.
‘[As gallerists] we rely on the walls of the gallery and we get into the habit of doing things that are exhibition based,’ said Quinlan. ‘It’s a great challenging for staff to think outside the square and to review their processes and hatch ideas. It is also a great time to foster partnerships and to do some professional development.’
It is a sentiment shared by Lara Strongman, Head Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery (NZ), who was behind the gallery’s Outer Spaces programming, which had to sustain public interest for nearly five years during the gallery’s rebuild in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake.
Through the program Strongman commissioned artists to produce an array of projects, often in outdoor sites, and to find ways to present aspects of the collection outside the building, as well as exploring different strategies for engaging audiences without the recourse of a home venue. It has become a global case-study for success, and has had an impact on the gallery’s longer term sense of purpose and strategy.
It is perhaps the most sure fit with our changing times, to recalibrate one’s perception a gallery as a public facility and cultural agent within its community, by using development works as a springboard to innovating programming.
Competition drives development
If we scan around our nation, plans for major buildings are in play in all states – from Hota in Queensland, to Aboriginal cultural centres in Northern Territory and South Australia, expansions to Mona in Hobart, grand aspirations in Victoria, and the list continues.
But this building boom extends well beyond our state institutions to regional cultural centres and private art museums. Melbourne alone welcomed privately supported spaces Buxton Contemporary and LyonHousemuseum to the gallery scene in the past 12-months. At every level our gallery sector is expanding. Is it a case of competition, or need?
Not to be outdone by Sydney Modern, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) announced last June (2018) that it plans to ‘build the largest contemporary art gallery in Australia’.
To be known as NGV Contemporary, the gallery would be built at the Carlton and United Breweries site, behind the NGV and Arts Centre, as part of a new arts precinct in Southbank. The Victorian Government allocated about $150 million in the May 2018 budget to buy the site and start planning works.
Concept drawing courtesy NGV
The Victorian Creative Industries Minister Martin Foley said in a formal statement at the time: ‘The National Gallery of Victoria is one of the world’s top 20 contemporary art museums and now we’ll have an opportunity to have a dedicated contemporary art facility.’
The emphasis here is that through these builds we are thinking less locally, and more globally as cultural destinations. NGV Contemporary is slated to open in 2025.
Another big dollar project is well in track for Hobart with the imminent expansion of MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art created by philanthropist David Walsh. Once called HOMO (the Hotel at Mona), Walsh has taken to just calling the five-star leviathan Hotel. The 176-room hotel is also tipped to include a three-story library (including Walsh’s collection of rare books) and a 1075-seat theatre (with an estimated bill of $87 million).
Mona’s development application for the proposed hotel development has been submitted to Glenorchy City Council, and a community consultation process is underway this year.
Are we caught up in a global trend?
The last five years in particular, have been a fast-paced race with new museum builds rolling out at an insanely escalated rate internationally, and domestically. Not just complete new builds, but upgrades and partial expansions which bring our art museums up to a 21st century standard.
Is it just a trend, or are we indeed witnessing the pick up of a more engaged society?
Australia is not alone – this year alone art museums are slated to open in Doha Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar (March), West Bund Art Museum in Shanghai (a partnership with the Pompidou designed by David Chipperfield), Bauhaus Museums in Weimar and Dessau, Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee (Scotland), The Shed in New York – a colossal Hudson Yards development designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (April), the hotly awaited MoMA expansion, also in New York (due October).
And while the world has lost count of the new art museums in China, Hong Kong opens K11 Musea at Victoria Dockside this year, with the 17,000 square metres mega space M+ West Kowloon (Hong Kong) designed by Herzog & de Meuron and scheduled to be completed March 2020.
That is a vast amount of cultural product – and if we are to be competitive as a nation then yes, we do need to take on these big project.
The burning question, however, is how well are all these institutions being funded in terms of intellectual and program resourcing? And should we be considering a different dollar spread to engage visual arts audiences? Are we at risk of having those empty ‘ghost museums’?
Next we will be looking at these question along with cultural precincts, and how our regions are also embracing the building boom for better community engagement.
