Thinking through things: Patrick Pound and the Flinders University art museum collections

Patrick Pound is known for his singular approach to art production: compiling, collecting, combining and captioning things in ways that challenge the orthodoxy of museums and their taxonomies. Working with public holdings and his own esoteric compendia of ‘stuff’, Pound uses self-devised cues to give shape, form and meaning to his exhibits. Pound makes his debut in Adelaide with Flinders University Art Museum, mining the 6,500 works in our care to make unexpected and unprecedented connections

Is creativity a matter for cultural leaders?

A climate of change in the arts in the 1990s, including a growing recognition of the need for creative management, has raised the issue of how not-for-profit art museum directors use creativity in their managerial role. Traditionally, the prime function of art museums has been to gather, preserve and study objects. The perception of directors as keepers of collections and creativity as residing in the object has evolved. Creativity is increasingly seen as residing in the managers of organizations. A survey of Australian and New Zealand art museum directors revealed six strategic responses to change, indicating the extent to which they used creativity in their leadership role: economic emphasis, market orientation, audience development, collaboration, accessibility and community relations. The question this paper poses is whether the change in the director's role has overturned the traditional view of creativity as focused on the art work rather than on management initiatives. The proposed answer is that it has been not so much overturned as extended: directors now balance the development and preservation of creative art works with creative management of the art museum as a market-facing organization.

Women's art as indicator of social change

The support for feminism in Australia came not from the scientific field, where there was almost total opposition to it, but from literature, philosophy and the arts. An art museum is an arbiter of taste and a cultural building that points important ideas throughout its lifetime.

Changes in museum management : a custodial or marketing emphasis

In recent years museums have changed from being predominantly custodial institutions to becoming increasingly focussed on audience attraction. New emphasis is placed on museum-audience interactions and relationships. This change in the purpose and priorities of museums has impacted upon the nature of museum management. The recognition of new roles for museum directors and the need to appeal to differentiated audiences has created new challenges for previously traditional, custodial directors. This paper presents a conceptual framework for managing museums, taking account of the museum service context and the delivery of the museum service product. It then examines two museums, one in Ireland and one in Australia, both of which have a similar cultural history. The paper considers the different management styles for museum directors and how these different styles illustrate the changes in professional perspective from the traditional (a focus on custodial preservation) to the more current (a focus on educating and entertaining the public).

Art galleries

This thesis aims to test various forms of methodology for visitor development with particular reference to the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The Art of Wool

An edited volume that examines the place of wool in the artistic imagination of Australia and considers visual relationships between art and fashion.Part of a wider curatorial project that brings together garments from the International Woolmark Prize archive with works from the Howard Hinton and Chandler Coventry Collections at New England Regional Art Museum. Editor's Introduction:Tanya Zoe Robinson'Introduction: stories of wool'Essay authors:Margaret Maynard, Honorary Research Consultant, Queensland University'Wool fashions: comfort, tactility, innovation'Adam Geczy, Senior Lecturer, Sydney College of the Arts'The art-fashion crossover'Christine France OAM'Wool in the artistic imagination of Australia'

The art of wool

A curatorial project that brings together garments from the International Woolmark Prize archive with works from the Howard Hinton and Chandler Coventry Collections at New England Regional Art Museum. Themed around qualities of wool that are also present in the artworks, the exhibition considers attributes such as Production, Romance, Pattern, Texture, Drape and Artistry. From the sale yards and shearing sheds of the New England landscape to the international catwalks, merino wool provides a staple thread made durable through works from these extraordinary collections.

Portrait of a star : National Gallery of Victoria

Museums are an important segment of the creative industries arena. A "star" art museum in Melbourne, Australia, is the National Gallery of Victoria, whose mission is to illuminate life by collecting and presenting great art. This gallery operates in an increasingly competitive landscape. It is becoming more competitive and is continuously striving to achieve its own ambitions and meet the expectations of multiple stakeholders. The present case study uses a brand orientation lens to evaluate the Gallery in order to address a gap in both the brand orientation and the museum marketing literature. It is crafted from interviews, surveys and internal documents. The case study is an exemplar for other institutions to identify how brand orientation manifests itself within their institution.

Exhibitions as sub-brands: an exploratory study

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of major exhibitions, often called blockbusters, as a sub-branding strategy for art museums. Focusing the experience around one location but drawing on a wide data set for comparative purposes, the authors examine the blockbuster phenomenon as exhibition packages sourced from international institutions, based on an artist or collection of quality and significance. The authors answer the questions: what drives an art museum to adopt an exhibition sub-brand strategy that sees exhibitions become blockbusters? What are the characteristics of the blockbuster sub-brand?