Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

FOREWORD Right Ian Fairweather Hara-kiri 1956 Gouache and watercolour on paper on card 53.4X 38.2cm Purchased 1998 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant and with the assistance of MIM Holdings Limited through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Doug Hall Over the past twenty-five years or so, Australian public galleries have become intensely exhibition-driven. Both intellectual and financial means have been extensively directed towards programs to attract an increasingly responsive public. Important exhibitions have become the mainstay of a gallery's profile, and in that sense the permanent collections are sometimes encountered only en route to the main event. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is an expanded international curatorial engagement and the need to sustain audiences in an environment where state support is often measured by the magnitude of the response. This is not entirely a bad thing, for the widespread respect for the professional and organisational capacities of art museums, and a public enthusiasm to enjoy great exhibitions, are welcome. Yet public galleries aspire to perform two roles, probably with equal distinction: as institutions continuing the important traditions of collecting, conserving, researching and publishing, and also as exhibition venues where a changing program provides innumerable marketing possibilities and where new audiences might be attracted — and where collections might be discovered as a result of such visits. This is not a criticism but an observation of a reality — possibly at threshold — about the changing roles of art galleries and of audience expectations and how such dynamics influence the activities and responses of both groups. But what of the collections? A cursory review might suggest that they have played second fiddle. But while they may have enjoyed a lesser public profile in terms of their attractiveness to the media — unless something has been stolen, vandalised or an outrageous price paid for a new purchase — it can be argued that they have been richly endowed while covertly performing this perceived secondary role. Perceptions can be deceptive. For public galleries in general, there remains a keen interest in supporting new acquisitions, with private, philanthropic and corporate assistance readily forthcoming. In the case of the Queensland Art Gallery, successive Queensland governments have also been sustained supporters of the Collections development, not only through direct assistance to the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, but also with major one-off contributions to mark particular milestones. We live and work in an environment where anticipation for the next big occasion creates an expectation of the unprecedented and the new. In many respects the same can be said about the ways in which new BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965