Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

second, the launching of the Gallery's Regional Services exhibition 'Decorated Clay'. His dedication to the arts and to the Gallery is well known and needs no further words from me. Iwelcome the Premier once again to the Queensland Art Gallery for what is a very different occasion, unique and festive--the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Queensland Art Gallery on the South Bank. Let me hasten to say that today's activities are all being paid for from the profits of the Gallery's entrepreneurial activities and from sponsorship, and not from Government or taxpayers' funds. I also welcome the Premier's Cabinet colleagues, who, to enable them to join our festivities, have set a precedent and conducted their Cabinet meeting today in the Gallery's boardroom. A Cabinet meeting has never before taken place in this Gallery and I doubt if one has ever taken place in any Gallery in Australia. The move to the South Bank in 1982 ended eighty-seven years of location in temporary and inadequate quarters for the Gallery. In its new and permanent location, the Gallery was able to expand its Collection, its programs and its audience. During its first five years, the Gallery began to be transformed from a small, relatively inward looking, Brisbane-based institution into an art museum of international standing, serving its numerous communities throughout Queensland. To the Director during those years, Raoul Mellish, as well as to the Trustees, we owe a very considerable debt of gratitude, and I am only sorry that Raoul is not present today to hear me say so. He is in France doing what he likes best----painting pictures rather than curating them. While 1992 marks the tenth anniversary of the Gallery on the South Bank, it also marks the fifth anniversary of what was a year of fundamental re-organisation, which set the institution on a course of unprecedented change and expansion. There was a new Gallery Act, a new Minister, a new Chairman, a new Director, and a changed and reduced Board of Trustees, and there was also a strategic review of the Gallery's activities. I made my first speech as Chairman in the Gallery exactly five years ago. I said then: 'A Gallery, in my view, has several roles to play, all inter-connected and yet sometimes in competition with each other'. It should provide intellectual and aesthetic stimulation and pleasure----perhaps that is its primary role; it should have an important educational function; it should act as an historical keeping place for the art of the present as well as of the past; and, finally, it should be a centre of social activity in the broadest sense--a place where all those interested in the arts, be they patrons, collectors, connoisseurs, art students, or simply voyeurs, can meet on terms of relaxed equality. Moreover, a Gallery such as this, on the periphery of Asia, should take account of the art of what used to be called the Far East, but which is for us very much the Near North. I think it is fair to say that we have successfully addressed all these aims. The Exhibitions Development Fund, established three years ago with monies from Japanese companies, now stands at over one million dollars, thanks to the Government contribution, and this enables us to bring in from other countries exhibitions of the highest quality; the Education Program has been greatly expanded; the art of the present is covered by the Contemporary Art Acquisition Program; 114