Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

4 Vote of thanks, valedictory remarks and Introduction of newly appointed Chairman, Mr Ted Edwards, at the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Annual Dinner, 11 May 1995 You will see that I am described in the program as the retiring Chairman of Trustees. In reality, I am the ex-Chairman. Tonight Ted Edwards is the rooster and I am the feather duster and I should not have to make a speech at all. I should just be sitting at the back of the hall, enjoying myself, and drinking the blood red wine like the king in the old ballad. Sir Bruce, however, suggested that I should propose the toast to the Foundation, introduce my successor, and also, since this is likely to be my last speech at one of these dinners, make a few valedictory remarks; and, with your indulgence, that is where I shall begin. When I wrote to the Minister I said that the Centenary Year seemed an appropriate moment to retire so that new ideas and more youthful vigour could carry the Gallery into its next I00 years. In that letter I reminded him, as one classicist to another, of the words that the Emperor Augustus had used about Rome, 'I inherited it brick and left it marble', and I suggested, with due humility of course, that, metaphorically, I could say the same about the Gallery. I hastened to add, however, lest he be able to accuse me of a degree of arrogance to which I did not aspire, that I claimed little credit for this metamorphosis. It had come about, I said, as the result of a felicitous combination of circumstances-a succession of sympathetic and supportive Ministers, sound and helpful fellow Trustees, and a dedicated and efficient staff headed by an innovative Director and a scholarly Deputy, all of them building, let it not be forgotten, upon the efforts of those who had gone before. For much of what has come to fruition in the last eight years, and for which my regime is now praised, had its genesis in the preceding decade. The Matisse exhibition is a case in point. One of those who spanned the two decades, and to whom can be sourced much of our success, is Professor Goodwin, who has also just retired as Deputy Chairman after twelve years as a Trustee. In 1987 the Gallery was transformed. It suddenly had a new Act of Parliament, a new Minister, a new Director, a,Chairman instead of a President and a Board instead of a Council--reduced in number from thirteen to nine. I therefore took the opportunity in my first speech to set out some of the things I thought a State Gallery situated in Queensland ought to be doing. First, It should be providing intellectual and artistic stimulation for the people of Queensland, and I think the Gallery has been doing that, both by constantly re-hanging its permanent collection, and also by bringing in great exhibitions from other countries. Second, it should play an important role in artistic education, and it has been playing that role. Third, it should be a repository for the art of the present as well as of the past, and many of our major acquisitions have been in the contemporary field. If we have made 171