Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS.AND, TO OPEN THE EXHIBITION, THE PRESENCE IN BRISBANE OF M. GERMAIN VIATTE, DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEE NATIONAL D'ART MODERNE CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS. PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, PRINTS, SCULPTURE, ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, CUTOUTS, COSTUMES AND A STAINED-GLASS WINDOW, TOTALLING 270 WORKS, WERE DRAWN FROM OVER FIFTY INSTITUTIONS AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS AROUND THE WORLD. THIS EXHIBITION WAS SEEN BY 87 800 VISITORS IN BRISBANE BEFORE GOING TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA. 'MATISSE' ACHIEVED EXTRAORDINARY CURATORIAL AND SCHOLARLY ACCLAIM AND CONSOLIDATED THE QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY'S REPUTATION FOR SCHOLARSHIP. JOANNA MENDELSSOHN IN THE BULLETIN OF 25 APRIL 1995 WROTE: 'IT ["MATISSE"] IS EASILY THE MOST INTELLIGENT BLOCKBUSTER EXHIBITION EVER MOUNTED IN THIS COUNTRY, THE RESULT OF THE KIND OF METICULOUS PLANNING AND THOROUGH SCHOLARSHIP WHICH HAVE BECOME THE HALLMARK OF QUEENSLAND OPERATIONS'. JOHN MCDONALD WROTE IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD OF 18 APRIL: 'WHAT DISTINGUISHES THIS EXHIBITION FROM OTHER RECENT "BLOCKBUSTERS" IS THE UNUSUAL CARE GIVEN TO THE SELECTION OF WORK AND THE CATALOGUE'; AND SASHA GRISHIN IN THE CANBERRA TIMES OF 22 APRIL SAID: 'ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EXHIBITIONS OF MODERN ART TO EVER TOUR AUSTRALIA ... "MATISSE" IS A BRILLIANT EXHIBITION WHICH WILL CHANGE THE WAY MANY PEOPLE PERCEIVE ART'. A NUMBER OF OUTSTANDING INTERNATIONAL MATISSE SCHOLARS CONTRIBUTED TO THE CATALOGUE AND THE SCHOLARLY CONFERENCE. THE OCCASION OF THIS ADDRESS WAS THE OFFICIAL OPENING BY M. VIATTE, WHICH WAS ATTENDED BY THE ARTIST'S GRANDSON, M. CLAUDE DUTHUIT, AND HIS WIFE. Although there have been nine exhibitions of French art in this Gallery and, of course, hundreds of others, this is the first time that an exhibition of any kind has been opened by the Director of a leading Art Museum in France. That this is happening on the eve of the Gallery's I 00th birthday makes this especially significant: in 1895, the year this Gallery was born, a new Gallery was also opened in Paris-the Gallery of New Art. It is therefore not only a pleasure but also a privilege to have the task of welcoming and introducing Monsieur Germain Viatte this evening. Monsieur Viatte, who was born in Quebec, has devoted his life to the arts, beginning his long and distinguished career at the age of twenty-four as Inspector of the Provincial Museums of France. Ten years later he took a leading role in putting in place the plans for the Pompidou Centre-– that marvellously improbable building in which he now reigns as Director of the National Museum of Modern Art and Director of the Centre of Industrial Creation. Of the Pompidou itself he has written: [It] confronts Paris as if it were a mirror, fleetingly reflecting images of this century's ideas and theories . . . Ranged invisibly behind the several hundred works on display there are thousands of others which help to sum up a century of hesitations, errors, lost opportunities, obstructions, hobby horses, campaigns and initiatives: a thick sediment of hope strained through the filter of the state to produce an image of contemporary reality. In that sediment of great twentieth-century paintings, there are 180 works by Matisse of which twenty-six have been loaned for this exhibition. 97