Compiler

Chola dynasty (9th–13th centuries), Tamil Nadu, India, The child-saint Sambandar, 12th century, bronze. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra – Art of the Indian Subcontinent gallery, Canberra. Purchased 2006. Visit www.nga.gov.au/IndianArt.

A first at the NGA

At the end of last month, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) opened a new gallery, Art of the Indian Subcontinent, the first in an Australian public gallery devoted to such a separate display. Many of the sculptures and textiles on show have been acquired in the last eighteen months and have not been seen before. The NGA holds the largest Indian collection outside of India itself. Recent acquisitions will join old favourites in a new central location off the main entrance foyer. Visitors will be delighted by the vibrant and inspiring world of the art of the Indian subcontinent, with works from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal on display. The new gallery's opening was celebrated with an Indian dance performance on 2 September and an exciting competition giving visitors the chance to win a trip to India. Better hurry along, now! KJD

Unique like all the others

‘A youth-driven celebration of cultural diversity, which bridges cultural, socio-economic and geographic boundaries to community involvement.’ Wow! How many clichés can they cram into one sentence? Medley Mag is a new online magazine looking for contributions from twelve to twenty-five-year-olds in the form of works of art, poetry, stories, reviews and essays. ‘A unique opportunity for young people to showcase their talents’, says the press release. Perhaps they’ve not heard about all the others. Email info@medleymag.com.au or visit www.medleymag.com.au.

Going, going, gone

A London collector paid $660,000 for a painting by Rover Thomas at Sotheby’s auction of Aboriginal art in Melbourne last month. It was the second highest price paid for a painting by an Aboriginal artist. The highest was another work by Thomas that sold for $780,000 five years ago. Over 130 works were offered and most of those sold went overseas.

Summit to think about

Twenty-five people involved in arts administration, business and politics, along with sixty invited observers, gathered in Canberra on 10 August for a National Regional Arts Summit, organised by Regional Arts Australia. The following priorities were identified: to get more people in regional areas involved in the arts; to conduct research that demonstrates the benefits of the arts; to develop a national promotional campaign; to find better ways of developing relationships with local government and other organisations; to build better infrastructure; to develop mentoring projects for young people; and to encourage more exchanges among regional arts organisations. [Art Monthly was there, too! All delegates received complimentary back issues. Ed}

Class distinctions

The Neue Gallery in New York, whose owner, Ronald Lauder (not Nicki Lauder as I reported previously) recently bought Gustav Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer 1 for US$180 million, has imposed a special tariff to control the crowds wanting to see it. The gallery, which usually charges non-members a US$20 entry fee, is hiking the price to US$66 on Wednesdays because of ‘high demand’. The tactic was pioneered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which sometimes offers ‘$66 Mondays’ during popular exhibitions to allow the well-heeled to avoid having to mix it with the rabble. Let’s hope the idea doesn’t catch on here.

The great temptation

The National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) inquiry into allegations that its senior curator of twentieth-century Australian art, Geoffrey Smith, used his position to further his own financial interests and those of his then partner, art dealer Robert Gould, will bring into the open a debate that has for too long hovered in the background. The matter concerns not just the NGV but all publicly-funded galleries. Curators, often poorly paid and professionally undervalued, are subject to great temptation to use their professional positions to acquire works of art for themselves at favourable prices and to favour certain commercial galleries in which they might have a financial or personal interest. This is hardly the first time someone may have succumbed to that temptation. If the NGV inquiry leads to more transparency and to a more practical (and enforceable) code of conduct for curators, then it will have served a useful purpose.

The reality is ...

The ABC’s new head of television, Kim Dalton, in an interview for the Age last month, had this to say about arts programs: ‘There’s been a lot of commentary about the ABC’s commitment to and involvement in the arts. We should have an involvement and it’s important to offer an opportunity for Australia’s creative community to present themselves and their work to Australian audiences and to have it discussed in some sort of critical context. The reality is that a limited number of people are going to be interested in that material, but that’s not a reason for putting it on at 2am. You’ve got to be reasonable about where you position it in the schedule, accepting also that you’re not going to kill the ratings with those sorts of programs.’ Nevertheless, the ABC appears to think that Rolf Harris’s eminently pointless Star Portraits is worth a prime-time spot and heavy promotion. The reality is that this is what happens when a public broadcaster succumbs to the vanities of the commercial world rather than positioning itself as a viable alternative.

The ‘Fuck you’ approach to arts funding

Although the federal budget finally put an end to hopes for resale royalty rights for artists, it did promise, as ‘compensation’, an extra $1.1 million for artists’ training. During discussions with the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and other arts organisations, arts minister Rod Kemp had promised that this money would be allocated to arts organisations via an open-tender process. Now, with no warning and no consultation, the minister has given the money to the Australian Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) – $500,000 is to provide a training package to help artists work more closely with the commercial art market (which is just weasel words for saying that it will go to the commercial art market) and $600,000 will disappear into AbaF’s general revenue. Robyn Ayres, director of Arts Law Centre of Australia, rightly says that when artists need assistance, it’s hardly going to be the AbaF they turn to. It will be the organisations that actually represent their interests on a day-to-day basis.