Antony Gormley
A field for the Art Gallery of New South Wales 1989
1100 unfired clay figures 11 x 10 metres (approx overall)
Mervyn Horton Bequest Fund 1993
© Antony Gormley

Friday 18 March 2005 • Saturday 19 March 2005

Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

At a time when the boundaries between the museum and the real world appear to be lessening, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is hosting an international symposium that will investigate the role of the art museum today. Given the shift from an industrial/modernist age to a postmodern society, museum professionals, artists and patrons are asking the question, 'How do we make museums matter?'

Marc Pachter, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, will deal directly with this issue. Other keynote speakers are Edmund Capon, Director Art Gallery of New South Wales, Ross Gibson, Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, UTS, and Bob Ellis, well known writer and social commentator. Over two stimulating days these influential speakers will open up four important discussions relevant to art museums in the twenty-first century:
• Spaces for containing art - including panellist Richard Johnson, architect of the new Asian galleries, Art Gallery of NSW.
• Do audience expectations influence exhibition practice? - dedicated to the viewer's space.
• Language and the art museum, which ponders the mediating role that language plays and asks the question, 'Does it divide or unite audience and object?'
• Art for laughs: Should humour be banned in the art museum? - chaired by Jonathan Biggins, host of ABC-TV's Critical Mass arts program.

This two-day symposium, which brings together experts, researchers and panel facilitators, will provide you with an up-to-date picture of your place in the evolving role of art museums.

This is the second in the series of symposia. The first Art Museums: Sites of Communication was collaboratively presented by the National Gallery of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery, in March 2003.

 
Site last updated: Tuesday 1 February 2005