Beware governments that talk about community consultation, but in practice fall in with the wishes of the developers. At the end of July, after months of speculation and in flagrant disregard for her own government’s community consultation process, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that the [...]
By JUDITH WHITE Artist John Olsen first came to public prominence back in 1953, as a leader of art students protesting against the conservative Archibald Prize choices of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Board of Trustees. That's him on the left of the [...]
In 2007 the Australian Public Service Commission published a set of guidelines entitled Building Better Governance. Under the heading “Clear Accountability Mechanisms” it stated: “Australian Public Service agencies are accountable to the general public through the Parliament as well as to the Government. The success [...]
Last year international art consultant Adrian Ellis, an expert in new construction, wrote in the London-based publication The Art Newspaper about the trend away from the grandiose museum expansion plans of previous decades. He gave this warning: “The shoals and whirlpools of capital projects still [...]
NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet declared in his first state budget (June 20) that NSW was “the envy of the Western world”. Really? Not in the arts! What Perrottet delivered was not a budget of facts and figures but spin. The 34-year-old son of a senior [...]
The NSW Coalition government will contribute $244 million to fund the Sydney Modern plan at the Art Gallery of NSW, according to The Sydney Morning Herald report tonight. The commitment is apparently contained in the NSW Budget to be presented to State Parliament on Tuesday [...]
Children of Coal is a riveting memoir. Culture Heist is the book that started an ongoing discussion about the future of our great cultural institutions. Order one or both here. To contact Judith White, email admin@cultureheist.com.au
In today’s world, enlightened voices in support of the arts and sciences are needed more than ever. We need the sciences to understand our world and find solutions to its problems; we need the arts to raise our horizons and unleash creativity. Since the earliest [...]
Welcome to the Culture Heist blog. It's time for an open and honest assessment of the problems facing our much-loved cultural institutions. My book Culture Heist, due out in May, began as an account of recent developments at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, [...]
Culture Heist has had a huge response from readers. "Cheers are going up around the country," said one museum professional, "as people listen to what you're saying." The COVID pandemic has made the issues raised more urgent than ever. Here's how it went when the book [...]
