Pondering the 'what ifs', the 'what if' actually asks if all of Tasmania's 'public musingplace collections' were to find themselves under a single 'governance' regime.
It is something that bumps up against the investments in the status quo front and centre. In regard to human resources, the stakeholder component of the Community of Ownership and Interest (COI) are ever likely to resist given that their incomes may well be challenged.
Yet in the case of the QVMAG it has been declared that the 'cost centre status quo' is unsustainable at the end of 'search' for a governance model that would deliver an outcome as close as possible to the status quo. Not an altogether bad outcome albeit one that surreally discounted a paradigm shift into anything like a 21st C merging of Tasmania's 'musingplace collections' into something like a COLLECTIONlutruwita.
Apparently what is unconscionable is a merging without the faltering and floundering bureaucratic paradigm that 'blends and blands' governance and management albeit with all the unsustainable fiscal consequences as 'a load of lead in the saddlebag'.
All this was deliberated upon in camera well away from the collections' COI well away from the press, well away from Open Council, well away from the ratepayers' scrutiny. There is no 'trust' in evidence here.
Healthy societies need the push of free enquiry and speculative research. Likewise, societies, and the diverse cultural realities within them, also need the pull of free enterprise to drive the successes needed to survive and thrive.
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Musingplaces are the places where new knowledge and enhanced understandings can be won along with the new data relevant to the world – the stuff that carries us forward.
The extent to which this is the case for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), it is also true for kindred musingplaces and heritage sites throughout Tasmania... LINKS [1] [2] [3] [4]
These places are important cultural resources. Arguably, a growing number people seem to have come to an understanding that if change can be embraced at the TMAG that could enhance ‘the cultural experience’ in Tasmania. Over time the TMAG has embraced change in the wake of healthy contestation.
Seeking change would be the case for all Tasmanians and by extension for visitors to the state – virtual and digital – that come to it with a broad range of knowledge sets as well as a wide range of expectations and aspirations. Yet, the TMAG is but a component of what might well be understood as Tasmania's 'cultural estate'.
Of course Tasmania's visitors, through their engagement and participation with local people, and their engagement with the ‘Tasmanian cultural estate’ – say COLLECTIONlutruwita – would be creating income streams for many aspects of the states cultural operations beyond the TMAG and kindred musingplaces throughout the state – plus private initiatives and kindred institutions statewide and interstate. The opportunity exists!
Moreover, there is a strong case to be put that it would be appropriate now for the Tasmanian government to:
•. Make new appointments to the TMAG’s governing Board of Trustees;
•. Extend the board’s membership in the near term to reflect new and emerging dimensions of musingplaces statewide; and
• Extended the leadership role of the Board of Trustees enabling it to proactively work towards establishing a physical network and virtual network of museums, art galleries, heritage sites, cultural events to better serve Tasmanians and by extension visitors to the state.
Tasmanian cultural tourism, cultural institutions plus the histories and heritage of the ‘island’ are closely interrelated. However, currently there are somewhat haphazard interfaces and interrelationships relative to the operational components of these organisations, destinations, etc. This is less than desirable as proactive cooperative and collaborative marketing and program development could well deliver more dynamic outcomes – indeed more productive outcomes.
Taking cultural tourism by itself, it can be understood as having five primary components.
• First of all an important component of cultural tourism in Tasmania is relative to the island’s physical 'placedness', its natural histories and by extension its pre-contact physical realities – its geography, its geologies and natural environment. Almost all of this is bound up with the ‘wilderness idea’ in one way or another.
• Very closely aligned with all that there is the cultural realities of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people in both pre-colonial and postcolonial contexts that are similarly bound up in Tasmania’s cultural landscapes, Tasmanian 'placescapes' and cultural production. Albeit that it is a factor that is yet to be fully acknowledged and engaged with in a contemporary cultural cum post colonial context there are cultural development and tourism subtexts to be considered and developed towards achieving more inclusive and respectful outcomes relative to Tasmanian Aboriginal communities.
• Tasmania’s built environment – public, commercial and private – is very much a part of the State’s cultural estate. It is often not acknowledged that collectively the State’s built environment is not only a key component of the island’s attractiveness as a tourism cum cultural destination and that it is a key component of Australia’s and Tasmania’s cultural estate.
• In the widest and most inclusive interpretation, the arts collections that have been created since the European settlement of Tasmania are amongst Australia’s most significant. Importantly, there is an increasing need to be able to access these collections both physically and virtually. More importantly, Tasmania's 'pakana and palawa communities' cultural production is part of a continuum that is the worlds oldest surviving cultural cultural reality.
• Tasmanian social histories and industrial heritage are both unique to the island and a microcosm of a kind relative to those found elsewhere in Australia and other ‘colonised places’. In many ways Tasmania’s cultural estate is an exemplar in regard to demonstrating the interfaces evident in ‘settler societies’ in a Eurocentric Western world context.
Bearing all this in mind there is a case to be put that a Board of Trustees for an entity understood as MUSEUMS TASMANIA drawing upon a COLLECTIONlutruwita working in concert with and collaboration with revitalised (extended?) network of 'trusteeships' statewide would best placed to put a new inclusive statewide strategic plan in place. That is:
• A plan relevant to 21st C imperatives;
• A plan that takes a proactive and productive role in the overall governance and management of Tasmania’s the cultural ‘estate’ – say understood as COLLECTIONlutruwita ;
• A plan that invests musingplaces and heritage sites with enhanced relevance and values.
A key imperative appears to be to do with 'ownership' and by extension 'implied trust' invested in an entity such as COLLECTIONlutruwita.
Then comes the issues of 'intellectual property' and 'cultural property'. These can be contentious issues and their management needs to be strategic. Thus it is a governance matter.
So, what if 'collection matters', can be separated from, perhaps insulated from, the variance of and the diversity of placedness relative to governance? By extension, what if a compounded and condensed 'cultural estate' can be achieved in ac21st C context, what might it look like?
Therefore the TRUSTtango comes into play and the parties need to get together in order determine the steps to be danced. That is eminently doable!
It would appear that the time and place for that would be via a Citizen's Assembly or some like process and the lead dancer in the TRUSTtango most likely needs to be the State.
CONTEXT … CLICK HERE
THE WHAT IF FACTOR … CLICK HERE
21st CENTURY MUSING IN lutruwitaTASMANIA … CLICK HERE
SO WHAT NOW? … CLICK HERE
BY WHAT MEASURE SUSTAINABILITY … CLICK HERE
A STRUCTURE FOR COLLECTIONlutruwita … CLICK HERE
HOW MIGHT A COLLECTIONlutruwita COME TO BE … CLICK HERE
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