Title

Collecting in Context: Acquiring Prints for the QUT Art Collection.

Author

Rainbird, Stephen

Details

Sixth Australian Print Symposium, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2007

Publication date

2007

Type

Conference paper

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Collecting in Context: Acquiring Prints for the QUT Art Collection
by Stephen Rainbird

My paper is titled Collecting in Context: Acquiring Prints for the QUT Art Collection. It deals with the print acquisitions program at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane where I have worked for the last eighteen years – initially as Curator, then as Senior Curator and presently as Senior Curatorial Advisor. My current role includes curatorial responsibilities for art acquisitions and exhibitions at the QUT Art Museum as well as providing high level planning and specialist advice to the University in relation to major cultural initiatives such as the multi-million dollar restoration and refurbishment of Old Government House as an art gallery and house museum, which I will refer to later in my talk.

My paper focuses on three main areas:

• the history of collecting prints at QUT;
• the current framework for the print acquisitions program; and
• future directions for expanding and consolidating this collection.

History of collecting prints
The QUT Art Collection was established in 1945 and developed from four quite distinct sources. Amassed in a somewhat ad hoc and perfunctory manner by a small number of enlightened individuals – art lecturers, artists and private art collectors – the original collections were located at three autonomous teachers colleges and an institute of technology. These institutions were the precursors of two larger educational establishments, the Brisbane College of Advanced Education and Queensland University of Technology, formed in 1982 and 1989 respectively. In 1990, the two institutions amalgamated, creating one of Australia’s largest and most progressive universities. The merger signalled the beginning of a new and dynamic chapter in the history of the collection, a period characterised by rapid growth and exceptional custodial interest.

The collection was seen by the University’s senior management as rather special and unique. It greatly added value to an institution that was still in its infancy and anxiously seeking to forge an identity that diverged from its educational traditions of technical and vocational instruction.

Both the foundation Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor were especially sympathetic and supportive from the outset. The Chancellor and his successor went on to chair the University’s Art Collection Committee throughout the 1990s and during the latter part of that decade the Vice-Chancellor steered the fundraising campaign for the development of the QUT Art Museum, which opened in mid 2000.

Established chiefly as a teaching resource for students and staff more than 60 years ago, the collection has since expanded to become an important cultural resource of national significance. Current holdings total almost two and a half thousand works and include paintings, sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper. Indeed QUT houses the second largest public art collection in Queensland – after that of the State Gallery, which contains some 12,500 holdings.
The following statistical summary provides a valuable insight into QUT’s prints collection:

• Print holdings comprise over twelve hundred works (1215) and represent slightly less than half the total number of works in the collection. Of this number 92% are by Australian artists. The remainder are mostly European and Japanese works, including a group of outstanding ukiyo-e prints from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of which were acquired with funds privately donated in the late 1980s.

• The earliest print holding is Shigemasa’s colour woodblock print Cultivation of the silk worm produced in 1776. Colonial artist Conrad Marten’s panoramic view titled Elizabeth Bay, Port Jackson with old Macleay mansion, a hand-coloured lithograph from 1850, is the earliest Australian print.

• Although sporadic and unfocussed collecting characterised the early years of development, a number of important prints were acquired. Works by seminal figures in early twentieth-century Australian printmaking such as Murray Griffin, Lionel Lindsay and Margaret Preston featured prominently among acquisitions in the late 1940s and 1950s. Soon after works by other Australian art world luminaries were collected including pieces by Tate Adams, Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams. The pace of acquisition picked up noticeably in the 1970s and 1980s, largely through the support of the Australia Council, with exemplary works by George Baldessin, Arthur Boyd, Barbara Hanrahan, Roger Kemp, John Olsen, Lloyd Rees and Jan Senbergs being acquired.

• The greater part of the prints collection – just over a thousand works – has been acquired since 1990. This growth coincided with QUT’s increasing curatorial expertise in contemporary print media and the associated prioritisation of prints as a key collecting area within the acquisitions program.

• In 1993, the International Year for the Word’s Indigenous People, QUT established the Oodgeroo Collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. Created as a discrete but related body of work within the main collection, Indigenous art has since become a collection strength. A period of intense buying in this area over the course of fourteen years has resulted in a significant corpus of new work being collected. Indigenous works now constitute 14% of total print holdings (173 works).

This collection contains especially strong representations of the work of artists from Arnhem Land, the Kimberley region and Utopia as well as from the Tiwi Islands, Lockhart River and the Torres Strait Islands. Also included are a number of outstanding images by a younger generation of Indigenous printmakers working in regional and urban centres across Australia.

Where possible QUT endeavours to collect prints to
augment and enhance other major Indigenous works by
the same artists. This approach has been adopted with
regard to practitioners like Gordon Bennett, Gloria
Petyarre, Rover Thomas, Paddy Tjapaltjarri Sims and Judy
Watson, all of whom are represented by key paintings and
prints.

• Compared with many Australian universities, QUT operates a lively art purchase program. In addition to substantial University support, the program is the beneficiary of generous philanthropy and benefaction. Nearly half of our print acquisitions have been gifted or purchased through donated funds from individuals and the corporate sector. Private collectors and artists, both locally and interstate, have been particularly generous. The collection contains unusually rich concentrations of the work of contemporary practitioners like Alun Leach-Jones, Euan Heng, Ron McBurnie, Graeme Peebles and William Robinson. We hold, for example, 93 screenprints, etchings and linocuts by Leach-Jones; 69 etchings and lithographs by Robinson; and 17 mezzotints by Peebles – the majority of which have emanated from the largesse of these artists in gifting significant bodies of work to QUT.

Dr Douglas Kagi, a Melbourne-based scientist and art collector, is the University’s most important prints benefactor. However, I will mention his contribution only briefly because I know that the second speaker Glenn Barkley will discuss Dr Kagi’s benevolence to the University of Wollongong in greater depth.

Douglas Kagi’s generosity and support in gifting to QUT a significant collection of contemporary Australian and international prints has greatly enriched our holdings. His two gifts, the first made in 2001 and the second in early 2007, are valued in excess of a $1/4 million. They have provided a rare opportunity for the University to augment and enhance its collection of twentieth-century American and European prints, including works by several internationally acknowledged artists.

This collection was built up during the 1960s and 1970s and expanded in the 1990s. Chief amongst the American works are prints by Alexander Calder, Lyonel Feininger and Ron Kitaj. Important British prints include representative examples of the work of L. S. Lowry, Henry Moore, John Piper, William Scott and Graham Sutherland. French holdings of note contain works by Georges Braque, Robert Delaunay, Auguste Rodin and Victor Vasarely.

Dr Kagi’s gifts comprise some 110 prints and include works by a number of eminent practitioners – Lynn Chadwick, Helen Frankenthaler, Richard Hamilton, Ron Kitaj, Henry Moore, Mimmo Paladino, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore, Larry Rivers, Pierre Soulages, Graham Sutherland and Joe Tilson, amongst others.

In 2002 the QUT Art Museum mounted an exhibition of selected prints from Douglas Kagi’s original gift. They were juxtaposed with related prints acquired in earlier decades and reinforced the importance of collecting works in context.

Current framework
Like all public collecting institutions QUT’s acquisitions program is circumscribed by various factors, some encouraging and others less so, which affect its ongoing development and growth.

Lack of funding is commonly cited by art museum professionals as the major impediment to collection building. In Australian universities, for example, where financial support for museum’s and collections is frequently determined by the vagaries of a high-ranking individual, usually the vice-chancellor or divisional or faculty head, art acquisition programs are generally delivered in an extemporised and piecemeal fashion. Unlike teaching and research, which are the core business activities of a university, collection development is often marginalised and deemed a luxury pursuit. It is usually tied in with ‘strategic partnership’ and ‘client service’ objectives or what is now euphemistically called ‘community engagement’ to reflect a university’s civic responsibility.

Within the context of QUT’s “real world” positioning and service orientation, the art collection plays a vital role. Its importance is reflected in the dynamic nature of our acquisitions program, the focus of which is contemporary Australian art.

QUT’s Community Engagement Strategic Plan is the blueprint that guides our collecting – in four principal areas:

• Digital and photo-media work;
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art;
• Queensland art; and
• Contemporary Australian printmaking.

Contemporary Australian printmaking is defined here as work produced post-1960.

In acquiring works in these areas, QUT acknowledge the importance of:
• procuring major works;
• contextualising and extending current holdings;
• promoting creative experimentation and innovation in contemporary art; and
• advancing QUT’s commitment to sustainable reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian people.

Our commitment to collecting prints is driven by three main objectives:
• To present a more homogenous and comprehensive view of Australian printmaking over the last 50 years by extending existing holdings and filling prominent gaps;

• To interface with new technology by embracing digital modes of production to complement conventional printmaking methods; and

• To acknowledge the importance of printmaking in Indigenous communities both as a means of extending their traditional cultural practices and augmenting diversity in contemporary Australian art.

In 2006, a total of 97 works were acquired for the QUT Art Collection. Of this number 56 were prints. Major contemporary print purchases included works by Gordon Bennett, Ian Burn, Fiona Foley, Milan Milojevic, Gloria Petyarre, Fiona Hall and William Robinson. As well, a number of historical works were bought including wood engravings from the early 1930s by Lionel Lindsay and screenprints from Sidney Nolan’s 1971 ‘Ned Kelly’ series. Lindsay’s Morning glory 1932, depicting the recurring motif of the peacock, is the highlight of the group and considered a masterpiece of Australian wood engraving.

Several important prints were also gifted including pieces by Alun Leach-Jones, Lloyd Rees and Brett Whiteley, which came from Sydney collectors. Two delightful mid-nineteenth century Japanese woodblock prints by Hiroshige were donated by a Brisbane collector.

Acquisitions made in early 2007 include three striking wood engravings by Tim Jones from a series of images depicting what he describes as ‘memory forests’; and a portfolio of seven prints by Aleks Danko from his major cycle of work ‘Songs of Australia’ made between 1996 and 2004.

In the international field, we are in the process of acquiring a book of nine linocuts simply titled Linocuts 2006 by leading American conceptual artist Sol Lewitt, published by John Kaldor, a seminal figure in contemporary art patronage in Australia. This major acquisition will add to QUT’s burgeoning international prints collection, particularly to works espousing a hard-edge minimalist style.

Future directions
Assembled in their own right as a versatile and engaging art form and frequently used to complement related works in other media, prints form the nucleus of the QUT Art Collection. They will remain a key acquisitions focus because of their intrinsic importance to the collection. As the only art form which has been collected in some depth, prints provide the catalyst for ongoing collection development at QUT, particularly in providing an overview of contemporary Australian printmaking practice.

Compared to paintings and sculpture, prints remain reasonably low-priced unless acquired as large portfolios or produced by eminent practitioners, and they are fairly easy to store. In an institution where the acquisitions budget is quite small – just $100,000 per year to cover all purchases – and storage space is becoming increasingly limited, it is both logical and practical for us to focus on collecting prints.

I want to close by mentioning briefly a new initiative at QUT which will have some bearing on the prints collection through the work of one particular artist.

In 2009, as part of Queensland’s sesquicentennial celebrations, the University will open a third exhibition space to complement its existing two venues – the QUT Art Museum and The Block, the latter is a purpose-built high-tech space for performance and multimedia work in the Creative Industries Precinct at Kelvin Grove.

The new venue will be established in Old Government House, one of Queensland’s most culturally significant buildings adjacent to the Art Museum at the Gardens Point city campus. Comprising six rooms in the eastern wing of the House, it will be the home of a gallery celebrating the life and work of William Robinson, the distinguished Australian and Queensland artist.

QUT possesses the largest public collection of Robinson’s work in Australia including almost 70 prints. With one-off funding of $1/2 million allocated from the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Initiatives Fund, the William Robinson Collection will be substantially developed over the next two years.

The primary focus will be works on paper – prints, drawings and watercolours – rather than the pricey paintings which we hope will ultimately come into the collection through gift and bequest. It’s a significant project which underscores the importance of our William Robinson Collection and Australian print holdings.

I’ll end my talk there. But I want to say that QUT runs a splendid acquisitions program, arguably one of the best in the Australian university sector. Undoubtedly we are a small player in the grand scheme of things but hopefully what we do will assist the development of Australian printmaking, particularly in strengthening the dynamic relationship that exists between artists, printmakers and QUT.

© Stephen Rainbird, Senior Curatorial Advisor, QUT Precincts
Paper delivered at the Sixth Australian Print Symposium, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2007

 

Last Updated

13 Aug 2012