The new Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane begins with a break. The old Queensland Art Gallery now holds all of the work made before 1970. GoMA holds all of the work made after 1970. But the split between them might as well be that between the 20th and 21st centuries. Perhaps in time we will even come to see that the 21st century in art began in 1970. And, as a result of choosing 1970 as the dividing line between the two galleries, the whole of GoMA becomes an example of what we might call 21st century art. This is the truly interesting thing about the new Gallery: that it absolutely grasps (whether consciously or not) all of the consequences of what happened in 1970. One of which would be the fact that in the 21st century we will no longer have an art history, or indeed—and this is already to be seen in GoMA—really even an art. What then could be the status and meaning of a gallery of modern art in the 21st century? This is the question the new GoMA does not so much pose for us—for the new art and museology are not finally interrogative or critical in this way—as embody. The answer thus remains an enigma, a puzzle, a secret, buried deep within the building, counter-intuitively, for all of the openness and light of the new Gallery, like the mysterious black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What is it that happened in 1970? Why is this date so appropriate as the distinction between the two galleries? In short, it marks the end of modernism, which means the end of the teleological... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline