40 Years and Counting
In October 2016, one of the solutions suggested to mitigate the Australian federal budget deficit was a proposal to sell Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles (1971).1 Bought for $1.3 million, its price tag, in 1973, caused controversy. Now estimated to be worth $350 million, this significant abstract expressionist painting, arguably Pollock’s best work, is often cited for its monetary value. While we have pressing budgetary needs—social issues such as homelessness, public health, and education—the fact that culture is seen merely as an asset with a price tag attached, rather than a repository of memories, public story, and historical narrative, would indicate that we have some way to go in terms of achieving cultural maturity. I would argue that, without stories and their cultural memories, we are more automaton than human.
When my mother died, also in October, what kept me awake at night was the compulsion to tell her story. Her funeral became a celebration of all the decades of her life, allowing us (as her family) to share with others the person she was, throughout her entire life. This was powerful, affirming, and positive—its value to us at this time immense.
This preamble is testimony to the way in which objects and imagery tie us to place, to story and to memory. The forty year collection that has evolved around the University of Queensland Art Museum (UQAM) is a repository of cultural values and collective memory, with the visual excitement of the contemporary. Luckily for the University, but also the broader state and national population, the establishment of a collection and a gallery in 1976 allowed for a focus on contemporary Australian art and the narrative of now. It