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I miss you Nick. I’m not often lost for words, but I am now. Several weeks after your emotional funeral and wake I have been asked to write an obituary. Yet I know you would be as uncomfortable with the formal obituary as you were with the formal suit and tie. So I guess this is the blue denim and checked shirt version. Most people who read this will already have read fine tributes from your friends and colleagues including Joanna Mendelssohn, Alan Krell, Felicity Fenner, and Ted Snell. These appeared not just in Sydney and Australia but New York, Glasgow, London and at least a dozen other cities around the world. I know, because friends have emailed me and told me how horrified and saddened they are at your death, at your murder—still and forever shockingly unbelievable—and that of your daughter Chloe. They’ve told me how much they loved you, and how much you touched their lives.
They would have read about your early career studying French history in Grenoble and Renaissance art in Florence, your work as a broadcaster and art critic, and of course your great work as a multiple Biennale of Sydney director, paralleling your dynamic directorship of The College of Fine Art’s (COFA’s) Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney. As far back as 1983 you were appointed director of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. Later, you ran the gallery management course at City Art Institute (now COFA), upgrading it to one of the world’s best Master of Art Administration courses.
Reading these obituaries has been like engaging with a Cubist painting. I think we’ve all seen new facets of you that we’ve constructed