The NSW Government will move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta.
- The NSW Government purchasing the riverfront site for the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences).
- The City of Parramatta committing $40 million to fund and grow arts and culture in the community over the next 20 years.
- A partnership between the NSW Government and the Council for a $100 million redevelopment of the Riverside Theatre with the State taking a 50 per cent interest in the project.
By Linda Cheng
The NSW government‘s contentious plan to relocate the Powerhouse Museum from Ultimo near Sydney’s CBD to Parramatta in Western Sydney could result in the museum’s collections being shared between the two sites.
In April, the NSW government said the relocation plans “could include keeping some Powerhouse presence at the current site in Ultimo.”
The government also said it was “committed to building a truly iconic museum on the Parramatta Riverbank site,” which was selected as its preferred site in April 2016.
In February 2015, the NSW government announced plans to sell the current site of the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo, part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, for an estimated $200 million, which would be used to fund the construction of a new museum in western Sydney.
Read more here.
This story first appeared in ArchitectureAU and appears here by kind permission of the author.
[post_title] => Hopes Powerhouse Museum Ultimo could stay
[post_excerpt] => Museum collection could be shared.
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Australia’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums (or GLAM industries) will become increasingly irrelevant unless they get with the digital program, says a CSIRO report released this week.
The report, An Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia's Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, found that most organisations viewed their digital activities as more of an “add on”, rather than part of their core service delivery.
The investigation found a variety of responses to digital technology from the GLAM industries including a “mix of resistance, ignorance, piecemeal adoption, and in some cases wholesale embracing of digital."
Going digital is a mammoth task for such institutions because of the massive scale of collections, the expense of digitalisation and the headache of wrestling with copyright and cultural law.
The combined collections of Australia’s GLAMs encompass more than 100 million objects, ranging from natural and human-crafted objects, records, books, artworks, and recordings. Only around 5 per cent of this is on-display at any one time and 25 per cent of it is digitised.
The report said: “Only a few Australian GLAM organisations have made fundamental changes to their planning, structures and operations to place innovation and digital services at the core rather than as add-on activities. While nearly all GLAM organisations in Australia have started to make this sometimes-difficult transformation, most are yet to complete this process.”
Acting Director of CSIRO's Digital Productivity Flagship Dr Michael Bruenig said that many GLAMs had not kept pace with the speed of digital change and that Australia was falling behind international best-practice in digitising over 100 million artworks, books and audio-visual items.
Dr Bruenig said that slow progress could risk losing public visibility of significant cultural and heritage material.
"The way Australia's collections are managed varies considerably. Some progressive institutions have collections that are fully digitised and can be accessed virtually over the web. However unfortunately some of Australia's collections are still managed through log books and card indices," Dr Bruenig said.
But he said that some venues had embraced digital technology.
"For example, it is now possible to visit the National Museum virtually via a guided robot. This innovation means school students in regional Australia are able explore exhibits and engage with the museum, when they otherwise would not have the opportunity to.”
Other institutions also came in for praise too. For example, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, which has made some of its photographic collection available on Flickr on an open licence agreement. The State Library of NSW also won plaudits for digitising its heritage collections, a mixture of documents and objects, for access online.
The, at times unwieldy, report put forward a number of recommendations which included: shifting to open access models and greater collaboration with the public; new approaches to copyright management; establishing a national leadership and collaboration forum; wider sharing of digitisation skills and ideas on aggregation initiatives like Trove and the Atlas of Living Australia; standardising preservation of 'born digital' material to avoid losing access to digital heritage and sharing capability, storage and networks between organisations in the sector.
The report, conducted in partnership with the Smart Services CRC, was based on consultation with representatives from state, national and local galleries, libraries, archives and museums, researchers and international experts.
[post_title] => Go digital or die, Australia's cultural institutions told
[post_excerpt] => Technological D-Day for galleries, museums, archives and libraries.
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The NSW Government has once again announced that the Powerhouse Museum will be moved from its current Harris Street, Ultimo location to a riverside site in Parramatta, next to the Riverside Theatre, which will undergo unspecified redevelopment and become 50 per cent state-owned.
The government has remained stum on what it will do with the current Ultimo site, but it is widely expected to be sold off for unit development.
What we know
The NSW Government has reached an agreement with Parramatta Council for a massive investment in new cultural infrastructure in Parramatta, which is the first major step in the relocation of the Powerhouse Museum to Sydney’s west.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said “the $140 million agreement laid the foundations for a vibrant arts and cultural precinct in Parramatta and secured the best site for the new Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta.
“Today is a major step forward in the NSW Government’s commitment to relocating the Powerhouse Museum to Western Sydney,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“The relocated Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta will be the anchor for arts and culture for the region, and now the site for the museum is locked in.
“The Powerhouse at Parramatta will include the best exhibits currently at Ultimo, and will build on them. The new Powerhouse in Parramatta will be bigger and better than anything this State has seen and will be a drawcard for domestic and international visitors.”
The $140 million in-principle agreement will see:
- The NSW Government purchasing the riverfront site for the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences).
- The City of Parramatta committing $40 million to fund and grow arts and culture in the community over the next 20 years.
- A partnership between the NSW Government and the Council for a $100 million redevelopment of the Riverside Theatre with the State taking a 50 per cent interest in the project.
Powerhouse-Museum
Hopes Powerhouse Museum Ultimo could stay
Museum collection could be shared.
Go digital or die, Australia’s cultural institutions told
Technological D-Day for galleries, museums, archives and libraries.
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