The Wiggles over design? Powerhouse of anger over arts exhibits

A stoush is brewing among the Sydney design fraternity over the apparent dumping of a long-term decorative arts and design exhibition, as stakeholders attack the Powerhouse Museum for “dumbing down” its collection.

The fracas erupted after the Powerhouse dismantled a prominent arts, crafts and design gallery after four and a half years on display. Many have expressed dismay at the removal, with former arts festival director Leo Schofield describing the decision in the Sydney Morning Herald letter pages as a “retrograde move”. Mark Goggin, acting director of the museum, responded in kind by saying the exhibition, entitled ‘Inspired! Design across Time!’, was being dismantled to make way for a temporary touring exhibition space and upgrades to the museum’s entrance, cafe and shop.

Opening in 2006 and covering 1200 square metres, the ‘Inspired!’ exhibition was one of the largest galleries of design in Australia. It featured 800 international and Australia objects spanning 300 years and took eight years to curate. According to the Powerhouse Museum, the gallery was intended to be on permanent display.

Grace Cochrane — a former senior curator of Australian Decorative Arts and Design at the Powerhouse Museum, and coordinator of the dumped exhibit — told Crikey the design community had not been given any reasons for the gallery’s removal and there appeared to be no plans for the displaced exhibition.

“After anticipating such an exhibition for many years, few can believe it has been pulled out after less than five years, with no discernible explanation, or plan for the future,” Cochrane wrote in an open letter to Powerhouse Museum director Dawn Casey. “In not announcing reasons, or plans for the future, it is as if we, the many constituents and audiences, are not acknowledged or valued.”

Goggin told Crikey that for the museum to remain relevant there needed to be a more regular turnover of temporary and permanent exhibitions: “The museum has gone through a whole range of public consultation processes. One of the central themes has been how to reinvent the museum’s permanent galleries. So as part of those planning processes we consulted really broadly across the science and design communities.”

He says there are numerous iconic objects in the ‘Inspired!’ exhibition which may be used when the museum’s design precinct is reformed.

The Powerhouse Musuem, which is a statutory body under the NSW government, was originally set up under the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences Act 1945. Cochrane and Schofield contend the removal of ‘Inspired!’ is an example of the de-emphasis of design by the museum. Both also expressed dismay at the timing of the removal of the gallery, which coincided with the start of the Sydney Design Festival.

Goggin responded by telling Crikey the timing was just a coincidence and there was no shift by the Powerhouse “away from design or to science or vice versa”: “Having said that, there’s been an enormous growth in creative industries in the way that design is now defined. Certainly the decorative arts for contemporary audiences need to be resold and reinterpreted.”

In her open letter to Casey, Cochrane said the removal of the gallery could be the result of internal decisions about priorities and preferences, as the result of external funding pressures from the NSW government. Many stakeholders — including designers, craftspeople and students — were disappointed with the decision, Cochrane says.

“They want to find out why this had happened, and what the Museum’s plans are for the future of this important aspect of the collection, which they see as equally significant as, for example, science and technology and popular culture,” she wrote.

In his letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, Schofield said the removal of the exhibit was an attempt to convert the Powerhouse into a “science museum or demi-Disneyland”.

“The institution is designated as a museum of applied arts and sciences but, bit by bit, the applied and decorative arts are being de-emphasised and the program of exhibitions dumbed down,” Schofield wrote. The facility is set to open a Wiggles exhibition in Spring in honor of the supergroup’s 20th anniversary.

Goggin says the museum provided programming for both families and “culturally active” adult audiences: “There is nothing that has been dumbed down in our program,” he said.