Australian Performing Arts Collection

Last updated

Australian Performing Arts Collection
APAC Archive.jpg
The APAC collection in storage
Australian Performing Arts Collection
Former name
Performing Arts Museum
Location Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Coordinates 37°49′13″S144°58′6″E / 37.82028°S 144.96833°E / -37.82028; 144.96833 (Australian Music Vault) Coordinates: 37°49′13″S144°58′6″E / 37.82028°S 144.96833°E / -37.82028; 144.96833 (Australian Music Vault)
Website www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/exhibitions-collections/australian-performing-arts-collection
-37.820278, 144.968333

The Australian Performing Arts Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne, formerly known as Performing Arts Museum (PAM), is the largest specialist performing arts collection in Australia, with over 780,000 items relating to the history of circus, dance, music, opera and theatre in Australia and of Australian performers overseas. [1]

Contents

History

Established in 1975, [1] the collection was originally known as Performing Arts Museum (PAM) and was planned as part of the Melbourne Arts Centre while that building was being complete. [2]

Roy Grounds had been appointed to design the Melbourne Arts Centre in 1959, and although he is said to have intended for a performing arts museum to be part of the building, he did not include a space for one in his original design brief. Instead, he had included a series of display cabinets around the building's foyers which would house collections. [3]

In 1975, a committee was set up to advise on the sources and types of material to be included in PAM. [4] At the time, the museum's name had not been finalised, and suggestions included Museum of the Performing Arts, Stage Museum, or Performing Arts Museum, with the later being decided upon in 1977. [4]

The Performing Arts Museum was officially launched by Premier Sir Rupert Hamer on 30 October 1978 with a display held at the nearby National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), where George Pusak, managing director of Mobil Oil, gave a cheque of $300,000 towards the museum's establishment. [3]

The NGV also hosted PAM's first major exhibition in 1981, [4] before PAM officially opened in 1982 with early exhibitions on Dame Nellie Melba and Bourke Street. [5] [6] In its first year the museum had 47,000 visitors, four major exhibitions, six smaller exhibitions, and also showed exhibits in the buildings foyer. [3]

Now officially known as the Australian Performing Arts Collection (APAC), [7] the collection continues to be expanded, [8] and exhibitions created by or featuring collections from APAC have toured nationally and internationally. [9] [10]

In August 2022, incoming Melbourne Arts Centre CEO Karen Quinlan announced plans to further showcase the Australian Performing Arts Collection and loan the collection to other Australian institutions. [11]

Exhibitions

The Australian Performing Arts Collection held exhibitions in the galleries throughout Arts Centre Melbourne (Gallery 1, Gallery 2, St Kilda Road Foyer Gallery and Smorgon Family Plaza). Exhibitions subjects have included AC/DC, Kylie Minogue, Geoffrey Rush, Peter Allen, and Nick Cave and have toured nationally and internationally. Since 2017, they have run the Australian Music Vault, a permanent exhibition and collaboration with the music industry. [12]

Collections

Ballet slippers in the APAC collection APAC Ballet Slippers.jpg
Ballet slippers in the APAC collection

Collections began being acquired before the Melbourne Arts Centre was built, officially beginning in 1979. Highlights include collections relating to musicians Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue, as well as the Australian Archives of the Dance, The Australian Ballet, Circus Oz, Juke Magazine, and more. [4] In 1975 an advertisement announced the Arts Centre Melbourne was preparing to receive theatrical memorabilia for their museum and were inundated with materials which were looked over by a group of volunteer archivists. [3] The collection was said to be unique at the time of its founding, because it didn't specialise and instead would collect anything to do with the performing arts. [3]

Many of the records, along with costume and set designs, audiovisual materials, and other papers pertaining to the New Theatre, Melbourne (1936-2000), and the personal papers of theatre director Dot Thompson, were acquired by APAC in 2001. [13]

Directors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery of Victoria</span> Art museum in Melbourne, Australia

The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arts Centre Melbourne</span> Performing arts centre in Victoria, Australia

Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central Melbourne suburb of Southbank in Victoria, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State Library Victoria</span> State library in Melbourne, Australia

State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It is also Australia's busiest library and, as of 2018, the world's fourth-most-visited library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queensland Cultural Centre</span> Historic site in Queensland, Australia

The Queensland Cultural Centre is a heritage-listed cultural center located on Grey Street, South Brisbane, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is part of the South Bank precinct on the Brisbane River. It was built from 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski</span>

Joseph Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski AM, FRSA was best known for his ground-breaking work in chromasonics, laser kinetics and 'sound and image' productions. He earned recognition in Australia and overseas for his pioneering work in laser sound and image technology. His work included painting, photography, film-making, theatre design, fabric design, murals, kinetic and static sculpture, stained glass, vitreous enamel murals, op-collages, computer graphics, and laser art. Ostoja flourished between 1940 and 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museums Victoria</span> Museum operator in Victoria, Australia

Museums Victoria is an organisation which operates three major state-owned museums in Melbourne, Victoria: the Melbourne Museum, the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks Museum. It also manages the Royal Exhibition Building and a storage facility in Melbourne's City of Merri-bek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canberra Theatre Centre</span> Performing arts venue in Canberra

Canberra Theatre Centre (CTC), also known as the Canberra Theatre, is the Australian Capital Territory’s central performing arts venue and Australia’s first performing arts centre, the first Australian Government initiated performing arts centre to be completed. It opened on 24 June 1965 with a gala performance by the Australian Ballet.

Del Kathryn Barton is an Australian artist who began drawing at a young age, and studied at UNSW Art & Design at the University of New South Wales. She soon became known for her psychedelic fantasy works which she has shown in solo and group exhibitions across Australia and overseas. In 2008 and 2013 she won the Archibald Prizes for portraiture presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2015 her animated film Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose won the Film Victoria Erwin Rado Award for Best Australian Short Film.

The Melbourne Arts Precinct is home to a series of galleries, performing arts venues and spaces located in the Southbank district of Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. It includes such publicly-funded venues as Arts Centre Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, and Southbank Theatre, along with various offices and training institutions of arts organisations.

The Melbourne Winter Masterpieces is an annual series of major exhibitions held over 100 days in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Exhibits are sourced from galleries and institutions from around the world, and exhibited at Melbourne Museum, National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for the Moving Image. The annual series held during the Melbourne Winter – between June and October.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour</span> 2011 concert tour by Kylie Minogue

Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour, also known as Aphrodite Live, was the twelfth concert tour by Australian singer Kylie Minogue. It was launched in support of her eleventh studio album, Aphrodite (2010). The tour was officially announced in September 2010, initially with European venues confirmed. Additional British dates were added in January 2011, alongside North American and Asian dates. Australian dates were confirmed in March 2011, and in May of the same year, Minogue announced she would tour Africa for the first time. The stage of the tour was composed of an Ancient Greek temple wall and two runways leading to a B-stage, which included a three-tiered scissor lift surrounded by water fountains. Thirty water jets created by The Fountain People, a tilted rotating platform and aerial performer displays were also part of the staging, paying homage to Greek mythology and culture. Effects and staging were provided by TAIT Towers, who described the stage as "one of the most technically advanced ever built". Fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana created the costumes for the tour.

Ponch Hawkes is an Australian photographer whose work explores intergenerational relationships, queer identity and LGBTQI+ rights, the female body, masculinity, and women at work, capturing key moments in Australia's cultural and social histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arts Project Australia</span> Non-profit organisation based in Australia

Arts Project Australia Inc. is a registered charity and non-profit organisation located in Northcote, an inner northern area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The organisation provides facilitation/mentoring, studio and exhibition spaces for artists with intellectual disabilities, and as such has been identified as a major centre for the promotion and exhibition of outsider art, or art that has been produced outside of the contemporary and historical mainstream. In 2016 there were approximately 130 artists attending the studio, with the work of exhibiting artists featuring alongside works from the broader contemporary art community in the annual rotating exhibition program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Constable</span> Australian artist

Alan Constable is an Australian artist well known for his ceramic sculptural depictions of photographic cameras. Constable has worked principally from his Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 1991, gaining critical success as a multi-disciplinary artist proficient in a wide diversity of media including pastel, gouache, paint and ceramics. He has been working on his series of ceramic cameras since 2007 and works from this series were represented at the 2009 Australian Ceramic Triennale in Sydney and featured in a solo exhibition of his work, Clay Cameras, at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. Thirteen works from this series were acquired for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, and appeared in their blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art, Melbourne Now, in the same year.

Lesbia Thorpe (1919–2009) was an Australian artist, possibly best known for her printmaking.

Maree Clarke is a Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, BoonWurrung/Wemba Wemba woman living in Melbourne, known for her work as a curator and artist. Clarke is a multidisciplinary artist renowned for her work in reviving South-eastern Aboriginal Australian art practices.

Mel O'Callaghan is an Australian-born contemporary artist who works in video, performance, sculpture, installation, and painting. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world and received a number of awards for her artistic practice, and her work is held in a various collections in Australia and France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Music Vault</span> Music museum in Melbourne, Australia

The Australian Music Vault is a free permanent exhibition that showcases past and present Australian contemporary music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Stephenson (photographer)</span> American-Australian photographer

David Stephenson is an American-Australian fine art photographer known for his representations of the sublime. His photographic subjects have included landscapes from America to Australia, the Arctic and Antarctica, the Southern Ocean, European sacred architecture, and day- and nighttime skyscapes. He has lived in Tasmania since 1982.

This is a list of exhibitions held by the Australian Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, organised chronologically and grouped by decade until 2017. Since 2017, the Australian Music Vault has housed a permanent exhibition utilising the APAC collection. The collections on display are rotated regularly. Previous exhibitions have toured nationally and internationally, while other collections are occasionally loaned.

References

  1. 1 2 "Arts Centre Melbourne". Open House Melbourne. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  2. "A live museum.....for performing arts". Papua New Guinea Post-Courier. 23 March 1979. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Fairfax, Vicki (2002). A place across the river : they aspired to create the Victorian Arts Centre. South Yarra, Victoria: Macmillan. ISBN   1-876832-13-4. OCLC   52868496.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Van Stratten, Frank (1996). The Performing Arts Museum: A Chronology. Victorian Arts Centre Trust.
  5. "Advertising - NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA MELBA TRIBUTE". Canberra Times. 22 May 1982 [22 May 1982]. p. 18. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  6. "Bourke St. flash-back". Australian Jewish News. 18 March 1983. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  7. Inside the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 22 October 2020, retrieved 8 August 2022
  8. "Australian Performing Arts Collection welcomes Olivia Newton-John acquisitions". Australian Arts Review. 28 September 2020. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  9. sshalders (7 September 2018). "Kylie on Stage exhibition boosting visitor numbers". www.ararat.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  10. "Nick Cave's cave: exploring the musician's darkest recesses". The Face. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  11. Flux, Elizabeth (3 August 2022). "Incoming Arts Centre CEO warns of 'short-term pain' amid rebuild". The Age. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  12. Strong, Catherine (21 December 2017). "The Australian Music Vault moves the canon beyond pub rock". The Conversation. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  13. "New Theatre: Company history". Arts Centre Melbourne . Retrieved 20 November 2022.
  14. PGAV. "Arts Centre Melbourne Farewells Janine Barrand". pgav.org.au. Retrieved 8 August 2022.