When Liz Ann Macgregor first took up her role heading the Museum of Contemporary Art it looked to be a poison chalice.
Philanthropist Simon Mordant had the task of simultaneously interviewing the impressive Macgregor while convincing the director of Birmingham’s Icon Gallery that she should lead the financially strapped institution. It was a delicate dance.
This time around, as the trustees consider generational change and institutional renewal, the potential candidates’ list to replace Macgregor, who announced last week she would step down after 22 years, includes a field of Australia’s leading gallerists and international talent.
Next in line to replace Liz Ann Macgregor (far right) at the MCA? Clockwise from top left: Blair French, Maud Page, Rachel Kent, Clothilde Bullen, Alexie Glass-Kantor and Aaron Seeto.
The MCA’s turnaround is well known in Europe as Macgregor has driven a strong exhibition program with international depth and forged an enduring partnership with London’s Tate Modern.
COVID-19, too, has reminded European and North American gallerists of the vulnerability of their own institutions and the relative sanctuary of the Australian executive arts scene. MCA is likely to draw on its strong networks in the UK.
“Sydney is looking very attractive with COVID-19 shutting galleries everywhere and directorial positions like this don’t come up often,” said a well-placed insider at a major Sydney art gallery.
Contender: Clothilde Bullen who is who is the MCA’s senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections.Credit:James Brickwood
Australia also has a well of talent from which to draw, as the MCA faces the challenge of delineating itself from Sydney Modern when it opens next to the Art Gallery of NSW in 2022 while also addressing the Change the Museum boycotts and Black Lives Matter movement.
“It won’t reflect well on the institution importing talent from Europe when there is such a wealth of talent in its own country and its own region,” said one influential cultural leader.
“There’s a far better case for appointing a director that has networks across Asia and the Pacific and can build on the international reputation of the MCA in its local context.“
Steven Alderton, chief executive of the National Art School, said the time was right for a director with a First Nation’s background, who could demarcate the MCA from other institutions on the international art scene.
“If you bring strong first people’s perspective to an art museum or arts facility it’s a dynamic difference to the current perspective and will bring a new way of thinking and experiencing and engaging with art that we really haven’t had before. It would bring an exciting and true cultural experience for visitors.”
Deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW, Maud Page, is a strong contender, with her deep connections to Pacific communities, but many assume Page will want to see through the construction of Sydney Modern as will Lisa Havilah at the Powerhouse Museum.
Maud Page, deputy director and director of collections at the Art Gallery of NSW.Credit:Mark Sherwood
Contenders from within the MCA include Clothilde Bullen who is the senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions. A Wardandi woman with English/French heritage, she came from the Art Gallery of Western Australia and is regarded as strong and impressive with untapped leadership qualities.
Rachel Kent has headed the MCA’s curatorial team in long partnership with Macgregor while Lara Strongman, the institution’s head of curatorial and digital, was formerly chief curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Both may want to step up.
Outside of NSW, Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow is the senior curator at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art who won admirers when she spearheaded its 2020 blockbuster Water. Then there is the Art Gallery of South Australia’s first-ever female leader, Rhana Devenport, and assistant director Lisa Slade, who was Nick Mitzevich’s loyal deputy before he left for the National Gallery of Australia, has championed Indigenous art education.
Likewise, Jason Smith from the Geelong Art Gallery, Rebecca Coates from the Shepparton Art Museum, or the adventurous Max Delany from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art could be itching for a bigger platform.
From NSW’s regional galleries, Campbelltown Arts Centre director Michael Dagostino is due for a change, understands western Sydney and the need to make art accessible.
National Association for the Visual Arts acting chief executive Penelope Benton said the appointment was a significant one and encouraged the MCA to consider the findings of Shifting the Balance, a recent report from Diversity Arts Australia that showed that only nine per cent of Australia’s cultural leaders were culturally and linguistically diverse.
Melissa Chiu – Curator Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden.Credit:Jonathon Timmes
This was despite data from the Australian Human Rights Commission showing that 39 per cent of Australians came from diverse backgrounds and were engaged consumers of the arts, Benton said.
The length and strength of Macgregor’s tenure, says one leader of a major cultural institution, requires not just generational change but artistic renewal to put MCA at the forefront of bold and adventurous contemporary practice.
“As it’s become more institutionalised, it’s become more like the Art Gallery of NSW at a time when it needs to be nationally distinctive in how it supports new and emerging practices with a real reckoning in the social context,” they said. “The Change the Museum Movement, Black Lives Matter, and diversity have become challenges to the MCA.”
Darwin-born Melissa Chiu has international authority, keeps company with rock star artists like Jeff Koons and Yoko Ono, and boasts the expertise in contemporary Asian art to make her a frontrunner if ever she could be enticed back from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, part of the Smithsonian still shuttered by COVID-19.
Chiu was founding director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art which the impressive Aaron Seeto also led before he went to Queensland Gallery of Modern Art and was poached to lead a private museum in Jakarta and in that role has developed first-hand knowledge of Australia’s place in Asian contemporary art practice.
Artspace’s Alexie Glass-Kantor is strong, opinionated and curated Australia’s representation at this year’s Venice Biennale while winning state money to renovate the historic Gunnery Building in Woolloomooloo.
At Carriageworks, Blair French has been an assured set of hands helping to navigate the venue’s way back to solvency and previously spent six years as the MCA’s director of curatorial and digital. The MCA has emerged from COVID-19 lockdown in sizeable deficit and having to re-establish itself financially, the pandemic having revealed the vulnerability of its business model by which 78 per cent of its income derives from events, catering, memberships, sponsorship, philanthropy, and retail.
Carriageworks chief executive Blair French.Credit:Rhett Wyman
The MCA’s board of directors led by chair Lorraine Tarabay will not be looking for a clone in their search for a successor but they’ll need someone with the director’s signature chutzpah, who can bring in the dollars from donors, sponsors and wrestle governments for funding. That might advantage a charismatic import or an experienced NSW government hand like the passionate Adam Lindsay, a former assistant director of QAGOMA, should he wish to move on from Sydney Living Museums.
In any event, the gallery insider expects the MCA will want a strong communicator in the mold of Macgregor. “Liz Ann has been passionate about art being accessible to all, not just the elite, and I can see her wanting to protect that legacy.”
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