MEANJIN BACK ISSUE

Meanjin on Museums: Art or Mart
Vol 60, no. 4, 2001

This is the first issue of Meanjin under the new editor, Ian Britain. It was launched on 6 December in Melbourne by the Hon. Dr Barry Jones AO at Readings Bookstore, Carlton.

The magazine appears in a new, enlarged format, and with a new cover and page design by one of Australia's leading graphic artists, Chong Weng-ho. The contents, as always, features samples of the best new poetry and short fiction by Australian (and some overseas) writers. In this issue, for example, there is a story by Marion Halligan and poems by John Mateer (winner of the Victorian Premier's prize for poetry in 2001) and Thomas Shapcott (winner of the Patrick White Prize in 2000). There is also a selection of fiction and verse from newly-emerging creative talents.

In the essays and reviews section of the magazine, the new editor intends to provide a sharper focus than ever before on contemporary and controversial themes. The recurrent theme of his first issue is Australia's museums, their contexts, their contents and their discontents. The issue is sub-titled `Art or Mart'. This echoes the title of one of the essays, a trenchant critique of the purchasing and curatorial policies of the state galleries by Juan Davila, the great scourge of the Australian commercial art scene, and `a great artist', as Benjamin Genocchio, art critic of The Australian, recently called him.

Other distinguished artists and cultural commentators report on museums old and new in various parts of Australia. They include novelists Carmel Bird and Sally Morrison, former Age art critic, Peter Timms, architecture professor, Leon van Schaik, multi-award-winning historian, Tom Griffiths, pioneer pre-historian, John Mulvaney, and heritage consultant, Linda Young. These authorities also add their voice to the debates over how far marketing imperatives and strategies have eroded aesthetic or scholarly values in Australia's major museums.

What these institutions represent of our national values, priorities, preoccupations and aspirations forms another common subject of the issue. For instance, one young historian, Sara Wills, takes a penetrating look at Melbourne's Immigration Museum in the light of the recent Tampa affair and the evasions and fears it revealed in political and community sentiments.

Some leading lights from within the museum world explain the constraints under which they work and also some of the joys of the job. There is an interview with Kevin Fewster, director of Australia's foremost design and technology museum, the Powerhouse.

The founding editor of Meanjin, Clem Christesen, recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday. Ian Britain hopes that something of the extraordinary Christesen legacy will be recognised in the critical but eclectic spirit of the museums issue, for all its innovations.