Since their inception, galleries and museums around the world have entertained the principles of marketing, but perhaps never so consciously as now. Of all Australian arts institutions, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has been most aware of the need to market its image.
In recent years there has been a major debate in Sydney on the nature of art education. Both Jacques Delaruelle and Fay Brauer have been active participants. Plants grow in silence but we (in the art world) vegetate noisily. see also article by Fay Brauer (no 665).
In the air, on the ground ( and water too). Sydney is undergoing an unprecedented interest in public art. Artists, curators, academics, contemporary art spaces, museums. commercial galleries, architects, urban designers, town planners, local government, arts councils and ministries - all are involved in varying degrees in making, discussing, supporting or promoting public art. Major fold out of William Yang's photographs.
Sydney thinks of itself as the centre of the country, the only part that matters, but in the lucrative art market, Sydney is subsidiary to the old moneyed city of the south -- Melbourne.
Western Sydney can be seen as another city with another culture. This is not quite accurate, but it is the fasted growing region where the bulk of the younger population of the city live. And it has art.
Editorial by guest editor Joanna Mendelssohn. What after all is different about Sydney? I have tried to give some idea of the debates which are not always expressed in writing - the incestuous nature of the mighty arts organisations; the way that words influence or corrupt understandings of art; and the limits on public debate because of fear of the consequences.
The most incisive commentary on the visual arts in Sydney usually occurs in private conversations that are not repeated in print for fear of the NSW defamation laws. But there is a great deal published on the visual arts....