National Museum of Australia
 Front view of the museum |
|
| Data | |
|---|---|
| place |
Canberra , Australia 
|
| Art |
Folklore Museum, Historical Museum
|
| architect | Howard Raggatt, Steve Ashton |
| opening | 1980 |
| Website | |
The National Museum of Australia (dt. Australian National Museum ) is a museum in the Australian capital Canberra . It shows practically every aspect of Australian life and culture. The collection ranges from Aboriginal culture, which is up to 50,000 years old , to European settlement, and also provides a glimpse into the future. The museum has been located near the Australian National University on the Acton Peninsula in Lake Burley Griffin since 2001 . The Royal Canberra Hospital, which was demolished in 1997, was previously located at this location. As a result, the collection, which had been continuously enlarged since a corresponding law was passed in 1980, was brought together in a single location.
architecture
The shape of the postmodern building designed by Howard Raggatt at the tip of the Acton Peninsula is reminiscent of linked ropes, which symbolically connect the inhabitants of Australia with one another. The architects said: “We thought that the history of Australia was not just one, but many interrelated stories. Not an authorized version but an enigmatic confluence; not just the dissolution of the difference, but their unreserved embrace. ”The building should represent the center of a knot, with towing ropes or strips extending from the building. The most obvious of these extensions forms a large loop before turning into a walkway that extends past the neighboring Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies building and ends in a large curl, as if a giant ribbon had happened to fall on the floor unrolled. Known as the Uluru Axis , the band focuses on the central Australian natural monument of Uluru . It symbolically integrates the site with the planned capital of Walter Burley Griffin and the spiritual heart of the Australian aborigines.
The shape of the main entrance hall continues this theme: it is as if the otherwise rectangular building encloses a complex node that doesn't quite fit into it. The completely asymmetrical building complex is designed so that it does not look like a museum - with amazing colors and angles, unusual rooms and unpredictable projections and textures. Although the building is difficult to categorize precisely, it can be seen as an example of Charles Jencks ' “new paradigm”; some features of deconstructivism can also be identified. The building concept, which is based on the idea of a “confused vision”, includes a variety of references, including
- Philosophy Tape by Bea Maddock
- Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock
- a boolean string , a knot and the Ariadne thread
- the dreamtime story of the rainbow serpent .
So the architecture is meant to imply that the history of Australia is not a single story but is made up of many interwoven stories. The building also refers to or quotes other structures:
- a cloister designed by Walter Burley Griffin in Newman College, Melbourne
- the Sydney Opera House - both the parts designed by Jørn Utzon and the parts designed by the other architects
- the shell curves by Félix Candela
- the TWA Flight Center by Eero Saarinen at John F. Kennedy International Airport
- a bow by Richard Serra
- the garden of australian dreams is said to evoke a number of different cartographies
- the walls use selected fragments of the word Eternity - reminiscent of Arthur Stace , who pasted that one word onto the sidewalks of Sydney for thirty years.
The controversial quote is a reference to the 1999 opened Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind . It contains an exact copy of the zigzag-shaped lightning bolt that Libeskind created for the Berlin Museum by breaking a Star of David . The Bulletin magazine first publicly raised allegations of plagiarism in June 2000 . Libeskind is said to have been upset about the copy. Raggatt defended himself by pointing out that the design was a quote and not a copy. Museum director Dawn Casey claimed in the press that she and the museum council were unaware of this symbolism when they approved the design.
The outside of the building is clad with anodized aluminum panels. Many of the panels contain words written in Braille and other decorative elements. This also includes controversial words and phrases such as sorry ("sorry") and forgive us our genocide ("forgive us our genocide"). These more controversial messages have been masked with silver disks that are attached to the surface, making the Braille illegible.
exhibition
The foundation of the collection is the National Historical Collection with over 210,000 objects representing the history and cultural heritage of Australia. The collection focuses on three themes: the culture and history of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders , Australian history and culture since it was settled by Europeans in 1788, and the interactions between humans and the Australian environment. Notable objects include:
- Bikes owned by Australian cyclist and 2011 Tour de France winner Cadel Evans
- navigational instruments used by Captain James Cook
- a holey dollar , the first coin minted in Australia
- Olympic medals won by John Konrads at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome
- Props from the children's television show Play School
- an Australian flag found in the ruins of World Trade Center Three after the 9/11 attacks
- Objects related to Burke and Wills' expedition
The museum also acts as a temporary repository for the repatriation of the remains of Aboriginal ancestors. It participates in projects to return the remains of the Australian Aborigines, which are in the collections of museums around the world, to their communities of origin. As part of these projects, more than 1,400 remains had been returned by March 2019.
history
During the 20th century there were sporadic proposals for an Australian national museum, but due to wars, economic crises and political inactivity nothing concrete happened for a long time. A national inquiry in 1975 (the "Pigott Report") eventually led to the museum's formal establishment in 1980 with the passage of the National Museum of Australia Act by Parliament. The collecting activity began with the takeover of various collections from the federal government. The Yarramundi Reach peninsula near the Scrivener Dam was initially envisaged as a possible location for the museum . The Royal Canberra Hospital on the Acton Peninsula was closed in November 1991 and finally demolished in July 1997. In December 1996, the federal government announced that the new museum would be built on the area that would become free and it secured funding. The opening took place on March 11, 2001 and was also one of the main events for the centenary of the Australian Confederation.
On the afternoon of December 29, 2006, Canberra was hit by a severe storm that damaged the roof in the museum's administrative area. The ceiling collapsed under the weight of the hail, exposing electrical cables; the ground was two inches under water. The water also damaged several paintings by a Sydney artist that were part of an exhibition on Australian lifeguards. However, the main part of the building remained untouched and nothing in the collection was damaged. The building reopened to the public a day later, with damage amounting to over half a million dollars.
In 2012, construction work began on a new administration wing. The relocation of the museum café there enabled more optimal use of the huge entrance hall for displaying large objects from the collection, such as vehicles. The new café went into operation in December 2012 and the rest of the work was completed in March 2013. The building is clad with colored tiles arranged in the form of a QR code .
Web links
- Website National Museum of Australia (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ National Museum of Australia - in the architects words. Australian Institute of Architects, 2010, archived from the original on February 5, 2012 ; accessed on February 28, 2020 (English).
- ↑ National Museum of Australia a popular attraction in Canberra. Attractions in Australia, Retrieved February 28, 2020 .
- ^ Architecture profile: Charles Jencks. Radio National, February 2001, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ A b Crystal Palaces: Copyright Law and Public Architecture. (PDF, 2.8 MB) Bond Law Review (Volume 14, No. 2), December 2002, archived from the original on May 20, 2006 ; accessed on February 28, 2020 (English).
- ^ Deyan Sudjic: Australia looks back in allegory at its inglorious past. The Guardian , March 4, 2001, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ Keith Windschuttle : How not to run a museum. Quadrant, September 2001, archived from the original on August 20, 2006 ; accessed on February 28, 2020 (English).
- ^ Miranda Devine: Disclosed at last, the embedded messages that adorn museum. The Sydney Morning Herald , April 2, 2006, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Collection. National Museum of Australia, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Collection highlights. National Museum of Australia, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ Repatriation. National Museum of Australia, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ UK's Natural History Museum returns remains of Indigenous Australians to elders. SBS News , March 27, 2019, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ History of our Museum. National Museum of Australia, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ Ben Wellings: Nation, History, Museum: The Politics of the Past at the National Museum of Australia . In: Susana Carvalho, François Gemenne (Ed.): Nations and their Histories - Constructions and Representations . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2009, ISBN 978-1-349-30453-0 , pp. 274 .
- ↑ National Museum damaged by hailstorm. The Sydney Morning Herald, December 30, 2006, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Storm hits museum paintings. The Sydney Morning Herald, December 30, 2006, accessed February 28, 2020 .
- ^ National Museum of Australia workplace. A&M Architecture, 2013, accessed February 28, 2020 .