The 1970s and early 80s were a boom time for New Zealand art museums (McCredie, 1999: 14). New galleries were built – many in provincial cities – and older ones saw significant re-development. The boom was assisted by government support for the arts which rose eight-fold between 1970-71 and 1974-75 (New Zealand Official Year Books 1971-1976), with funding for capital development readily available through the Department of Internal Affairs for the first time.
Galleries also began to re-orient their approach in response to new ideas about the purposes, functions, social and political relationships of museums. In using the phrase “going public”, McCredie (1999) deftly captures the features of this period in New Zealand: the upsurge in exhibitions and public programmes that characterised galleries’ activities; the motivations driving increases in public participation, and the philosophic engagement with concepts of the public museum. This turn to the visitor signalled that it was art museum education’s turn to assist in the democratisation of the museum’s enterprise.
These new ideas had their foundations overseas. As critical theory, broadly categorised in Anglophone countries as the new museology (Vergo, 1989), became
Policies. Practices. Public Pedagogy.
more insistent, its transformative influence on museum practice became more conspicuous (Harper, 1990; Karp and Lavine, 1991; Karp, Kreamer and Lavine, 1992). The post-structuralist critique, centred in the academy, portrayed museums, and especially art museums, as debased and discredited institutions founded on a series of fragile fictions which reinforced exclusion, suppressed innovation, and failed to deal adequately with changing needs of communities (Bourdieu and Haacke, 1995; Crimp, 1993; Foster, 1987; Donato, 1979). The debate also encompassed political activism: artists resisted the drastic under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in public collections, or revealed the hegemony of corporate sponsorship on which museums increasingly relied to sustain the numerous blockbusters circulating globally (Luke, 1992).
Social and political life in New Zealand in the 1970s was also being redefined by a new nationalist confidence.23 The Kirk Labour government elected with a landslide
majority in 1972, asserted that confidence in foreign policy, rejecting dependency on the United Kingdom, granting diplomatic recognition to China, withdrawing troops from Vietnam, deploying a frigate to Mururoa to protest French nuclear testing and cancelling the 1973 Spingbok rugby tour. Social policies focussed on support for families, workers and women. Legislation in these areas followed quickly. Persistent Māori activism finally revealed that the assimilationist proclamations of the Hunn Report (1961) were indefensible. Processes were established to support Māori self-determination: te reo Māori was declared an official language in 1974, statutory recognition was accorded to the Treaty of Waitangi, and in 1985 the Waitangi Tribunal began hearing claims to redress historical grievances. As the New Zealand Year Book proclaimed proudly, the values of society were founded on “the traditional, humanitarian, egalitarian and pragmatic approach and acceptance of community responsibility for social welfare” (New Zealand Official Year Book, 1981: 149; Rice, 1992: 484). These values were those enacted by the first Labour government in the 1930s and preserved since that time.
Such certitude was soon threatened. Precipitated by global circumstances, including a crippling oil shortage and a sharp fall in export income, New Zealand was unable to cushion against fiscal pressures. The political consequences of Kirk’s death while in office, the erosion of economic surplus and the backlash as unemployment rose sharply left the electorate in a volatile mood. In the 1975 election the National Party, led by Robert Muldoon, was returned to power convincingly. Despite the government’s assurances to the contrary, political and economic decisions resulted in high inflation, rising government debt, and extreme levels of unemployment. The
Prime Minister’s belligerent and arrogant leadership style contributed to the general malaise and the repudiation of the National Party at the 1984 election.
1984 - with its Orwellian overtones24 - began badly for the incoming Fourth Labour
Government led by David Lange. Without warning, it emerged that the previous government had concealed a severe balance of payments problem: New Zealand’s credit was almost exhausted. Even more pernicious was the defeated Robert Muldoon’s obdurate refusal to devalue the dollar in the post-election hiatus. Rethinking economic policy became an urgent priority and the style and pace of its implementation breakneck.
Treasury briefing papers to the incoming Labour government of 1984 and then 1987 emphasised the twin tenets of efficiency and equity. While not accepting all of Treasury’s advice, the Labour government planned and speedily implemented economic reforms designed to maximise efficiencies in the public sector. The concept of efficiency relied on achieving maximum outputs secured from given resources (Hawke, 1992: 438). When this line of thinking is applied to the museum sector, outputs such as preservation of heritage items, contributions to nation-building and national identity could be regarded as a public good, adding capital and social value to society. On the other hand, museum education with its focus on more generalised outputs and amenity values such as leisure, entertainment, knowledge consumption and life-long learning, could be seen to contribute substantially more to private good, and increases in individual social, cultural and perhaps, economic capital.
The challenges for art museums in these circumstances were considerable and the issues complex. Apart from the need to develop strategic solutions to combat rising costs and high inflation, the ground had shifted substantially and it took some time for museums (and New Zealanders) to understand the implications. The most significant factor for museums was that their relationship with local government changed from a funding model that provided finance for operations to a fee-for- service: local government contracted defined outputs from museums. This required consideration about measurement quotients. Jane Leggett’s catchy aphorism, “measuring what we treasure and treasuring what we measure” (2009) adroitly characterises the tricky issue of creating compatible mindsets from polarised philosophies. Not only did museums have to shift their thinking but so did their contracting agents, principally local authorities. Understanding how to achieve and implement successful quantitative and qualitative quotients to demonstrate efficiency became an onerous undertaking for most museums whose ‘three Rs’ -
Policies. Practices. Public Pedagogy.
ritual, reverence and restoration (Weil, 2002: 61) - were qualities writ in stone. With local authorities attuned to quantitative measures associated with their ‘three Rs’ - roads, rates and rubbish – museums faced an uphill battle. Indeed the measurement of qualitative outcomes associated with the intrinsic and extrinsic social benefits of museums remained an on-going issue (see Scott 2010, 2009; Legget, 2009, 2006).
Local government itself was under considerable pressure to meet central government’s demands for greater efficiencies and to cut spending. Moreover the Local Government Act 1974 was unwieldy and highly prescriptive with little bearing on the management of cultural heritage (
Legget 2006, 2009;
Stevens 2014; Wilson and Salter, 2003).25 A long-overdue review and re-structure of local government wascarried out so rapidly that it left communities dazed and bewildered (Rice, 1990: 492; Bush, 1990). There were corollary effects on museums. They had to manage prudently within the prolonged recessionary environment and, because operational revenue was diminishing, pressures to generate income began to mount. For many art museums the economic climate meant curtailing services and deferring staff appointments. For others, the availability of government funded temporary employment schemes provided opportunities to take staff on short term contracts to assist with necessary and routine technical tasks associated with exhibitions and collections (Christchurch City Council, 1982; McCredie, 1999: 100).26
For art museums, ‘going public’ was challenging enough: within the context of economic constraints it became harder still. The remainder of this section describes the responses of art museum directors and their newly employed educators to these issues. The narrative is constructed to emphasise broad context. The two chapters that follow examine in depth the circumstances of the Auckland Art Gallery and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery (later the Christchurch Art Gallery).