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Have insurance, will travel
By Susan Grigson
Visitors to Australia's cultural institutions take great delight in viewing thebeautiful artworks painted by the world's great masters.
These precious artworks are normally housed in the most prestigious overseas galleries so, before being transferred, detailed negotiations and planning take place. International lenders must ensure these valuable works are protectedand that stringent requirements relating to security, transport, conservation and access arrangements are met.
This process can make transferring these priceless items across the world a very complicated and expensive process that would be out of the reach of many of Australia's collecting institutions.
But for many years it's all been made possible through the support from the Australian Government's Art Indemnity Australia program.
The program aims to create greater opportunities for Australians to access the world's cultural treasures and to make exhibitions more affordable by removing the burden of commercial insurance costs from organisations managing the exhibitions.
This year marked the 25th anniversary of the Art Indemnity program. During this time, over $10 billion of significant cultural material has been indemnified and more than 20 million visitors have viewed these exhibitions.
For many Australian collecting institutions, Art Indemnity has been crucial to the delivery of important international exhibitions, such as the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition The Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay. This exhibition was organised in conjunction with Art Exhibitions Australia and was one of the most extensive collections of impressionist art ever seen in this country.
It included such iconic pieces as Van Gogh's Starry Night on the Rhone, and Cezanne's The Card Players-works that, otherwise, may have never been seen in Australia.
But, it's not all about bringing overseas art to Australia. This highly successful program also supports significant Australian exhibitions. John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque was a major retrospective exhibition of the painter who is generally credited as Australia's first professional artist. Glover's landscapes provide an important historical record of early colonial history in Tasmania.
Brought together by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia, the exhibition was able to tour to four different galleries with support from the program. It opened at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and then travelled to the Art Gallery of South Australia, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and, finally, the National Gallery of Victoria.
The Director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Mr Bill Bleathman recognized the support of the Australian Government through Art Indemnity Australia and Visions of Australia programs.
'The exhibition added significantly to both the public's enjoyment of this major artist and to global scholarship on this important British and Australian painter. Such an achievement would not have been possible without the commitment of the Australian Government working in partnership with our cultural institution,' Mr Bleathman said.
During 2003-04 the National Gallery of Australia's Out and About exhibition was supported by the program. The gallery's most famous paintings were exhibited in 20 venues across the country including regional centres such as Alice Springs, Bunbury and Rockhampton.
'Australians living in regional communities were for the first time able to view major works of art that they could only otherwise see by travelling to Canberra,' said Dr Brian Kennedy, the National Gallery's former director.
'The high cost of commercial insurance would have inhibited the gallery's ability to present the Out and About exhibition.
'Whether it is exhibitions that take such major works around Australia or the bringing of loans for important exhibitions such as The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires from overseas, Art Indemnity Australia makes it possible for the National Gallery to provide significant opportunities for all Australians to enjoy the visual arts.'
Art Indemnity supports a variety of exhibitions including such spectacles as Treasures from the World's Great Libraries.
In 2001, The National Library of Australia, in conjunction with Art Exhibitions Australia, brought to Australia more than 160 amazing exhibits from 38 generous lenders in 24 countries. These treasures of world history and culture had never before been gathered in one place. Over 115 000 people-including many visitors from overseas-flocked to see these treasures and were enthralled by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The exhibition included such cultural icons as Albert Einstein's handwritten E=mc 2 manuscript, the typed I Have a Dream speech delivered in 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr, and JRR Tolkien's original design for the dust jacket of The Hobbit.
'Without the support of the Art Indemnity Australia program, the Treasures exhibition could not have taken place as commercial insurance would have been prohibitively costly,' said Nat Williams, the library's Director of Exhibitions.
'The library is very grateful for this assistance in bringing such a significant and well-received exhibition to this country.'
The overall success of the program can be measured by the quality of exhibitions that have toured to Australia over the past 25 years and the number of visitors to those exhibitions. By making high quality exhibitions available, Art Indemnity Australia has had a significant impact on the Australian exhibition market.
Inset top left: Impressionists, Édouard Manet The Balcony (Le balcon) 1868-69, oil on canvasCollection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Left and detail at top: Vincent Van Gogh, Starry night over the Rhône (La nuit étoilée) 1888-89, oil on canvasCollection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Above left: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)
Original design for the dust jacket of The Hobbit or There and Back Again c.1936, MS Tolkien Drawings 32 © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and the Trustees of the J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 2001
Above right: John Glover, My Harvest Home 1835oil on canvas, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery