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The Ian Potter Museum of Art has gone through a number of name changes and has been housed in different locations on the University of Melbourne Parkville campus. First established as the University Art Gallery in 1975, it was located in the centre of campus in the Old Physics Building.
Additional accommodation was found on Swanston Street for it in the Physics Annex in 1988. This space housed both the Ian Potter Gallery and the Art Conservation Centre and together with the University Gallery were known as The University of Melbourne Museum of Art. In 1998 a purpose-built art museum, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, opened to the public and is now considered one of the leading university art museums in the country.
Foundations
Constituted by statute of the University Council in
July 1998, the Ian Potter Museum of Art has custodial
responsibility for the university’s art collection,
as well as participating in teaching and research, exhibiting
and publishing and conducting
public programs. Through its core activities the Potter
provides for the acquisition, maintenance, conservation,
cataloguing, exhibition, investigation, interpretation
and promotion of the art collections of the University
of Melbourne. In partnership with academic departments,
the Potter takes part in teaching and research, as well
as offering vocational opportunities to students in
relevant degree programs.
Through their participation in professional associations
and partnerships with key public policy agencies, the
staff of the Potter contribute to the development of
the museums industry and cultural sector on national
and international levels.
In seeking to establish itself as a nationally and internationally
acclaimed university art museum, the Ian Potter Museum
of Art promotes the key values of the university’s
strategic and operational plans, contributing to the
profile of the university and to the cultural experience
of its Parkville campus. These goals are reflected in
the Potter’s strategic plan, of which the key aims
are; to manage the art collections to maximise benefits
to the university and the community; to develop research
and teaching; and to establish cultural leadership on
the campus and beyond.
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Activities
In acting more as a hub for activity than as an art
'bunker', the Potter goes against the grain of conventional
perceptions of the art museum. The Potter, for example,
exhibits considerably more art outside the building
than inside it. Because the Potter oversees the location
of art works in buildings across the campus, a far greater
proportion of the art collection is on display than
would normally be the case.
While all museums now prioritise education, the Potter’s relationships with academic departments means that its education programs encompass teaching from school holiday programs and VCE classes through to major exhibitions emerging from graduate research. Likewise, while all art collections have their own history, the university’s is a very local one; the objects often speak strongly of specific individuals, sites and philosophies. This local history is evident,
for example, in the considerable number of portraits in the collection, or in the area of antiquities, which has strong ties to teaching and field research.
The opening of the new Potter building in 1998 is the key to expanding the communicative role of the art museum. The Potter is now located on the boundary of the campus, rather than at its centre. Bridging the campus and the wider community, it is a gateway in a physical and conceptual sense. Exhibitions, publications, public forums and consultancies offer research, knowledge, and the pleasures of art to the Melbourne community. In sharing the university’s assets, both
cultural and intellectual, the Potter dispenses with an older, negative, definition of the art museum – as an elite cultural gatekeeper – replacing it with the idea of the museum as a gateway.
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