29 April 2008

Richard Tognetti on our recent 20:20 summit

I think this is a pretty decent post from Richard Tognetti the artistic leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. It covers the whole arts side of the 20:20 summit.
I guess one aspect not covered is that currently the focus within the arts sector in Oz is still all about the performing arts. Those on the other cultural heritage side (museums, libraries, galleries and archives) are still very much the poor cousins. There are well-funded pockets, but generally we fade into the background, especially when compared to sport!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The performing arts side of 2020 is well covered by Marcus Westbury over at http://www.marcuswestbury.net/ who would violently disagree with Tognetti's orchestral focus. If we are talking heritage arts then opera and orchestras are very much heritage arts . . .

I'm disappointed that even he doesn't take up the fight for the collecting institutions and am continually at him about it. The cultural heritage sector has a golden opportunity to be seen as contemporary rather than 'full of old stuff' - we often have far more social spaces than many performing arts spaces yet we haven't really found a way to trumpet that . . .

Unknown said...

Good points Seb. I put this post up quickly without much other reading. Thanks also for the link to Marcus Westbury's post, I'll check it out. I usually find the ACO's concerts very inspiring, but wonder how much they stray beyond performance arts themselves? I invited them to a tour of the exhibition I have on at present in our museum when they were down in Canberra earlier this year because some of the things we did regarding design and presentation were ideas that started in my head while attending their concerts. I didn't even get a reply from their website. Maybe I needed to be more direct?