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Museum to consign 'bias' to history

By Lauren Martin

30 July 2003 - The new director of the National Museum of Australia will overhaul two contentious galleries, scrap blockbuster exhibitions in favour of shows that can tour shire halls, and create a million- dollar acquisitions fund.

Since opening in 2001, the museum has been a battleground in Australia's "culture wars". It is tackling charges of political bias by displaying the arguments: next year the museum will hang panels explaining how curators and historians come up with them.

Long-serving bureaucrat Craddock Morton was appointed last week as director for three years, after acting in the position since the museum's first chief, Dawn Casey, was effectively sacked in December.

Mr Morton, a former Keating adviser, was once pilloried by the Howard Government as a Labor party "propaganda" pusher.

Now he is tackling fears he will implement a political history agenda set out by conservative members of the museum council, including John Howard's biographer, David Barnett, and former speechwriter Christopher Pearson. Their concerns led to a review by Melbourne sociologist John Carroll. The review broadly approved the museum's treatment of indigenous history but called its coverage of European settlement "ill-focused and confused".

Revealing a strategic plan for the next three years, depending on funding, Mr Morton said the museum would take immediate action on some issues, including the story of Captain James Cook. The review said Cook was "pejoratively and unfairly" covered in displays insinuating European arrival was "a disaster for the continent".

"It's not our intention to hero-worship a line of dead white males... but on any estimation, Cook is one of the great world figures of the 18th century," Mr Morton said.

The Cook displays are in the Horizons gallery, to be renamed the "Australian journeys" gallery, featuring explorers, travellers and migrants. It will include Australians who have left to make "history all over the world", from Gallipoli, London to Bali.

Another contentious gallery, Nation, will be renamed Creating a Country, "to represent the development of Australia and its economic, social and political conditions". After Mr Barnett's submission that the museum should include waterfront reformer Chris Corrigan and mining giant Hugh Morgan, the review suggested this gallery include stories of national development. The museum's response is to include displays ranging from the Anzacs to the Flying Doctor Service, solar-powered satellite phones and mechanical wheat harvesters.

After two major exhibitions on deserts and beauty, it will turn to less costly and intensive shows. "(We want to) tour something to country towns where they can be seen in the shire hall," even if lighting and climate aren't good, Mr Morton said.

Source: The Age

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