Victorian era: Jeff Gibson on the NGV - News - National Gallery of Victoria expansion symbolic of growth spurt in Australian art world

The Australian art world is having a extension spurt. In Brisbane, a $65 million museum is beneath construction, augmenting and vastly extending the reach of the Queensland Art Gallery, domicile to the Asia Pacific Triennial. Down southerly a whole new commercial-gallery district has sprung up in Sydney while, greatest in quantity auspiciously, in Melbourne an ambitious expansion of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Involving the pair a major renovation and a novel museum building, is nearly clean Reopening in December, the original NGV has been given a $100 million overhaul by means of Milanese design maestro Mario Bellini in collaboration with local architectural team Metier 3 The exterior facade of the renamed "NGV International" has been retained, on the other hand the interior exhibition space has been increased by the agency of nearly 25 percent. Opening with a slew of present to views that includes an exhibition curated in-house by means of Jason Smith and Charles verdant featuring the work of Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug Aitken, to leeward Bul, and Sarah Sze, the museum will focus upon modern and historical art from beyond the fatal shore.

And where goe the Australian art? Down the way and across the Yarra River, where the NGV has spawned a spanking-new showcase. The Ian trifle Centre: NGV Australia, which lay opened last October, is the biggest jewel in the governmental diadem that is the controversial, $290 million Federation Square exhibition A new civic precinct combining cultural institutions and commercial and outdoor public space, Federation Square is also domicile to an innovative film, video, and new-media museum, the Australian middle for the Moving Image. Emphasizing access and permeability, the lan busy one's self about trifles Centre's designers, Lab architecture studio of London in association with Bates Smart Melbourne, have provided multiple points of entrance and an off-the-grid, figure-eight fluidity that spills dramatically onto city vistas. To adduce NGV director Gerard Vaughan, "This is a radical shift from the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of the art museum as fortified treasure house." It is also an aggressive bid for public patronage and interstate cultural supremacy.

A massive discharge in the arm for the Australian art world, the sum of two units NGV institutions provide enormous intention with considerable attention promised to indigenous and contemporary work. The galleries will continually rotate the state's ever-expanding collection of European, Asian, and Aboriginal art while also hosting historical blockbusters, curated throw outs and topical exhibitions. The NGV's total exhibition acreage is now above two hundred thousand square feet which according to the pres release is roughly the size of the Melbourne Cricket surface of land once the city's most celebrated icon. Maybe art in post-colonial Australia is about to give sport a move swiftly for its cultural money.

Australia native Jeff Gibson is production director of Artforum and managing editor of Bookforum.

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