QVMAG VALUE UNDERRATED... GROSSLY?

It's about a year since it was discovered that THE QVMAG's Bret Whiteley drawing WAVE 5 was missing from its collection's.  Perhaps only in fear of a 'political leak' before the Local Govt. elections, the QVMAG's Trustees chairperson, the Mayor', went to the press and confessed to 'the loss' in August 2018. 

Reporting the matter 'to the cops' was almost the last thing the then QVMAG Director, Richard Mulvaney, did before he retired and left his post.

At such times 'money always gets a mention' and the speculation around the time of disclosure, some eight months on from when WAVE 5 found to be missing, it was estimated that it would most likely fetch $20K to $30K at auction. However, the acquisition of this drawing was a 'cultural investment', not a 'financial investment' and there has been next to no commentary on that aspect of the drawing's 'loss'. Indeed, there has been no apparent outcome in regard to holding 'the work' relative to the 'purposefulness' of its original acquisition.

Indeed, if this were not so, the drawing would quite probably have not have 'become lost' given that would have found its way into exhibitions, into study collections, on loan to other institutions, etc. Somehow, this drawing seems to have vanished not only from sight but also from the imaginations of the QVMAG's 'Community of Ownership & Interest' – and possibly not long after it's acquisition.

When 'money' is put to one side 'value' is an expansive idea – socially, culturally, scientifically, educationally, etc. ... something's assigned worth relative to. Therefore, discussing values relative to the QVMAG's collections becomes complex as 'value in context' is at the same time multi-dimensional and subjective. In so much as 'fiscal values' are considered 'base line' this only serves to make the task of determining value all the more complex given the subjectivity involved. Valuing processes typically involves holding wet fingers to the breeze.

Nonetheless, 'money managers' are ever likely to privilege fiscal/monetary understandings over and above less tangible 'values' such as cultural values, historic values, social values etc. etc. Despite their 

--> 'intangibility', these values are very real and they do deliver real dividends once the value invested in them is acknowledged. The flow on from this is that these 'intangible investments' when nurtured can and will deliver dividends – intangible and very tangible.
Against this backgrounding it quite clear that the QVMAG's collections are both undervalued and under exploited – and some might well say n ow, mismanaged in a security context. Arguably, this 'cultural investment' is underperforming. Should we go looking for reasons, there is almost no need to look much further than the institution's poor governance – and the consequent lost opportunities ... decades of it.

It is time that the QVMAG's collections were exposed to 'root and branch' investigation, community investigation, in order to gain  better understandings of the 'values' invested in, held in, attributed to, the collections and items within them – and in their cultural cum social contexts. Arguably, given the  accumulating evidence, this is not anything that 'outsiders' acting alone are likely to be able to do, Locals are most likely to deliver the kind of outcomes needed to win better understandings of the collection's and their 'placedness'.

Just how all this might be achieved is an open question but with a purpose in mind there are a myriad of ways to achieve useful outcomes.

Ray Norman

Dec 2018

LINKS

• QVMAG COMMUNITY OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST ... CLICK HERE
• QVMAG COLLECTION POLICY ... CLICK HERE
• ABC NEWS AUG 2018 ... CLICK HERE
• MERCURY ARTICLE AUG 2018 ... CLICK HERE
• MERCURY ARTICLE DEC 2018 ... CLICK HERE
• EXAMINER ARTICLE OCT 2018 ... CLICK HERE
• WHITELEY IMAGES ... CLICK HERE

"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: The music is nothing if the audience is deaf."

 WALTER LIPPMANN, A Preface to Morals