De-Skilling the Specialist Curatorial Staff at the Powerhouse Museum (PHM)|
Acknowledgements: KW JS LS AG 18 12 23 Final
The following specialist positions have been deleted over the previous two decades through attrition, budget cuts, restructures and an unexamined decision to turn the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, known as the Powerhouse Museum (PHM), into a creative industries contemporary arts organisation. These decisions have had drastic consequences for the Museum’s curatorial, conservation and trade expertise, and its skills and knowledge in science and technology, decorative arts, design, and history. The scholarly research and documentation of the collection is being downgraded at great risk to the Museum’s standards of professionalism – a trend that will be deleterious to all the Museum’s collection-based programs, indeed, to the purpose of the Powerhouse Museum.
The cuts have critically affected the Museum’s capacity to meet its obligations under its Act, to manage the collections, to make strategic acquisitions, to curate engaging exhibitions and among other things, to maintain the specialised engineering and steam facilities at the Powerhouse Museum.
Most seriously they have led to the PHM posting the lowest visitor numbers since 1960 in 2021-22. Over the last four years to 2022 the PHM recorded a 77.7% decrease in visitor numbers, and a 73.8% decline in education engagement. The steep decline in visitor numbers coincides with the de-skilling of the PHM’s expert curatorial staff. It’s a reminder that skilled, highly trained people are essential to any successful museum. They animate collections, engage audiences and ultimately ensure the community benefits from taxpayers’ intergenerational investment in the museum and its collections.
The current ‘curatorial’ exhibition group primarily constitute art-based staff who have no expertise in planning exhibitions and experiences in STEM subjects which is required by a ’world class’ Museum of Science, Technology and Innovation. Current ‘experience’ planning (e.g. ‘Sounding the Collection’) is vapid, expensive and irrelevant to the science, technology and innovation principles applicable to STEM education.
In 2020 the MAAS CEO promised to restore specialist curatorial positions at MAAS. Instead employment priority is given to artistic associates on SES level salaries, friends of the CEO and people who have worked at the MCA and Carriageworks. Despite a 9 year campaign to save the PHM, the government is still erasing a 143 year old institution with a remarkable heritage collection, along with all trace of the 1988 multi award winning museum, designed with state of the art facilities including co-located conservation, research and storage facilities.
In place of the state’s, indeed Australia’s major science, technology and industrial heritage museum – a museum of applied arts and applied sciences, the site is being turned into a creative industries precinct. For the first time since the 1960s the PHM has no curator of transport and no curator of steam engineering to curate, interpret and communicate these collections of international significance within the STEM field to thousands of educands. These collections are the core of the MAAS and help explain all the later industrial revolutions which were established by the first.
In a recent blatant step by the current CEO to deskill the Museum, all museum curators have been assigned as either Collections or Exhibitions curators – no other curatorial roles exist. And the majority of those appointed to Exhibitions Curator positions are artists or so-called creatives with no requirement for curatorial experience and/or collection knowledge. This removes one of a museum curator’s most important responsibilities – to curate exhibitions for the Museum’s core audiences based on their collection knowledge and understanding of the Museum’s purpose. Instead, the Museum’s real curators are now almost all ‘collection curators’, essentially part of Registration. This is a wasteful and insulting diminishment of their professional roles and responsibilities as museum curators – a retrograde decision by the current CEO which will be to the detriment of the Powerhouse Museum’s professional standing and capabilities as a major public museum.
The Museum’s professional curators with collection knowledge, are being reduced to working as glorified porters to service the musings of artists, not the educational role of a museum as the custodian of a nationally significant collection. This profound change, which has been made without consultation or explanation, will forever disrupt the museum’s museology, its once renowned mode of working and communicating through objects and exhibitions, making their meaning accessible to people of all ages.
It is not just museum professional staff who have been deskilled but also knowledgeable volunteers have been told their services are not wanted. Many of these volunteers have forty or fifty years of industry knowledge as experts in a range of fields including aviation, steam, rail heritage, and education.
Lost Science and Technology curatorial and trade positions – not a complete list
- Senior Curator of Engineering and Design
- Curator of Engineering and Design
- Curator of Energy and Power Technology
- Curator of Biotechnologies
- Senior Curator of Sciences
- Curator of Computing and Mathematics
- Senior Curator of Transport
- Curator of Transport – Aviation
- Curator of Space Science and Technology
- Curator of Health and Medicine
- Curator of Philately and Postal Technology
- Curator, Design and Built Environment
- Engineering Conservator (3 positions)
- Manager, Interactive Exhibits and the entire staff of the department (about 5 positions)
- Plant Operators (3 positions)
Lost Decorative Arts and Design and Social History curatorial positions
- Senior Curator Social History – domestic history
- Curator Social History – arts and design
- Curator Social History – architecture, lifestyle
- Curator Social History – culture, music
- Curator Australian Indigenous Culture
- Senior Curator Australian Contemporary Decorative Arts & Design: architecture, furniture, lifestyle
- Curator Australian Contemporary Decorative Arts & Design – crafts, crafts practice
- Curator Australian Contemporary Decorative Arts & Design – graphic design, photography
- Senior Curator Australian Historical Decorative Arts & Design
- Curator Australian Historical Decorative Arts & Design – textiles, dress
- Curator Archaeology and Numismatics
- Senior Curator International Decorative Arts & Design Curator International Decorative Arts & Design – furniture, architecture & design
- Curator International Decorative Arts & Design – juvenilia, textiles and dress
- Curator International Decorative Arts & Design – Asian arts
- Curator West, Central, South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Pacific – textiles, dress
- Curator West, Central, South and Southeast Asia, ceramics & metalwork
- Assistant Curator Decorative Arts & Design – textiles, dress, lace
- Assistant Curator Decorative Arts & Design – general
- Curator Egyptology
- Curator Lace
- Curator Music
- Conservator of Musical Instruments
Of the remaining 21 curators left at the PHM only 14 are permanent ongoing positions. The other seven positions are on contracts.
Lost regional and migration heritage positions
Manager of Regional Services 2001-2014
Manager NSW Migration Heritage Centre 2004 – 2012
MHC education and community positions x 2
These positions were established to extend and deepen the Museum’s engagement with regional communities and with migrant heritage communities in Sydney and across NSW. The team worked with PHM staff across the museum – especially curators, conservators and registrars, to co-develop and deliver exhibitions and programs documenting and interpreting regional heritage places and collections and community collections.
Summary statement
The impact of the loss of the Museum’s specialist expertise has been felt across the Museum: in its development, care and conservation of the collection, in the collection’s documentation and accessibility and, in the Museum’s meaningful engagement with its core and diverse audiences.
Instead, the current management has prioritised the employment of artists and ‘creatives’ who are invited to use the collection and the Museum’s resources and facilities for often arcane purposes that are not related to the Museum’s education mission and core audiences but are for the ‘creative enjoyment’ of an extremely limited audience.
This current CEO-driven fundamental change to the Museum’s purpose, structure and programs has resulted in ‘exhibitions’ which are indulgent forays into the thoughts and reveries of contemporary artists, with little or no relevance to the Powerhouse Museum’s longstanding audiences and, at odds with the Museum’s Act, notably its education remit. The current CEO has retreated into her comfort zone of contemporary art and artists.
The Powerhouse Museum Alliance calls on The Minister for the Arts, The Hon John Graham, to replace the Powerhouse Museum’s Board of Trustees and senior management with people who have experience and knowledge of museums and their important role in society, as described in the International Council of Museums’ statement of purpose:
“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.” Prague 22 August 2022
Jennifer Sanders, Kylie Winkworth, Dr Lindsay Sharp and Andrew Grant on behalf of the Powerhouse Museum Alliance
18 December 2023
Jennifer Sanders, former Deputy Director, Powerhouse Museum
Kylie Winkworth former Trustee and Life Fellow, Powerhouse Museum
Dr Lindsay Sharp, Founding Director and Life Fellow, Powerhouse Museum
Andrew Grant, former Senior Curator Transport, Powerhouse Museum