Panel: Curating and Collecting the New: Resistance is Futile

  • Angelina Russo will speak to her research, which focuses on the connections between cultural communication and media from a design perspective. Angelina is currently the Director of Higher Degrees Research in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. She has spent the past six years leading two major Australian Research Council projects in conjunction with 10 national and international cultural organisations. This research investigated digital content creation and multi-platform distribution and the impact of social media on learning and communication. Angelina is a former Australian Research Council Post Doctoral Fellow (2007-2010) and Queensland Premiere’s Smithsonian Fellow (2005). She is a co-founder and Director of Museum 3, a not-for-profit organisation established to explore the future of cultural organisations.
  • Amanda Slack-Smith is Assistant Curator, Australian  Cinémathèque at the Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art. In 2008 the Queensland Art Gallery initiated the first of three acquisitive award exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art surveying contemporary new media practice in Australia. Funded by the Queensland Government, the project comprised a $75,000 acquisitive award and a $25,000 scholarship for an emerging Queensland-based practitioner. The project enabled the Gallery to engage with a wide range of practitioners working with media art, develop this collection area for the museum and focus on issues surrounding the ongoing installation, conservation, and preservation of media art. It was also an important opportunity for the Gallery to develop new audiences and understanding for practices under represented within the art museum context. Reflecting on these challenges and experiences, QAGOMA curator (and co-curator of the 2012 Award) Amanda Slack-Smith will discuss the award series and the ongoing conservation and presentation of works held in the QAGOMA collection.