City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection |
The City of Melbourne's Art and Heritage Collection consists of 8,000 items.
It includes outdoor artworks, such as Vault, plus Lord Mayoral portraits, contemporary artworks, historic photographs, sister city gifts, 1956 Melbourne Olympics items and a Moomba collection. The City Gallery, located in the Melbourne Town Hall, draws on the collection for its exhibitions.
The City of Melbourne manages an Art and Heritage Collection comprising both objects and artworks (indoor and outdoor).
The outdoor component of the Collection includes around 150 artworks, while the indoor element is made up of approximately 6000 historical and contemporary objects including civic and ceremonial objects, commemorative objects, sister city gifts, architectural drawings, streetscape images of Melbourne as well as a contemporary art collection.
The Collection is used predominantly by researchers as well as by the City Gallery, located on the ground level at the Melbourne Town Hall, which draws upon the Collection for its annual program of five contemporary art and social history exhibitions.
An Acquisitions Panel continues to acquire contemporary art with a particular focus on indigenous artwork. Many of the artworks acquired by the council are displayed within the Melbourne Town Hall.
The collection - it's a thing composed of 8000 things.
Occupying a museological halfway point between the idiosyncrasy and eclecticism common to a private collection and the ambition of the state museum, the Art and Heritage Collection is big enough to reflect the city and its narratives and small enough to stay connected to the street and its stories. Some of its items were created for posterity, such as the memorials and the mayoral portraits. Others, such as a series of photographs of potholes, a bottle of Moomba spumante and an Aboriginal scar tree, were not.
It is characterised by dualities: outdoor/indoor, contemporary/historical, prosaic/artistic. It can be laudably democratic and comically stuffy.
It also happens to be the best capital city collection in Australia.
Collection and City Gallery
This site was launched in September 2017 with 1,000 items, and will continue to evolve with a further 3,000 items being added by mid-2018. If there is something in the collection that you would particularly like to see online, please contact us and we will see if we can expedite the process of cataloguing, photographing and uploading your item of interest.
Collection and City Gallery enquiries
Phone 03 9658 8549
Postal address GPO Box 1603 Melbourne VIC 3001
City Gallery
Location
Melbourne Town Hall, 110 Swanston Street, Melbourne
(enter via Halftix)
Opening hours
Monday 10am to 2pm; Tuesday to Friday 11am to 6pm; Saturday 10am to 4pm
Closed Sundays and public holidays
❊ Venue | Location ❊
City Gallery [ view ]110 Swanston Street Melbourne Victoria 3001 View Map
Telephone: 9658 9658
❊ Web Links ❊
➼ City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection
➼ www.melbourne.vic.gov.au
❊ Also See... ❊
➼ Art & Heritage Collection Tour
➼ Melbourne Town Hall
Disclaimer: Check with the venue (web links) before making plans, travelling or buying tickets.
Accessibility: Contact the venue for accessibility information.
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