Normally I wouldn’t quote from The Age as it’s really little more than mediocre tabloid sensationalism, and if I want that, I’ll go to the Herald Sun where sensationalist flair and tabloid panache is writ large, bold and in short words. Buried in the gutter of Metro, what the once separate section of the arts has been reduced to, the announcement that Australia Council for the Arts’ Chief Executive Jennifer Bott is resigning next month.
Bott is the overseer of eight years of bludgeoning Australian art into a vegetative coma, who argued we should regard Australia Council staff members as our peers, while disemboweling the New Media Arts Board, and seems to have spent much of her time either closing down companies or putting them on notice, possibly to scavenge the necessary dollars for endless surveys, reports, and studies.
The cynical realist in me says don’t expect her replacement to be any better.
A former chairwoman of the council in the Keating era, Hilary McPhee, said earlier this year that artists seemed to have been displaced from the centre of the cultural debate during Bott’s term in favour of the “comfort of output managerialism and corporate smugness”.
Change afoot at arts body
A new era is about to begin at the Government’s arts funding body, the Australia Council, following yesterday’s announcement by chief executive Jennifer Bott that she will step down on September 19.
Bott, who has been in the job for nearly eight years, is identified with the Howard Government and the previous chairman, David Gonski, who resigned in June and was replaced by Sydney businessman and former Qantas chief James Strong.
Her contract was due to expire in February, but she told the media earlier this year that she was yet to make any decision on her future. But she said yesterday she was moving on to take up the position of chief executive of the University of New South Wales Foundation. This clears the way for the Government to appoint a new CEO under Strong’s direction.
Strong paid tribute to Bott yesterday, saying she had achieved new funding for the arts and had established new policy and program priorities.
But critics say the organisation has abandoned its key role as public advocate of the arts.
A former chairwoman of the council in the Keating era, Hilary McPhee, said earlier this year that artists seemed to have been displaced from the centre of the cultural debate during Bott’s term in favour of the “comfort of output managerialism and corporate smugness”.
Bott was unavailable for comment yesterday.
