Australian National Maritime Museum

On their own—Britain's child migrants

An international touring exhibition about the history of child migration from Britain to Australia and Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period about 150,000 children and youths were sent from the UK to British dominions across the world to work in various forms of labour—far from their parents and homes. Taken from poverty and disadvantage it was believed that they would have a better life working the expanses of the British Empire.

The ANMM is working in collaboration with the National Museums Liverpool, UK to create an exhibition that will travel in Australia and the UK.

Touring to SA (Adelaide).

Touring funding: $74,700

Sons of Sinbad—the photographs of Alan Villiers

Photographs of Alan Villiers aboard Arabian Dhows, 1938–39, record the old Arabian sailing traditions and coastal trade routes in the Red Sea, coast of Arabia, east coast of Africa and the Gulf; the great skills and hardship endured by the sailors and pearl divers of the Gulf; and the passing of a way of life which he admired.

Alan Villiers was born in Melbourne and worked as a journalist at the Hobart Mercury. He donated his collection of photographs to the National Maritime Museum, UK which will be supplying scanned images to ANMM for this exhibition which will tour to the Maritime Museum of Tasmania.

Touring to TAS (Hobart).

Touring funding: $9,800

Saltwater Freshwater—ATSI prints

Part of the ANMM's travelling exhibition program Sail Away, thisexhibition features a selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints with the common theme of water. Featuring everything from marine life, to water as a place to hunt and fish, to being the site of dreaming stories and also as a place of contact with non-Indigenous Australians.

Touring to SA (Adelaide) and NSW (Maitland and Murwillumbah).

Touring funding: $15,500

Bundanon Trust

Connections in Australian Modernism: Bundanon and Heide

Development of a joint exhibition (with Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne) that draws on the common strengths of both institutions in Australian modernism. Themes will be explored in relation to artists such as Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker who have strong linkages to both institutions. Possible themes include the artists' common move from Melbourne to the international stage, social activism and the reflection of contemporary politics in the artists' works and their intertwining personal lives and its manifestation in their art.

Development funding: $50,000

National Gallery of Australia

Anton Bruehl: In the spotlight

The first major exhibition to showcase the work of this important Australian expatriate photographer will include framed photographs, multimedia and ephemera components and will include a new monograph on the artist.

Touring to NT (Alice Springs).

Touring funding $75,500

 

Australian Portraits: 1880–1960

The exhibition of portraits will provide a compelling image of Australians over the course of time, from the theatrical Victorians and Edwardians, through modern women of the 1920s to the angry Antipodeans of the 1940s and 1950s. During this period shifts in values and politics were matched by changing artistic movements: realism, tonalism, formalism, expressionism and surrealism. A real sense of these cultural and artistic changes can be realised from the selected portraits.

The exhibition will include a number of much loved works from the collection as well as works that have rarely been seen in public.

Touring to QLD (Brisbane) and NT (Darwin).

Touring funding: $99,500

To please the living and the dead: ancestral art of Southeast Asia

The first major exhibition to focus on art which venerates ancestors and spirits of nature, the oldest and most enduring of Southeast Asian religions. It will include masterpieces from prehistory to the twentieth century from broad geographic regions and will detail important links between the various cultures of Southeast Asia. Works will come from a number of key galleries and museums in countries such as France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Singapore, the Philippines, China and the USA.

Touring to ACT (Canberra).

Touring funding $150,000

National Film and Sound Archive

Touring the Sounds of Australia

The Sounds of Australia celebrates the unique and diverse recorded sound culture and history of Australia. Launched in 2007 with a foundation list of 10, public nominations are called for each year and 10 new recordings are added to the registry.

The registry includes recognisable Australian 'heritage' songs Waltzing Matilda, On the Road to Gundagai and the Aeroplane Jelly theme; contemporary selections from the Easybeats, Johnny O'Keefe, the Warumpi Band, Billy Thorpe; Gough Whitlam's 'Kerr's Cur' speech from 1975 and the voices of Don Bradman and Dad and Dave; and recorded Indigenous songs and language from Tasmania recorded in 1899 and 1903 and more.

Touring VIC (Mildura) and NSW (Gunnedah).

Touring funding $159,000

National Museum of Australia

Symbols of Australia

Symbols of Australia focuses on the role of symbols in the formation and promotion of Australian national identity. The exhibition will use both objects and multimedia. The exhibition's aim is to highlight the diversity of Australian symbology: the official and the popular, the organic and the imposed, the natural and the man-made, the old and the new. The chosen symbols include: the kangaroo, the wattle, the flag, Uluru, the boomerang, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the billy, Vegemite, the Southern Cross and the Holden.

Touring to QLD (Townsville and Brisbane) and NSW (Wagga Wagga).

Touring funding $56,690

From little things big things grow

This exhibition has developed from an Australian Research Council Linkage project which included contributions from the National Museum of Australia, Monash University, the State Library of Victoria and the National Archives of Australia.

Using a chronological approach, the exhibition follows the history of the efforts of Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to improve the social and legal status of Indigenous Australians. It also highlights the personal stories of the activists, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, famous and not so well known, who fought to change Australian society.

Touring to Vic (Melbourne), SA (Adelaide) and NSW (Sydney).

Touring funding $48,310

Canning Stock Route project

The Canning Stock Route (CSR) exhibition is being developed in a collaborative partnership between FORM, the National Museum of Australia, and nine participating indigenous art centres and groups. FORM is an independent not-for-profit arts and cultural organisation, working in urban, regional and remote Western Australia.

The CSR Project is a pioneering, multi-faceted contemporary arts and cultural initiative, celebrating the lives and stories of Western Desert Aboriginal peoples from countries surrounding the Canning Stock Route.

There are 105 Aboriginal artists, elders, countrymen and professionals contributing and collaborating as part of the CSR Project and 116 artworks and many supporting materials will be featured in the touring exhibition.

Development funding $102,000

National Portrait Gallery

Inner worlds: portraits and psychology

This exhibition will engage key moments of intense connection between psychology and portraiture in Australian art and social history. The exhibition will draw heavily on other national and state based collections and original research will be undertaken which will draw together, examine and interpret these works.

Development funding of $56,500

National photographic portrait prize 2011

This annual event is intended to promote the best in contemporary photographic portraiture by both professional and aspiring Australian photographers.

Touring to WA (Bunbury).

Touring funding $21,000

Beyond the self: portraiture from Asia

The artists in this exhibition all explore historical and/or cultural constructs to examine contemporary life. The exhibition will present the works of major artists from India and Indonesia with a small selection from other Asian countries.

Development funding $67,500

National photographic portrait prize 2010

This annual event is intended to promote the best in contemporary photographic portraiture by both professional and aspiring Australian photographers.

Touring to NSW (Bathurst, Wagga Wagga and Mosman).

Touring funding $14,000