ART AND SOCIETY

PUBLIC debate about art, and especially about public investment in the arts, has been taking place for a very long time. Offering our opinions on how our elected representatives represent us, as a society, through public expression and investment in art and culture is one of the freedoms of democratic society.

Public art is meant to reflect its particular society at a time in history. As individual and collective social views fracture and segment into a greater diversity, it shouldn’t be surprising we encounter art projects we might not very much like.

So what we see about us, as we walk through Hobart or travel through Tasmania, is in some ways a mirror of ourselves at particular times; a reflection of the architecture that was approved, of the public investment in facilities, or sporting arenas or galleries, museums and theatres. These things form part of the evidence of the values and priorities of a government, and what it believes are the values and priorities of voters.

And that is how it should be; no individual can claim to expect it all. We cast one vote and hope an elected government might favour what is most important to each of us.

But a city can reflect more than just its ability to attend to the core needs of voters; it can reveal values and priorities.

The vibrancy and sophistication of the best cities in the world is manifest in the evidence of that society’s creativity; the objects in public museums — and in the museums themselves, in the depth and breadth of art in galleries — and in the galleries themselves, in the richness and diversity of that society through how its stories are told in theatres, and in the way it not only preserves but holds up, with justifiable pride, its heritage architecture and how public buildings from our past are accessible to the public of today and tomorrow.

Joe Bugden Salamanca

Arts Centre