Enthusiasm for Horsham role
New Horsham Regional Art Gallery director Jane Scott has brought state, national and international experience to her role in the Wimmera.
Ms Scott, who started the position three months ago, said she was looking forward to helping reinvigorate the Horsham district and region’s re-engagement with art and art-based activities.
“My aim is to get people back engaged with the gallery, to get visitor numbers up and organise events and activities that people in Horsham will love, want to participate in and get enjoyment from the arts,” she said.
Ms Scott has worked in the arts industry for the past 35 years and had leadership roles in a variety of major institutions, events and projects.
Her most recent role was curator and co-ordinator of a Flesh After 50 program, dedicated to exploring and challenge negative stereotypes of aging while celebrating and promoting positive images of older women through art.
The program culminated in a major exhibition at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne.
Ms Scott said one of the photographic projects she was already working on in Horsham was along similar lines involving 500 district women in promoting body positivity.
Ms Scott has had previous director roles with Craft Victoria, Tarrawarra Museum of Art at Healesville and Monash Gallery of Art at Wheelers Hill.
She also had a two-year stint as Australian cultural attachê in Washington DC and has been a key figure in other public galleries, festivals and programs.
Ms Scott said she had been impressed with Horsham Regional Art Gallery and the Wimmera since arriving from Melbourne.
“This is a fantastic gallery. It has worldclass environmental conditions for art and is a beautiful building,” she said.
“There is no exhibition that we can’t have here, and it is fantastic for a small community. “It has loads of potential that I love.” Ms Scott said she had observed unique aspects about the Wimmera and its communities.
“The Wimmera is its own place and unlike anywhere else in Victoria,” she said.
“We have a fantastic, active and vibrant community and I’m really enjoying working closely with them,” she said.
“Things just look and feel different in the Wimmera. It’s hard to explain but those who live here fully understand it.”
Ms Scott said she was gaining a greater appreciation of what was special about the region.
“Melbourne-based people often talk about the sky. The light is different in the Wimmera and I now understand why artists are drawn to this area. It is just a beautiful environment to be in,” she said.
Ms Scott said she was looking forward to events, exhibitions and attractions at the Horsham gallery with excitement.
“We’re also working and planning for a big Norman Lindsay exhibition and a Sidney Nolan exhibition that’s coming down from National Gallery in Canberra,” she said.
Lindsay, who wrote and illustrated Australian children’s literary classic The Magic Pudding, was a diverse, popular, prolific and controversial artist and personality.
Nolan, responsible for his famous Ned Kelly series of paintings, was also one of Australia’s leading artists of the 20th Century.