The Australian National University would be a very bland place if it wasn’t for the arts, according to Emeritus Professor David Williams.
Professor Williams says the art collections that the University owns and maintains help to add to the creativity of those who are studying on campus, whatever their discipline.
“You have to think of visual arts in the very broadest sense – we’ve got a School of Art, we’ve got an art history program, we’ve got the Drill Hall Gallery, we’ve got a very fine art collection and we’ve got a sculpture collection,” he says.
“And without any of those things the ANU would look pretty thread-bare.
“The visual arts and arts generally add a real dimension to life and living and personally I cannot imagine a national university without a substantial involvement in the visual arts, and the music and the drama and everything else.”
He says the arts are a measure of the University’s sophistication and the community’s confidence in itself and its ability to excel.
“Without the creative elements of our existence, we are poverty-stricken. It’d be thread-bare, it’d be a most spare sort of place, if we didn’t have our literacy, our music, our arts, around it.”
The Professor says the passion around the sculpture collection continues today although it’s more of a collaborative effort across various groups in the University.
“I’ll give you an example, there’s one in the Sculpture Park at the moment which was done back in April – May and the name of that is Chris Drury – he’s an environmental artist.
“We had him here as a visiting artist, we then said we need some logs and trees and things, so we hooked up with the gardening department and in their spare time they found logs that had been cut down.
“The arborists came on board and said ‘oh yes we can get the trees’. So it was a collaborative effort, and that’s the way I think it’s going to have to happen in the future.”
Professor Williams is delivering a public lecture into the public art, sculpture and design at ANU this afternoon from 4 to 5pm at the Emeritus Faculty.
http://news.anu.edu.au/2013/10/16/anu-art-is-art-for-all/
