Renewed funding for Australia’s cultural institutions will ensure they will be able to be viewed for generations to come, the prime minister says.
Nine cultural centres, including the National Gallery, National Museum and the National Archives, will receive a $535 million boost in the upcoming budget.
The new funding coincided with calls for urgent repairs in many of the buildings, with buckets and towels being used to mop up water leaking through the roof at the National Gallery.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the more than 54 million items in the national institutes’ collections needed to be properly protected for the future.
“The idea that you would have a $500 million artwork (Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles) in a building with buckets to collect leaks from a leaky roof is absurd – we’re a better country than that, and Australia deserves better than that,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“When we invest in our national institutions, we’re investing in ourselves. We’re investing in our pride. We’re investing in the way that we see ourselves and the way the world sees us.”
Labor has accused the former coalition government of neglecting the cultural icons over the previous decade.
The funding forms part of the government’s national cultural policy in supporting Australia to have “strong cultural infrastructure”.
The announcement follows $33 million being set aside in this year’s budget for the National Library of Australia to shore up the Trove collection of digitised stories and artefacts.
Arts Minister Tony Burke said the funding in the budget would begin a road to recovery for cultural institutions.
“The institutions have been heading down a hill towards a funding cliff. And today, they turn that corner and they can climb back up the hill and start growing again,” he said.
“There are plenty of buildings in Canberra that would always leak, but the cultural institutions should never be on that list. And the cultural institutions will now have that investment.”
National Museum director Matthew Trinca welcomed the funding announcement.
“In making this significant financial contribution to the museum, the government has addressed longstanding funding issues and allowed the institution to plan for the future,” Dr Trinca said.
National Film and Sound Archive chief executive Patrick McIntyre said the announcement would allow its collection to be viewed by more people.
“We are currently ramping up the digitisation of the collection for long-term preservation, especially those items on obsolete and deteriorating format,” he said.
“The increased funding announced today will allow us to realise our vision for the NFSA as a contemporary digital institution connecting all Australians to the national story through the objects in our collection.”
By Andrew Brown and Tess Ikonomou in Canberra
