Looking Forward to the Past: The Rotational Collection of Art at Australian Parliament House, 1981–2023

Abstract

The Rotational Collection of Art at Parliament House, Canberra is a significant fully public-funded art collection, although little known. This thesis explores the Collection as it developed and engages through archival and analytic methods with the nature and problems of this Collection. The Collection remains effectively hidden from view—less than one percent of the displayed artworks are situated in publicly accessible spaces of Parliament. The artworks initially collected were contemporaneously produced by mid-career and well-established artists covering a variety of genres and mediums, and with few exceptions sourced in the primary market. This contemporaneity was achieved notwithstanding a preference for colonial-era landscape painting being voiced by many parliamentarians. Since opening of the new Parliament building in 1988, conservative and liberal parliamentarians alike have acted in ways to change the original acquisition policy criterion of works being “stimulating but not being overwhelmingly provocative” to being “suitable for general viewing”. The acquisitions policy and practices also have come to privilege parliamentarians’ suites over the general circulation areas within Parliament. In these ways, the Rotational Collection has become conformed to the (un)aesthetic preferences of the nation’s parliamentarians. A principal aim of this project is to provide a reference document on the history of the Rotational Collection from its inception until the near recent past. No publication has existed prior to this study that explores the multitudinous forces acting upon, and objectives underlying both the establishment and development of the Collection. The resulting thesis thus is foundational, and yet invites further study due to the unavailability of an entire body of official documents dealing with the development stage of the Collection over the period 1989–2023.