It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) is in decline. Plainly, the reasons for it being so are to do with multiple factors but mostly to do with the paucity of governance.
Increasingly, and over a decade plus, the institution's status as a council cost centre has stifled its ability to change given council's administrative hierarchy. Unlike, regional museums and art galleries elsewhere in Australia the institution is not governed at arm's length from its funding bodies – here the City of Launceston.
Launceston's ratepayers invest annually in the institution and for the most part willingly. The bitter pill is that the institution each year delivers less and less. It's output has reached a point where it is unable to deliver services commensurate with the long and short term investments in it and the community's 21st Century expectations.
The review here delves into the issues impacting upon the institution's performance and offers some options for a way forward for the institution's governance, management and funding.
On it's current administrative trajectory the QVMAG runs a real risk that it may well need to close and and have its collections dispersed.
Arguably, the institution has arrived at point where its future is unclear unless there is real change of the kind that brings it into the 21st Century at the time of its 130th Anniversary.
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