Foreword

This paper aims to set out the governance requirements of a public museum that holds in its collections the cultural and intellectual property of a diverse Community of Ownership and Interest (COI); that is funded from the 'Public Purse'; and is the recipient of private and corporate donations and sponsorships.
Readers are encouraged to participate in this research. The simplest way of doing so is to add a comment in the section provided below each section of the paper. Alternatively readers may email QVMAGresearch@7250.net to either make a written submission or to arrange a confidential interview with a member of the QVMAG Working Group if that is required. Also see this companion paper ... click here

Monday, November 29, 2010

QVMAG: The Status Quo

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Tasmania's LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT 1993 - SECT 333 states that:

"(1) The Launceston City Council has the management and control of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and its contents and may sell and exchange the contents and generally act in such manner as appears best calculated to advance the objects of the institution.

(2) The Launceston City Council, once in every year, is to report the proceedings and progress of the institution to the Minister responsible for the administration of the Tasmanian Museum Act 1950, and a copy of every report is to be laid before Parliament within 14 sitting days after it is received." Prior to this the QVMAG was covered by Tasmania's "Launceston Corporation Act 1963, ss 197, 198".

Nonetheless, by necessity, this does not translate as "ownership" as is claimed in QVMAG advertising and marketing material .... read more on this here

For whatever reason the Local Govt. Act is silent in regard to the appointment of a Board of Trustee which in effect means that the Aldermen are – and it seems more by default than design –  the institution's 'trustees'. In general the Aldermen do not meet as a Board of Trustees for the QVMAG nor consider or determine in any real sense policy issues pertaining to the QVMAG in the ways the Trustees of other museums and art galleries do. Interestingly, and by comparison, the governance of New Zealand's Auckland War Memorial Museum, a regional institution,  governance  is covered by its own  Act of Parliament that calls for a "Trust Board" – and this institution is a 'provincial museum' rather that a State institution.

It is now established that the status quo situation for the QVMAG, as an institution, is that it does not have a formal constitution, charter or like instrument of governance albeit that in 2006 it came close to having a "Board of Governance is established by Launceston City Council as a controlling authority under section 29 of the Local Government Act 1993." Neither does the institution have its own Strategic Plan. Consequently, there is ambiguity in regard to the institution's 'Purpose for Being' and its goals given that there seems to be no instrument of any kind that articulates these things – and that has been passed by Council as the QVMAG's current governing body.
INDEX  
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