Augmenting the past to appeal to new museum audiences – ArtsHub

In September this year, the Northern Territory (NT) Chinese Museum installed a virtual reality display which constituted the first significant rehang for the institution in over a decade.

It is the first revamp since 2007, notwithstanding the updating of family tree scrolls in 2010, is designed to bring the attention of the museum to a wider audience and provide a post-COVID reboot.

At the centre of this reboot is the new exhibition, Family Murmurings: Fragments of Australian Chinese Life, which also signals a change of direction in museum programing through the introduction of contemporary art.

Resident historian at the NT Chinese Museum, Neville Jones, said: [The] paintings are inspired by the short stories written by Kenneth Chan [and] the viewer can don 3D goggles and take a virtual reality step into the paintings.

The nine vibrant vignettes and virtual environments immerse viewers in the childhood recollections of the author. Aspects of Sydney during the 1950s and 1960s are vividly recreated in his modern tales, illustrated by the visual artist Nancy Liang, and modelled by digital artist Oliver Clifton.

Dr Kenneth Chan was born in a foreign occupied Shanghai, to a Chinese Australian father who had emigrated from Darwin in 1928. His family operated a general store and tailoring business on Cavenagh Street, in Darwins Chinatown, prior to its demise in the 1942 bombings.

Through the nine short stories represented in this exhibition, Dr Chan attempted to capture the essence of growing up both Chinese and Australian in a White Australia, which favoured the quiet assimilation of its migrants.

While turning to VR has been a new venture for Dr Chan, he has long been interested in cross-cultural storytelling and history. Before Dr Chan undertook a creative writing course at the University of Canberra, he was a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, a diplomat and the Administer of the Cocos Islands.

Distinct from a memoir or biography, there is an accessibility afforded by his employment of the genre, both to him as an author and the audience. Dr Chan has said that freedom from stick[ing] to the accuracy of the facts has enabled him to construct powerful allegories extrapolated from fragments of memor[ies], with an array of characters with which Chinese Australians might identify.

The painted compositions are deceptively simple and decidedly modern in style. Through nuanced gradations of colour, Liangs illustrations also captures an atmosphere of post-war optimism. Her landscapes and interiors investigate locations of significance to the Chinese community in Sydney, such as the iconic Trocadero on George Street where debutant balls and weddings were staged.

However, reference is also made to the Shanghai experienced by the father of the author in the 1930s. Dr Chan was in his early childhood when his family migrated to Australia. The situation of these paintings and the VR headsets amongst remnants from an older China is a masterstroke in curatorship.

Although well preserved from the point of acquisition, the collection in this museum is unique amongst its Australian counterparts because many of the artefacts are salvage from its Chinatown.

In commemoration for the 50th anniversary of bombing of Darwin in 1942, the Chung Wah Society assembled an exhibition, components of which were curated by Glynis Diamond into the groundbreaking Sweet and Sour, shown at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in 1996.

This exhibition received applause from the Chinese Australian museum community, yet was met with a palpable local resistance, the latter of which manifested in both parliamentary debate and a critical exhibition review.

Irrespective, the NT Chinese Museum was established in the late 1990s in the Chung Wah Society headquarters, which was built on land exchanged for parts of the old Chinatown in the 1940s, and adjacent to a temple built in 1887.

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The NT museum is preceded by the Museum of Chinese History in Melbourne and the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo, and with the forthcoming Museum of Chinese in Australia in Sydney (opening in 2023), collectively they chart an integral chapter in Australian history and life both past and present..

Whilst introducing contemporary art content will bring the programing of the NT Chinese Museum in line with its counterparts, the institution remains unique in its standing of significance within its own community.

Aside from being a repository of a Chinatown, which was never restored, the NT Chinese population is relatively younger but was significantly larger per capita during the 19th century.

After having been recruited by the NT Government in 1874, to meet a chronic shortfall in labour, the ratio of Chinese to European settlers swelled to eight to one by the end of that decade.

Bearing witness to the industriousness of a people reputed for working night and day, seven days a week, the museum collection includes brass and ivory scales, granite flour milling equipment, and an improvised wire basket used to transport live pigs. However, it is the displays dedicated towards the Chinese Australians who served in World War II which are the most striking, evidencing the significant contribution the community has made to the NT cultural landscape.

Federation and the enactment of the White Australia Policy saw the repatriation of many Chinese residents in the NT, like Dr Chans grandfather and father. In 2021 the community constituted only three percent of the overall population.

Although the NT Chinese Museum, according to Jones, has always had a dedicated band of volunteers [who] were already senior citizens at the commencement of COVID-19, the museum continues to grow in its vision, testament by this new exhibition and rehang.

Family Murmurings: Fragments of Australian Chinese Life is currently on show at the NT Chinese Museum in Darwin. The institution reopened after a pandemic-imposed hiatus by appointment only.

The collaboration was originally staged at the Museum of Chinese History (Melbourne) between 31 January 30 March.

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Augmenting the past to appeal to new museum audiences - ArtsHub