Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery has faced years of uncertainty about the fate of the Royal Park and Inveresk campuses but new ideas have emerged for the cultural institution.
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QVMAG director Patrick Filmer- Sankey effectively advocates overturning a key plank of a plan put to Launceston City Council last year.
Mr Filmer-Sankey told aldermen in a report dated February 26 that sweeping changes were needed at the QVMAG.
The report, obtained by The Examiner, was considered by aldermen at a closed strategic planning and policy meeting last month.
Mr Filmer-Sankey's report follows a series of confidential reports written last year by consultant Tony Chamberlain recommending that Royal Park be closed.
Mr Filmer-Sankey praised Mr Chamberlain's work.
The council backtracked after public opposition and Mr Filmer-Sankey, appointed in November, has backed retaining Royal Park.
In his report, he urges aldermen to make sweeping changes at the museum but put another key Chamberlain recommendation - governance changes - on hold.
Mr Filmer-Sankey says the most important issue facing the QVMAG is location and style.
"Location because that affects use, identity and function," he says.
"Style, because the QVMAG covers a great range of disciplines and audiences which require their own sometimes completely incompatible approaches.
"The proposed solution is to develop the QVMAG at Royal Park as the art gallery embracing fine art, craft and associated areas while concentrating the social and natural sciences at QVMAG Inveresk."
He says Royal Park is a "superb venue" for visual arts and is "striking, intimate and much loved by the community".
A centrepiece of this redevelopment would be recreation of the core 1892 Royal Park galleries, by stripping back the false ceilings and other architectural additions.
"It will be like finding treasure unrecognised and carelessly lost long ago," he said.
His vision for Inveresk was a busy, exciting place where "stimulation and engagement can be found at every turn" and possibly allowing other users on the site.
Mr Filmer-Sankey says his dual campus proposal seeks "to use the strengths of the buildings rather than to fight them" as happens now.
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SUGGESTIONS
STAFF changes, reducing and refining the collection plus avoiding subsidies for non-visitor activities are suggestions from Mr Filmer- Sankey to make the QVMAG more sustainable. Improvement suggestions include:
Clarifying the aims of public programmes and reforming the exhibition programme to work in a more cross-disciplined way and focus more on the development of locally derived themes.
The museum has over-collected, so the collection should be judiciously reduced and documentation improved.
Staff reallocated to meet changed outcomes, with increased use of volunteers.
Programmes meeting primarily non-visitor needs reduced, hire fees increased to cover costs and search for improvements in commercial or in-kind arrangements.
Mr Filmer-Sankey says the report last year by consultant Tony Chamberlain was exhaustive and valuable and he lists responses to observations from Mr Chamberlain, including: Need for a more engaging and energetic programme, reorganisation to achieve more open and organised collections and new spaces developed to a high standard.
Also suggested was increased collaboration, operating sustainably and strengthening leadership and skills.
