Dateline: 07/13/98
t seems there are more and more ceramics galleries and museums making a debut on the Net. However, as with other web sites, the quality of these virtual museums and galleries differs quite a bit. An analysis of the Shepparton Art Gallery in Shepparton, Australia serves as a case study for us to take a peek at where some galleries are at and where they are going.
The Shepparton Art Gallery is one of Australia's major rural art centers and is renown for its extensive ceramics collection, begun in the 1970s and incorporating 19th and 20th C Australian and International ceramic art. The gallery also initiated the annual Sidney Myer Fund Ceramic Art Award in the 1980s. In 1997, this award moved into the international ceramics arena with the inception of an international award with a prize money of $AUS 15,000.
When opening the Shepparton Art Gallery homepage, one is confronted with quite a bit of red - unfortunately this is about its only outstanding feature. Adorning the page is a banner design by Fiona Murphy -hmmm, it is also red. But don't let this deter you from further investigating the site, which has something to offer, and has greatly improved from an earlier version.
The homepage lets us select from information on The Collection, History of the Gallery, Exhibition Program, International Ceramic Award, Friends of the Gallery, How to Reach Us and Ceramic Links.
On the Collection page, we are told about the gallery building which was built in 1965 and has an extension to house the ceramic collection. We learn that the gallery has 400 works on paper and 150 paintings from such greats as McCubbin, Streeton, Preston and others. But the Shepparton Art Gallery is best known for its ceramics collection. It has in its possession around 2000 historically and artistically important treasures from the 19th and 20th C, including works from the Bendigo Pottery, the Boyd Family, Harold Hughan, John Percival and from more recent artists Stephen Benwell, Gywnn Hansson-Pigott, Col Levy, Thancoupie and many other Australian ceramists. On this page we find a number of images from diverse artists, ranging from Merric Boyd and Shunichi Inoue to Marea Gazzard and Michael Doolan, all of course represented in the gallery.
From here we can link to the Sidney Myer Fund International Ceramic Award page. 1997 was the first year that this well established ceramics award went global. The new international flavour encourages "mutual respect for the capability of all entrants and a chance for Australians to see an incredible selection of contemporary ceramics". The winner of the 1997 award was Claude Champy with 'URNE (double parois)'. Other prizes were awarded to Bern Emmerichs (Australia), Masahiro Kiyomizu (Japan), Martin Georg (Germany) and Beverly Gallop (Australia). The gallery purchased works by Juris Bergins, Ken Eastman, Hideaki Suzuki and Timea Tihanyi. The 1998 page offers some information on next years event. The Exhibition Program gives details of upcoming gallery exhibitions until the end of the year. These events are ceramic and non-ceramic alike.
Unfortunately the site appears fragmented due to a different colour scheme on each page, which does not contribute to a consistent look, although other design elements have been repeated, notably a navigation bar at the top of each page, which does make switching between pages fairly easy. While the Shepparton Art Gallery has much to offer, I feel that a much more comprehensive site could be developed using the huge gallery collection. This might be along the lines of the 'Rudi Autio Contemporary Ceramics Collection', which offers an extensive on-line version, which is of a real benefit both to national and international web surfers alike. Let's not forget that on the Net, geographical boundaries are irrelevant, and if a site wants to be more than an advertisement for a local institution that only locals can visit, the site's strategy should reflect this and should take full advantage of the capabilities of the Web. More frequent updates would also be welcome.
None-the-less, this is a useful site of the well-known Australian gallery - hopefully in the future more galleries will be following this example and making an appearance on the Net.
Related Sites:
Virtual Museums
Virtual Ceramics Museum Tour
Michael Lucero -Sculpture 1976-1995
Online Ceramics Exhibitions