MELBOURNE—Is Melbourne's arts scene dead?
The Victorian capital, renowned for spruiking its vibrant cultural scene, got a reality check when visiting academics last week called the city's visual arts collections into question.
"Melbourne lacks a high profile for visual arts," Joe Thomas, from Clarion University of Pennsylvania, told News Ltd's The Herald Sun newspaper.
"The lack of really big, comprehensive collections is a major gap."
A former Harvard teacher, Marina Belozerskaya, said Melbourne's art scene was vibrant but London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and New York offered a wider range.
Others praised Melbourne's modern and contemporary collections, and highlighted Aboriginal artworks as a quality point of difference.
After such a critical review from international art experts, can Melbourne still claim its perceived place as the doyenne of the Australian art scene?
Suzanne Davies, the director and curator of the university-run RMIT Gallery, said it was ridiculous to compare Melbourne's art scene with other international cities.
The academics' comments were "all tip and no iceberg," she said.
"Our history is different. We are a city of three million people.
"It's absolutely silly to compare (Melbourne) with London, New York or Paris."
But Melbourne-born Ms Davies says - with one foot firmly planted in the harbour city and the other in Melbourne - the southern city can certainly claim the Australian artistic crown.
The gallery director has commuted weekly between Sydney and Melbourne for the past 12 years, and has a home in both cities.
But she says Melbourne's art scene has more opportunities for exhibiting artists and more support from local and state governments, than any other major city.
There are more university-based galleries in Melbourne, she notes, while places like the still-developing Docklands waterfront precinct have embraced public art.
"It's very clear to me that Melbourne offers a depth and breadth of support and engagement, certainly with contemporary visual arts, the like of which is not matched in any other city, including Sydney," she says.
"There's this sense of engagement and support and respect for Australian, and specifically local, artists.
"It feeds an energy into the arts scene. You can't buy it. You can't construct it. It's real grass roots stuff."
Dr Stephen Alomes, an Associate Professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University, questions why Melbourne even needs to compare itself to other national or overseas cities.
He calls the phenomenon a "colonial cultural cringe".
"Australians do have a colonial cultural cringe whereby we want to be liked and approved of by places of metropolitan power and status," he says.
Dr Alomes also acknowledged the interstate competition for global city status.
Sydney wins on finance and icons, with the Harbour Bridge and Opera House international drawcards.
But Melbourne has tried to claim its own global city status through culture and sport.
"The theory is this global status brings investment and tourists."
Dr Chris McAuliffe, the director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, said the city's art collections were hardly limited.
He said Melbourne had more than 200 galleries and museums, where Australian art was presented exhaustively and contemporary art was an incessant activity.
But the art scene was more than just paintings hanging on walls.
"I think what Melbourne offers is more than just objects in collections," Dr McAuliffe said.
"We have got more than 200 art galleries and museums in Melbourne ranging from the tiniest little artist-run space through to the mothership, the National Gallery of Victoria."
Those exhibition spaces were surrounded by the energy, the debate, the cafes and bars, and the groovy artistic set, he said.
"You get the full package here. That's actually what makes a city a dynamic artistic culture."
Dr McAuliffe said you could build a "dirty great shed" at the showgrounds and put 100 Picassos in it, and while it would have the masterpieces, it wouldn't have "surprising little things down grotty little alleys that kind of half scare you".
By that, he's referring to the light boxes, graffiti and stencils adorning the grimy walls of buildings down Melbourne's bluestone cobbled laneways.
It's this artistic movement that intrigues Phil Hall, the artistic director and curator of the Contempora sculpture and public art festival, held over six weeks from March 6.
If Melbourne's gallery collections fail to rival international counterparts, Mr Hall is confident the city's street art leaves places like London in its wake.
While England can claim renowned street artist Banksy, whose work is also emblazoned on several Melbourne buildings, the scene is stifled by a zero tolerance approach to street art, he said.
"It's much better than London," Mr Hall says of Melbourne's underground scrawlings.
"There are places like Berlin which are possibly better.
"I think the thing that makes ours better is the diversity and quality of street art you can find."
Also, young people are becoming more interested in public art, and that's been reflected in schools now offering it as a subject, he says.
Dr McAuliffe says young people today will have seen more international art exhibitions than earlier generations.
There were also more students studying more arts degrees than ever before, he added.
As a result, Dr McAuliffe predicts that 20 years from now, Melbourne would be a city that "lives and breathes art".
But at the moment, he's not convinced there are gaping holes in the city's visual art collections.
In fact, he says Asian, European and American art are all well represented - not a bad effort for a country that has only been collecting for 150 years.
The notion that any gallery around the world "is like a comprehensive slide lecture that takes you from the Pyramids to Picasso and post-modernism and beyond," was unrealistic.
"You could name the museums in the world that do that on the fingers of one hand."
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