Public art is a good idea, but the proposed new SAM is a bad idea

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hen is a good thing a bad idea?

The idea of building a new art museum in Shepparton ticks all bar one of the boxes and interestingly that last box is the biggest of all and the one that really matters.



An artist's impression of what is proposed for 
Shepparton - a new SAM at Victoria Park Lake.

Yes, a new art museum for the city is a wonderful idea for art is at the heart of everything we do and so to celebrate and recognise its importance through the creation of the beautiful lake-side proposed complex suggests a coming of age for the city.

Everything about the idea appears to be as it should, except for its timing.

A collision of world events suggest the city’s interest and emphasis should be about building resilience, entrenching what exists and underscoring the strengths of our culture to ensure we can arrive as unscathed as possible through the unfolding challenges.

Like many others, I endorse the importance of emphasizing art, but rather than committing our resources to create something new, we should be exploring every avenue to use what exists, even if that demands some changes to our behaviour.

Much of what presently happens at the city’s offices in Welsford St could be, thanks to modern technology, undertaken and completed almost anywhere in the city. It is not essential to have all administrative staff at Eastbank.

Yes, keep the customer/ratepayer contact people, the Mayor’s office, the council chambers, and any other pieces of the operation vital to the daily public operation of the city.

The Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) already has space in the building and so the area cleared of relocated administrative staff could easily be incorporated into a restructured art museum.

With costs far below that of what is proposed near Victoria Park Lake, SAM and the existing library building could connected to create a beautiful centre of the city-community facility that would answer our civic needs.

Yes, the new SAM is a good idea, but its timing is bad for rather than such wonderful physical city enhancements, the city should be acknowledging the changes that are settling upon because of global warming and along with that playing its part in cutting the world’s carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 per cent with a decade or two.

Building a new, stand-alone art museum that oozes embedded energy is contrary to an efficient and sustainable city future.

Yes, let us use what we have, modifying what exists, provide the services we want and need and yet do it thoughtfully in terms of our carbon dioxide emissions.

Yes, despite the opinions of the doubters, skeptics and others, we have changed our climate system, subsequently the benign weather that once was is gone and we are quickly moving into an era in which we will need every resource we can gather.

Friends discuss Shepparton's future

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hepparton’s future was recently discussed among a group of friends.



Shepparton at play.

Most came to the conversation with substantially different values and ideas about how the place should proceed, but all, with some caveats, were guardedly optimistic about the city’s future.

Naturally, all saw the city’s potential, or otherwise, through personal prisms, be that adherence to an ideology that favours growth, in all its forms; a steady “as she goes” view that is about consolidation of existing strengths; or what might be considered a Luddite view, being something of a retreat from modernity to a more localized community that builds its resilience.

One fellow said the Goulburn Valley, and Shepparton in particular, had benefitted from the “accident of birth”, saying it had long been fortunate in that many with an entrepreneurial spirit had been born here.

“We need more of them,” he said.

True, but the “entrepreneurial spirit” of last century, as appropriate as it was then, is no longer what is needed and although that same endeavour is still essential the circumstances in the world suggest a redirection – a new “spirit”.

The neo-liberals of the world see growth as the solution to every human dilemma, while many others, however, see our insistence on bigger, better and faster as the root of our troubles.

Personally, pessimism prevails as I peer into the darkness of the future through the neo-liberal blinkers of our present governments, State or Federal.

One in the group placed his faith in technology, mentioning the unexpected arrival of the motor car and how it rid London’s streets of near knee-deep horse manure.

That, he argued, was a wonderful example of how technology leap-frogged a problem and opened the world to new vistas.

The Shepparton of yesteryear.

Technophiles face not just an issue of too much horse manure, but a spiralling world population pressing relentlessly for more stuff, creating a world in which resources of all kinds are becoming fewer, rarer and so increasingly expensive.

And so what does this mean for Shepparton?

Many obvious needs arise, but primary among these is leadership.

We can lament the performance of State and Federal Governments, but that which can have the biggest immediate impact on our lives is what happens at municipal level.

Shepparton needs to be directed and built to survive what is evolving in the 21^st Century and not what was happening several decades ago.

Present leadership in the City of Greater Shepparton appears to be in disarray with divisiveness instead of the critically needed collaboration, cohesion and cooperation.

Shepparton needs, rather than the present vacuum, leaders who are acutely aware that we face serious energy and resource constraints and so those same people need to act with a bold plan to build a city that will endure.