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Description
After 50 years in the cultural industry, Ken Gorbey questions whether or not long-standing professional traditions and beliefs will be fit for purpose into the future.
Drawing on his experience at the forefront of new developments at the Waikato Museum, Te Papa and the Jewish Museum Berlin, he predicts a future where we will not only have to negotiate further shifts in trade and strategic alliances, but also face challenging global population expansion and the fast-accelerating and possibly dire consequences of climate change.
In this seminar, Ken will address the idea of museum as central place, namely, the ‘big building full of stuff’, and asks whether museums, and other cultural agencies, might serve their communities so much better if they were to become more ‘ubiquitous, distributed, and integrated into daily life’ (Elizabeth Merritt). Further to this, Ken will explore how successful are we in looking after burgeoning, comprehensive collections. In face of the widespread contention that museums are failing some audience segments, Ken Gorbey proposes a ‘new landscape’ of identity-forming narratives, an approach that seeks to touch the experience of currently neglected audiences.
Speaker Bios
Following a year of gas line archaeology, Ken Gorbey became Director of Waikato Museum 1971 to 1984. He then went into the market place as a consultant in the field of cultural property and museums. From 1984 to 1999 he had many different roles in establishing Te Papa finally, as Director of Museum Projects, being responsible for the visitor experience. In 1999 he was appointed Project Director and Deputy President at the Jewish Museum Berlin, tasked with the successful opening of the Museum in 2001 and overseeing the first year of operation. He then returned to his consultancy in 2003. Ken Gorbey’s work involves concept formulation and project oversight of a wide variety of endeavours, including government policy, exhibition development, performing arts centres, urban renewal, historic sites and precincts, an arboretum, and cultural tourism attractions, as well as assisting the creation of new, and the re-engineering of existing, galleries and museums. These projects range from the very small community-based to large multi million-dollar developments in Russia, Germany, Australia, the States, Mexico, etc as well as New Zealand.