A treasure trove of performing arts history is finally getting a new home

Down in the depths of Hamer Hall, behind a secret door, is a treasure trove of performing arts history. The drawers and cabinets all look simple and practically identical, but unless you’re part of the curatorial team, the contents come as a complete surprise.

One drawer is filled with ballet slippers, another with handwritten notes. A nearby shelf displays set models of plays long since passed, and the cupboards are filled with costumes, sequins and, unexpectedly, Ossie Ostrich from Hey Hey It’s Saturday.

Arts Centre Melbourne CEO Karen Quinlan and curator Sandra Bruce.Credit: Eddie Jim

“We’ve got opera, we’ve got dance, we’ve got theatre, we’ve got magic, we’ve got comedy,” curator Sandra Bruce, director of collections and exhibitions at Arts Centre Melbourne, says with a laugh.

Arts Centre Melbourne has been building the 850,000-item collection since 1975 – even before its first building opened in 1982 – and now, in the collection’s 50th year, it is opening a new dedicated museum space to showcase the unique archive.

In December, Arts Centre Melbourne will open the Australian Museum of Performing Arts in Hamer Hall, in the site formerly occupied by restaurant Fatto. The space will host two exhibitions a year, predominantly drawing on the centre’s sizeable collection, with the goal of not simply putting items on display, but telling some of the many stories that have long remained untold.

“We’ve always known that there’s this amazing Australian performing arts collection,” says Bruce. “It sounds a bit corny, but to be able to bring it back up into the light and to share it with the public I think is very exciting and very important.”

The collection has been a priority for Arts Centre Melbourne CEO Karen Quinlan from very early on. “The conversation started, really, at the very beginning with my first interview for the job,” she says. “When I started in the role, I was very aware of the collection, and I also knew that I would do something with it.”

Minister for Creative Industries Colin Brooks underscores the importance of the new space, saying the museum will “showcase our national collection at a scale never before possible”.

The bulk of the collection has been built through philanthropy and donations from artists – including Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave and the estate of Dame Nellie Melba – and companies, including The Australian Ballet and Melbourne Theatre Company.

One of the philosophies underlying the museum and broader collection is that items from the past can help shape the present – glimpses into the creative process or peeks behind the (sometimes literal) curtain can inspire new works. One of Quinlan’s favourite sections of the archive is a drawer filled with Nick Cave’s notebooks. “I could imagine that would be very, very important for musicians, and anyone who wants to be inspired by the creative process, to actually see the material behind that.”

A concept illustration of the Australian Museum of Performing Arts. Credit: Scharp

Bruce finds herself drawn to playwright Ray Lawler’s typewriter. “It was the typewriter that he wrote Summer of the Seventeenth Doll on,” she reflects. “How does a creative work come into being? That’s what the typewriter evokes for me.”

The collection has not been completely unavailable to the public. Items have been displayed in temporary cabinets in the Arts Centre buildings and in the Australian Music Vault, and tours of a curated cross-section of the collection are currently available – but this will be the first time in over 25 years that there has been a formal space dedicated to showcasing the items.

“I felt that over the course of the history of Arts Centre Melbourne, the collection had really experienced a sort of start-stop approach, and I felt that it was time to fully embed it within what Art Centre Melbourne is, and to give it a more of a profile,” says Quinlan.

Both Bruce and Quinlan think of the museum as a full circle moment. When Hamer Hall – then called the Melbourne Concert Hall – first opened in 1983, it included a dedicated Performing Arts Museum, which showcased items from the collection until its closure in the late ’90s. PAM, as it was colloquially known, was housed just next door to where the new museum will be.

While the focus of the museum’s first exhibition is yet to be announced, Bruce says that her team is brimming with so many ideas, enough to “keep us going through this century and into the next one,” she says.

The museum, and the collection itself, is a way of capturing something otherwise fleeting. “We’re a performing arts collection. We’re embedded in the heart of the biggest performing arts centre in Australia. And we are, I guess, the nexus between the ephemeral moment that happens on stage and then preserving memories and reinvigorating memories, or telling stories for perpetuity, for people once they’ve walked out of the auditorium.”

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