Toowoomba Art Museum: Vision laid out for new gallery as council approves $300,000 business case
Some of Toowoomba’s most influential people have laid out their vision for a massive new art museum that has reached a key stage with the council. Here’s what it could look like and where it could go:
Development
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Toowoomba’s new dedicated art museum could attract international exhibitions, showcase local and First Nations creatives, have a permanent wing for one of Australia’s finest artists and better showcase the region’s rarely-seen 8000-piece collection.
That’s the vision laid out by some of the proponents of the tentatively named $100m Toowoomba Art Museum (TAM) project, which has been given the green light in the council’s latest budget.
In a decision that has been years in the making, more than $300,000 will be spent on a business case for a purpose-built gallery or museum in the Garden City.
The news has delighted the city’s art community, collectors, philanthropists and supporters, who have envisaged a beautiful multistorey museum and tourism attraction in the bold style of the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) in Victoria or the Rockhampton Museum of Art (RMOA).
Where TAM could go and what it would include
Both SAM and RMOA, created for communities half the size of Toowoomba’s, are case studies to note according to art collector, philanthropist and developer Ian Knox, who is working closely with the council and has completed his own masterplan that has earmarked a space at Picnic Point for the building.
Mr Knox said TAM needed to be a stand-alone building in an iconic destination with a modern architectural style, picnic facilities, a new restaurant, conferencing, tourist features and permanent wings for local and indigenous artists.
“It’s got to have an iconic architecture flavour, something that says ‘wow, what a beautiful building’,” he said.
“Shepparton has done an amazing bit of architecture – they’ve got 65,000 people and they’ve done this.
“We can do something as good, if not better, for 165,000 people in this region.”
Along with helping to raise funds from fellow philanthropists for construction, Mr Knox said his contribution would be gathering the pieces for a permanent wing dedicated to acclaimed Australian artist Jeffrey Smart.
Smart, who died in 2013, was known for his modernist landscapes and a 2021 exhibition of his work at the National Gallery in Canberra sold out for three months.
“His work starts at about $500,000 and goes up to $3m, so most of his (pieces) would be bequeathed by collectors,” Mr Knox said.
“His foundation has about 25 to 30 of his existing works that have never been on the market. “Phillip Bacon, a good friend of mine from Brisbane, he has 15 of his works and I’ve got 10 myself.
“I’ve got to put them somewhere, because my family has no interest in art and I thought, why not find somewhere really good to put it and just bequeath it.”
Councillor Melissa Taylor said the proposed facility would give the region access to national and even international exhibitions that it couldn’t currently attract.
“We would have wings that would highlight our local artists, wings that would highlight international artists and wings that would have spaces for workshops so our young people could come and experience the arts hands-on,” she said.
“I’ve been talking with Ian for some time now and that is exactly what I thought, so to be on the same page is quite a blessing.
“And we’ve got families or people that just can’t get to Brisbane or Shepperton or to Melbourne or Sydney to see these exhibitions.
“I’ve been lucky enough to go down and see them myself, but there are families that just can’t do that, so imagine if we could bring those exhibitions to Toowoomba and they get to experience the absolute delight of that.”
Ms Taylor said the funding of the business case in June’s budget, given the current economic pressures the council was feeling, was a watershed moment.
“It was euphoric because this art gallery can mean so much for our region, not just from a tourism perspective, but from an arts perspective for our region, for our youth from an educational perspective, from the cultural perspective for our region,” she said.
“It was hard fought, and it’s not that councillors didn’t want it in there, it’s just things are so extremely fiscally tight at the moment.
“But I was thankful for the foresight of the board room table that we actually got it across the line.”
Inside Toowoomba’s ‘priceless’ 8000-piece art, manuscript collection
TAM would replace the ageing Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery (TRAG) on Ruthven Street, which has been at that location since 1994 and features works from some of Australia’s greatest artists.
It is also includes an extraordinary collection of books, manuscripts and artefacts donated by Bill and Marion Bolton of high national important, including discovery journals from the early 1600s, rare materials on our First Nations people and literature on pre-colonial Australia.
Once the largest regional gallery in Queensland, TRAG is too small to even showcase 10 per cent of the 8000 pieces and works that belong to the community and has been prone to weather damage that saw the priceless Lionel Lindsay gallery upstairs shut for a year.
Louise Boyle from the Community for a Toowoomba Art Museum (CTM) said collections like the Lionel Lindsay gallery were too precious to keep out of public view.
“The Lionel Lindsey collection is so important that Nick Mitzevich, the director of the National Gallery in Canberra, is one of the trustees for it,” she said.
“It’s important for the people of Toowoomba to see the collection.
“They’ve only got a limited space (at TRAG) and some of our greatest artists are in the collection, we’ve got a lot in (storage) and it’s a shame if we can’t see it.”
Toowoomba councillor and TAM advocate Melissa Taylor said showcasing more of the region’s existing works was a primary driver for her support of the project.
“This building here was the biggest in Queensland when it was first built and now we’ve outgrown it,” she said.
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