Word: mca
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only three years ago, when Sydneysiders were asked to vote on a similar plan for the harborside MCA, they gave it the thumbs-down. European architects Sauerbruch Hutton had won an international design competition to redevelop the former Maritime Services building (one scheme involved a "lightbox" over the existing art deco edifice; another had it demolished and replaced with what detractors likened to a petrol station). But public support waned, and the plan was eventually scrapped. Instead, director Macgregor set about improving the existing building, turning around the museum's deficit, and widening its community outreach; for the first time...
...enough to raise your spirits about the state of contemporary art. The buoyant mood continues upstairs on the fourth floor, where the museum has unveiled an expanded space dedicated for the first time to its permanent collection and new acquisitions. Hard to believe that six years ago the MCA was faced with a crippling deficit and possible closure. "It does feel like the contemporary moment has finally come," says director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor...
...Sydney's loss has been Brisbane's and Auckland's gain. Voted the most popular design of those shortlisted for the MCA was an elegantly fanned Moving Image Museum at the Harbour Bridge end of the site. Its architect, Sydney's Richard Francis-Jones, now finds himself at the helm of the Auckland redevelopment. With the original 1887 French chateau?style building overrun by storage and an unwieldy airconditioning system, Francis-Jones was faced with a similarly tricky heritage site. His solution has been to restore the existing spaces and double their area with what he calls a "hovering canopy...
...Pacific into concrete form. Just last month, the gallery purchased 20 new works by Niuean-New Zealander painter John Pule, helping to remedy Australia's blind spot on contemporary Pacific art. "That they're looking to the region is exciting and great for all of us," says the MCA's Macgregor...
...Macgregor's museum will lose its title as the country's largest exhibitor of contemporary art, though it will perhaps remain the edgiest. (Indeed, it's hard to think of another local institution gutsy enough to take on Ed Kienholz's sex-and-violence-splattered junkshop assemblages, as the MCA will do in December.) Wandering around its modest new permanent collection space, one senses a cultural flowering just as important as any glassy cathedral to contemporary art. Here the fiberglass manta ray and skater-boy video of former "Primavera" artists James Angus and Shaun Gladwell sit happily alongside such contemporary...