Rachel Spence’s Battle for the Museum reflects a growing movement to redefine the art museum as a site of activism and social change that has gained momentum in the United States and Britain around issues of race, equity, and diversity. Advocating the need for radical transformation, Spence paints an insistently bleak picture of art museums, recording their multiple failings on social, ethical, ... (read more)
Gabriella Coslovich
Gabriella Coslovich is a Melbourne author and freelance journalist, specialising in the arts. Her Walkley-winning book of true crime, Whiteley on Trial (2017), centres on a case of alleged art fraud involving paintings in the style of Australian artist Brett Whiteley.
As I sat down to write this review, a media release popped into my email inbox with the excited news that more than 400,000 people had visited the National Gallery of Victoria’s MoMA exhibition over its four-month duration, making it the NGV’s ‘second most attended ticketed exhibition on record’. This large attendance figure was presumably cited as proof of the exhibition’s success. More ... (read more)