Nan Giese Gallery

There is a singular quality about Territory women.  As Cloudy Beale, an Alice Springs pioneer once remarked: ‘They’re a tough individual lot.  Maybe you have to be to come up here in the first place … I don’t know if it was they who made the Territory or the Territory that made them’.ⁱ  The extraordinary life and work of the late Nan Giese reflected both aspects of this Territory phenomenon: she was a woman whose resilience, fortitude and creative sensibilities were sculpted by the contours, the culture and climate of the region.  As a pioneer of tertiary education and an ardent advocate for the value of the visual and performing arts in shaping our society, and contributing to its well-being, she left her own indelible mark on the Territory landscape: its people, collections and institutions. 

Dr Nan Giese was the Foundation Chair of the University Art Collection’s first management committee, established in 1981, a year after the Collection was formed within the teaching program of the Darwin Community College.  She steered the Committee and Collection’s evolution for more than two decades, overseeing the acquisition by purchase and gift of more than 1000 art works.  Some of the earliest paintings, prints, drawings and ceramics acquired between 1980 and 1985, and later in the 1990s – several displayed here today – are an outstanding testament to the informed decision-making and connoisseurship exercised under her stewardship.  ‘There is no art without judgement’ according to Roger Scruton, and Nan was not afraid when the time came to exercise it – wisely, patiently and with undisguised, unashamed, love. 

She was proud to hear that by 2011, the Collection had more than doubled in size, in large part augmented annually since 1993 by limited edition prints gifted by artist-printmakers and the University’s printmaking workshop, Northern Editions.  Dr Giese had been instrumental, with Kevin Davis, in brokering the arrangement – still in operation today – that ensured the safe transfer of workshop proofs of prints to the Art Collection’s holdings.  She once described the printmaking studio’s contribution, and this component of the Collection, as the ‘jewel in the Crown’ of the University. 

It is fitting that the Art School’s Gallery in Orange 10 was named after Nan in 2011, as she facilitated its creation and supervised its exhibition programmes for more than a decade, from 1989 onwards.  She was in regular attendance at exhibition openings, in particular supporting student and staff shows.  When the University Art Collection was accorded its own purpose-built, dedicated exhibition space in the Chancellery in Orange 12, Nan was there, at the opening, and at all openings thereafter.   

I was fortunate to have worked with Nan in commissioning her portrait, on display here today.  It was Nan’s wish that the artist have a connection to the University, first and foremost: as a past or present member of staff or a student.  With the commissioned artist, Tobias Richardson, a former CDU lecturer and Masters of Arts candidate, I visited Nan’s home in Audit House.  Suspended above the tropical garden, surrounded by books and art works, several by her daughter Diana, we spent a few hours discussing the portrait ‘brief’ in Nan’s cultural domain.  Tobias was enchanted by his subject and the ambience of the place: he rushed home and began work immediately.  The dual portrait on glass captures, I believe, something of that encounter, with light reflected on the louvres, the moist air, the whirring of ceiling fans overhead and Nan as its focus.   

Building a public collection and ensuring it is cared for requires diligence, commitment and strength of character, often in the face of staunch opposition.  Some view the existence and maintenance of an art collection within a University as an expensive and unjustified luxury: Nan saw it as a necessity.  In the words of Lord Radcliffe, a public collection is ‘an unconditional public charge’.  In her arts leadership and advisory roles, at this University, as for the Arts Council of the NT and on the Board of Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, she recognised that the provision of support and funding for arts-related activities was less a question of ‘priority’ as ensuring the community gained access and experience to things that are ‘an inescapable condition of any proper civilisation’.  In a balanced society, the arts should go ‘hand in hand’ – not compete – with the ‘provision of other essential things’.ⁱⁱ  

Today, the University can be proud of a Collection that reflects both its past and its present, its teaching, learning and research activities in Northern Australia and Southeast Asia, and its significant community engagement role in the Northern Territory and beyond.  Dr Nan Giese played a pivotal role in making the Collection what it is today: one of national and international significance.  Whenever I pull out a painting rack or open a plan drawer, Nan is there – as much a part of the Collection’s past and present, as its future.  Quoting Banjo Paterson, in the Introduction to Baiba Berzins’ and Peter Loveday’s history of the Northern Territory University (1999), Nan remarked: ‘In this land full of possibilities, there is much, much more to come’.ⁱⁱⁱ   

I will miss her greatly at exhibition openings, but I know that Nan’s legacy has already stood the test of time: vita brevis, ars longa – life is short, but art endures. 

Anita Angel 

Curator, Charles Darwin University Art Collection and Art Gallery 

13 June 2012