Censorship in Canberra. - or is it something else.

Listened to the  Director of the National Portrait Galllery in Canberra , again. On Radio National.

He seemed to be torn  between the reasons  he had to take down  a Photograph of  the Indonesian President.

Safety of  the art work was the, hardly reasonable, reason he  first offered.  But then he insisted he was not naive enough to  have ignored the  lead of  his Political Masters. They had withdrawn  the Australian Ambassodor from Jakarta.  He took down the photograph  in an act of Prostration before  the Powers that be.


Critics of his  action  have described  it as Censorship by  a Nanny State.  That was my first reaction too.   But now that I have had time to mull over the  episode I think there is a lot more to the  sad story.

Only  a few days earlier  a young reporter  for Australia Multicultural TV station had been fired for a personal tweet  that dared to challenge the  'cultification'  ( as he called it ) of  Australia's Holy Cow - ANZAC Day. That firing had followed a phone call from the Minister of  Communication. A man otherwise  well known for his patronage  of the Arts.

What these two incidents  point out very loudly and clearly is that  any challenge to Australian National Narrative   will not be allowed to go unpunished . Not in these days of increasingly right wing  Nationalism.

I have always been struck  by how the National Portrait Gallery is about  projecting a National narrataive that is about  haloed Heroes. Heroic leaders to be looked up to. Almost worshipped without  question.

I actually had raised that question with Andrew Sayers , a former Director of the Portrait Gallery when he was part of a seminar  in Delhi  that I had organised.   He had no answer to my question about why  the Gallery foregrounded  a hagiographic Hero and not the the blokey and average Ozie
In the  Land of the Fair Go which believes in Mateship and not Class, that would have been  the way  to go.  Or so one thought


Like most National Portrait Galleries  the one one is Canberra is about projecting  a very Nationalist   narrative    that suits those in Power.    Any challenge to that Power will not get by the Gate Keepers. The Chowkidars of Culture. The Culture of the Powerful  Class.