The Mildura Model

Abstract

From the mid-1960s on, the Australian tertiary art-education system experienced great and rapid change. Art education moved from the technical-education sector into the tertiary one. Institutional structures expanded, government patronage grew, and student numbers increased. There were new ideas about making, exhibiting, and viewing art; new curricula for art teaching; new critical theories; and increased political awareness. Follow-on effects included increased status and employment opportunities for artists (particularly sculptors), and pressure to exhibit emerging artists and new media. The changes in art education would prove pivotal to the development of the Mildura Sculpture Triennial, initiated in 1961, especially to its fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh instalments (1970, 1973, 1975, and 1978). Specific to the development of the Mildura model was the 'profound dependence on the education system' by a new and emergent visual-arts profession, which constituted 'the indispensable means of [the profession's] reproduction and growth'.