A cooperation between a rural campus of a university and an art gallery in the same regional centre is documented in this paper to demonstrate how new approaches can invigorate and strengthen past practices. A fiftieth anniversary exhibition of an art collection in a Faculty of Education was planned in 2008 with the cooperation of the regional art gallery. This then is the focus of the paper.

Education lecturers and students have used the university art collection over a period of fifty years for learning in art and other curriculum areas. It has allowed rural students who, because of distance and rural economic decline [1], have had limited access to public galleries, to have ongoing contact with quality Australian art during their student days. The art works have always been readily accessible hanging in the corridors of the Education Building. Only once before has it been exhibited to the general public in a gallery setting.

Internationally since the 1980s, events have led to what has been termed a “crisis” for university collections [2]. The move away from object-based teaching and greater dependence upon Information and Communications Technology, and the imposition of financial constraints on universities that have forced their managements to question the value of maintaining museums and collections have both contributed to this sense of crisis. The researcher’s concern over the status of this teaching collection and its proposed change of management to a central city-based university bureaucracy drew her attention to evaluating its potential use in the school and more generally within the institution. The exhibition has provided an excellent opportunity to contribute to this evaluation, along with surveys of current students.

At the gallery, the exhibition heightened public and student awareness not only to the importance of the collection in terms of the value and significance of the art works but also in the sense that it provided a “window into the university” revealing what was available there for research, teaching and learning [3].

As well, for the students the heightened awareness of the significance of the collection for the wider art and education communities helped focus their understanding of its value to themselves in their learning and in their development as teachers. For the researcher, the opportunity to work with art gallery specialist staff has allowed professional development in exhibition organization and management, working with artists and hanging shows, publicity and catalogue publication. This learning then has the potential to enhance and inform the ongoing development and management of the art collection at the university and enrich teaching programs dependent upon the collection.

The cooperation between the university and the gallery has resulted in multiple benefits for the university. It is expected also that the relationship will be ongoing with loans of art works to the gallery for exhibitions and with sharing of expertise between the two organizations. It is envisaged that this will result in further invigoration of teacher education programs.

[1] Socioeconomic Index for Areas - Index of Disadvantage, cited in City of Greater Bendigo (2006, n.p.). On-line:
[2] Kozak, Z.R. (2007). Promoting the past, reserving the future: British university heritage collections and identity marketing. PhD thesis. St. Andrews University, Scotland.
[3] Ibid.