IAN POTTER MUSEUM MURAL

The Ian Potter Museum of Art has gone through a number of name changes and has been housed in different locations on the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus. First established as the University Art Gallery in 1975, it was located in the centre of campus in the Old Physics Building. Additional accommodation was found on Swanston Street for it in the Physics Annex in 1988.

This space housed both the Ian Potter Gallery and the Art Conservation Centre and together with the University Gallery were known as The University of Melbourne Museum of Art. In 1998 a purpose-built art museum designed by Nonda Katsalidis and named The Ian Potter Museum of Art, opened to the public and is now considered one of the leading university art museums in the country. The Potter, won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects ‘Project of the Year’ award on its completion in 1999.

Bursting through Katsalidis’s sleek facade is the immense 1993 sculptural mural, "Cultural Rubble", by the Australian-born sculptor Christine O’Loughlin, now based in Paris. She used fragments of classical statuary, architecture and pottery cast in white fibreglass from plaster moulds of originals in the Louvre to evoke the tension between Australia’s European heritage and its future.

This post is part of the Weekend in Black and White meme.