Diana Baker Smith and Verónica Tello
Opening Night (The Order of Arrangements)
2020
Single Channel HD Video
17:15 minutes

The video essay Opening Night (The Order of Arrangements) focuses on the National Gallery of Australia, and its opening night which took place October 12, 1982. It reconstructs the opening speeches and the walkthrough of the Australian collection, involving Queen Elizabeth II (Head of State), James Mollison (inaugural Director of the NGA) and Gordon Darling (Chairman of the NGA Council). It analyses the origins of the museum and its foundational rhetoric and values, which celebrate the settler-colonial nation. At the same time, the video shows that while women may be excluded in the collection, they are nonetheless always present. That is, as librarians, art handlers and administrators working ‘behind the scenes’ reproducing the museum. Drawing on the NGA’s archives, including archival footage and sound, the video plays on various forms of reproduction, repetition and re-enactment within the museum’s historiography.

Work Credits
Music Composition: Bree van Reyk
Text Design: Ella Sutherland
Videography: Sam Cooper
Video Editing: Diana Baker Smith
Sound Mix: Bob Scott
Colourist: Julien Chichignoud

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Opening Night (The Order of Arrangements) was commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia and funded and supported by NSW Government in association with Create NSW and UNSW Art & Design.