Flinders University Museum of Art facts for kids
| Established | 1978 |
|---|---|
| Location | Flinders University, Sturt Rd, Social Sciences North, Bedford Park SA 5042 |
| Type | University art museums and galleries |
The Flinders University Museum of Art (FUMA) is an exciting art museum in Adelaide, South Australia. It's also known as the Flinders Art Museum. This museum looks after and grows the amazing art collections of Flinders University. It has both old and new artworks!
Contents
Discovering the Museum's History
The Flinders University Museum of Art officially opened in 1978. The university council decided to create it to hold their growing collection of art. Even before the museum opened, Flinders University was collecting art. They started buying artworks in 1966. This was the first year students could study fine arts at the university.
Where the Museum Has Been
The art collection first found a home in 1997. It was located on Grote Street in the heart of Adelaide city centre. Later, in 2003, the collection moved. It went to the State Library of South Australia on North Terrace. This location closed its doors in June 2018.
In that same year, something new happened! FUMA launched its Online Collections Catalogue. This means you can now see many artworks online.
A New Home for Art
Since 2019, the museum has a special gallery space. It's right next to the Art Museum at the university's Bedford Park campus. This gallery shows many different art projects. These projects encourage questions and new ideas. They also help artists from different places work together.
Unique Art Collections
A special part of the museum is the Post-object and Documentation collection. It's one of the best collections in Australia. It shows how "conceptual art" was made in the 1960s and 1970s. Conceptual art is all about ideas, not just the finished artwork.
This collection was started by Donald Brook. He was in charge of Visual Arts at Flinders from 1974. He also gave the museum artworks from a group called Optronic Kinetics. This group was an experimental art collective in Sydney during the 1970s. They mixed science and technology with art. They made new, sometimes funny, conceptual art pieces.
Exploring the Art Collections
The Flinders University Museum of Art has grown a lot! It now holds more than 8,000 artworks. This makes it one of the biggest university art collections in Australia.
The collection focuses on four main types of art:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art
- European prints
- Post-object and Documentation (art focused on ideas and records)
- Australian political posters
If you want to see the university collections, you can! You just need to make an appointment first.
