A Sydney University proposal to restructure its prestigious Chau Chak Wing Museum has shocked and angered the museum’s curators, who fear the world-class collections in their custody will be put at risk. A petition circulating in the Australian cultural sector decries the planned cuts to eight positions across curatorial, collections and public engagement teams.
”The loss of these roles, and changes to organisational structure, risks diminishing the museum’s capacity to care for and develop its collections, deliver educational experiences, support academic research and maintain its standing as a leading university museum,” the petition says.
According to the petition, the proposed new management structure is “top-heavy”, with three executive-level salaried directors in an organisation with only about 30 staff. The key position of head of collections would also be removed.
The Art Newspaper understands morale at the Chau Chak Wing Museum has plummeted. But John Buchanan, the branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union at the University of Sydney, says the museum’s staff members were strongly unionised and would fight the changes.
“They’ve got deep expertise, and they’ve basically been told: ‘there’s going to be a spill-and-fill change process and get in line to apply for your job again’,” Buchanan tells The Art Newspaper. ”This is an unhelpful way of dealing with a complex problem in the creative workforce, and [the staff] are showing their creativity by being so effective in organising.”
According to a university statement in response to the petition, the proposed changes aim to strengthen the museum’s educational and exhibition programme. “They include realigning positions in education and public programs and curatorial work, while creating a more sustainable staffing structure to meet growing demand,” the statement says. It adds that the proposed overall number of full-time equivalent roles would remain unchanged.
Craig Barker, an archaeologist and the head of public engagement at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, believes that the proposal would refocus staff attention towards education and engagement. While he was generally in favour of that idea, Barker tells The Art Newspaper that this will swing staff attention away from curatorial and collection management. Academic research and international expert connections would suffer, Barker adds.
Barker says his role’s title would become “deputy director of business, education and experience”, and that he believes the focus would be on business. ”Our big frustrations are not that there’s a refocus towards public engagement. It’s something that we want, but it’s at the cost of what we have done so well and where we’ve built our reputation, which is in highest-quality curatorial research,” Barker says. “The fundamental question is: does the University of Sydney want an internationally recognised, world-class research and object-based teaching facility? Or do we just want a nice shiny building with pictures hanging on the wall?”
Ann Stephen, a senior art curator of the university art collection at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, says her job is under threat. She adds that curatorial knowledge is vital for collection care, research, publications and advising on acquisition and deaccession of works. ”Without recourse to such knowledge, artworks can be misattributed, over or undervalued, or simply not understood in terms of any wider context,” Stephen says. ”Exhibition programmes not informed by curatorial knowledge can become merely dumbed-down spectacles lacking historical research or insights.”
According to the University of Sydney's statement, formal consultation began in July and “feedback and proposed alternatives” are welcomed.
The modernist Chau Chak Wing Museum opened to the public on the university’s main campus in 2020 and is free to enter. The museum amalgamated the university’s three main collections: antiquities, natural history and art. The director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum is Michael Dagostino, who was chosen as the curator for the Australian pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The Chau Chak Wing Museum was also a venue of the 2026 Sydney Biennale.