WEBVTT
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Two of the leaders of our National Portrait Galleries
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to reflect on the year that has passed,
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how they're guiding us through 2020 and beyond,
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and what future holds for our National Portrait Galleries.
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Beaming into us figuratively and literally
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from Washington DC, is Kim Sajet,
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the Director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
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Kim has been at the helm of their organization
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for seven and a half years, now.
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She was born in Nigeria,
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but she was raised here in Australia,
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and after doing a couple of stints
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at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
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and the MONA Art Gallery,
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she's traveled to the United States and taken up the helm
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of the National Portrait Gallery there.
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We can't thank her enough for joining us today
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amongst all of the drama and unfolding news
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that's coming out of Washington and the United States,
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at the moment.
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We're all glued to our television screens, I'm sure.
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Karen Quinlan AM took up the position
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of the Director of the National Portrait Gallery
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here in Australia, literally, almost two years ago, now,
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and ever since she arrived,
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the universe has thrown just about all that it can at her.
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We've had major building rectifications,
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catastrophic bushfires this year,
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which blanketed Canberra in toxic smoke.
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Followed by an Armageddon-style hailstorm,
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more building rectifications,
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and straight into the COVID-19 lockdown.
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So Karen has had to become a master of the perfect pivot.
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Just keeping with the little behind the scenes feel
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to this particular series,
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the first tidbit I'd like to drop in
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is that the staff here at the National Portrait Gallery
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affectionately refer to Karen as K.Q..
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So if you happen to hear that throughout the course
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of the presentation, you'll know who I'm talking about.
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So welcome to Karen and Kim.
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Thank you, so much, to both of you
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for giving up your time to talk with us today.
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I'd like to hand it over to Karen now
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to kick over the conversation.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, Gill.
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It's great to be here.
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It's great to be part of this conversation,
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and, look, a big thank you to Kim.
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Hey.
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It's just fantastic to connect with you.
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When I did take on the job, it is two years ago,
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I remember thinking I so much want to connect
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with all the portrait gallery directors around the world,
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indeed, connect our organizations,
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so here's great step forward for us.
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Again, welcome to all of our viewers.
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It's great that's you're--
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I see the numbers going up, and it's great to see so many,
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or know that so many people are watching us,
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and hearing our conversation today.
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I know that there'll be lots of similarities
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and differences between our organizations,
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but I guess, for us, it being the first conversation,
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we sort of decided in our preparatory work,
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that I would ask the questions and you would answer them.
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I'm going to answer my own questions first,
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and then flick over to you.
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So that's really the nature of this conversation today.
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So look, it has been a very interesting two years,
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but certainly the last 12 months,
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for me, have been challenging. (laughs)
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And it's when you have to really ensure
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that you have strong leadership skills.
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And so as was mentioned, we started, in particular,
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well, last year with some work on the building.
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We moved out of the building and back into the building,
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but this year has been incredible.
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The bushfires, I was over in Bali, would you believe?
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For holidays, came back, and there were bushfires,
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but my car was so severely damaged by the hailstorm,
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the golf ball-sized hailstorm,
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and so coming back to that,
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and then bushfire season.
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We weren't impacted in Canberra, but certainly we felt it,
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and we felt for everyone around the country.
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And I think, as that was lifting,
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and the conversations were starting to become
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a little bit more positive, COVID started to be discussed,
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and before too long, it had actually reached Australia.
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So keeping the team together,
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and thinking on your feet, as you do,
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we all moved into that working from home environment,
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which was challenging, but I felt my team
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rose to the occasion and really connected well,
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particularly my senior management team.
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We moved really quickly to online programming,
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we postponed exhibitions,
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we had our inaugural Darling Portrait Prize on display,
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and we had to close that, which was sad.
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The National Photographic Portrait Prize
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was on display, again closed.
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So looking for the silver lining.
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Behind the scenes, staff got into the cataloging.
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They got into the photography of the collection.
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We did some repainting, we rehung spaces.
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So there was lots of times for planning,
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and opportunities to have conversations about the future.
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Loads of thinking time, really, which was great.
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And then we reopened in June,
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so I'm giving you the huge timeline, here.
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Made sure our spaces were safe for visitors and staff,
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and importantly continued to work online,
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but encouraged people to come back.
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One of the projects that worked really well for us online,
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was working with the artist who won
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the Darling Portrait Prize, Anthea da Silva.
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She did a live workshop for the public,
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and it brought in more than 500 people
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from young children right through to adults.
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It was a really warm event because of the connectivity,
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and at the end, as you can see,
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all of the artists showed their drawing.
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It was just so fantastic to experience this,
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and I sort of wonder whether
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we would have gone to that extent,
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or whether we would have had that response
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if it hadn't been for COVID.
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So I'm always looking for the silver lining.
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So my first question to you, Kim,
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is sort of about your experience,
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particularly in the last few months,
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and how this has all effected you, in Washington.
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Yeah, it's been a dumpster fire of a year.
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As everyone has said,
(Karen laughing)
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what a disaster 2020 has been,
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and because I was watching what was happening
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with the fires, because of course, my family is in Australia,
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and I'm so sorry that you went through that.
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We went through different fires.
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We went through political fires.
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We had the issues about racial injustice and protests,
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the people who've died at the hands of police violence,
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but even before that,
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all the conversations about Confederate monuments,
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the Me Too movement, immigration.
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And like all good artists, our artists were responding
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to what was happening to them around the community.
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So in fact, if you want to go to the first slide,
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you can see that we, when we started going into the pivot,
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we immediately reached out to our artists
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to ask them to comment on what was happening.
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So you'll see, on the far left-hand side,
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some of our educators.
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There's Ashley doing some education around our portraits.
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We, because we're part of the Smithsonian,
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we had partnered with USA Today,
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to also make materials available to everybody
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through the newspaper, because not everybody
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has access to digital material.
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We, too, did a lot of art projects.
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So you can see, on the right-hand side, our artist there,
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showing people how to make portraits.
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But in the center, in fact,
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we started on our Instagram TV,
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we asked our artists who were at
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the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition,
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that happens every three years,
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to respond to the current moment,
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and what they sent us was really remarkable.
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And if you have a chance, you can watch them.
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They're very little snippets about how they were feeling
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about what was happening around us.
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And so, you know, it's been really interesting.
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To your point about the staff, we sort of saw this coming.
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We sort of saw the winds of change,
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and one of the funniest moments was, one of my team said,
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"You know, let's test out an all staff meeting online
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before we all have to go home."
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And I said, "Well, this is never gonna work.
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This is gonna be a complete disaster."
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So there we all were in our offices,
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a couple of feet away from each other,
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and we did our first team meeting, staff meeting,
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and when I came out of my office, everyone told me
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that it was the best meeting that they've ever had.
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(laughing)
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And it was the most well attended meeting,
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and I got instantly insulted.
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I was like, what do you mean?
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But I felt we did the, sort of, going home really well,
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and we pivoted to the online really well,
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but as time has worn on, and as you know,
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we're still very much in the middle of the COVID crisis,
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in fact, it's getting worse in the United States,
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it's really changed, it's fluctuated.
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At first, it was sort of adapting so that everyone,
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you know, knew how to work from home,
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but there's a whole psychological aspect,
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not just for our staff, but everyone at home.
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One of the worst forms of punishment
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is to put people in solitary confinement.
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And so we've all been going into our homes,
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but we're craving content, and connection with other people.
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And so the Portrait Gallery, here,
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has really tried to provide that, while at the same time,
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working out how to give ourselves
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the nourishment that we needed to have.
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Yeah, it goes against what we stand for, really,
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this isolation and lack of connection with people,
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and you know, opening the doors to the physical, the public.
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So thanks for your answer, Kim.
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That's really interesting,
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and I can see lots of synergies between us,
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in terms of our experience.
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So through our collection development
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and our temporary exhibition program,
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we both focus on identity.
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It's a big part of what we do,
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and we like to sort of say that we try
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to capture the heart and soul of every Australian
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through our collection development,
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and through our temporary exhibition programs.
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So at the gallery, it's a bit of a celebration of diversity,
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and gender, and inclusiveness,
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and importantly, our First Nations peoples.
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So I though I'd talk about an acquisition
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that came into the collection quite recently,
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which was a 36-paneled work by indigenous artist,
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Shirley Purdie, as you can see on the screen, there.
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Her cultural knowledge and artistic skills
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are complementary, and as an artist,
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she's very worthy of being in our collection.
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She's a prominent indigenous leader,
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and has become a cross-cultural communicator,
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who is really dedicated to passing those stories down
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to younger generations.
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The title of this work,
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it's really a self-portrait in many ways,
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it's "From My Women", so it's actually about country,
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and her own experience, her family,
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and it represents, really, herself
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through her collective knowledge,
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her values, and her culture.
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So rather than being a likeness, which we all expect,
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with the face being, you know, central to portraiture,
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this work challenges those notions,
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those preconceived notions of portraiture,
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and I think it's a really interesting acquisition for us,
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and very timely, at this point.
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So in terms of living in the US, in your nation's capital,
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Kim, what's the role of your portrait gallery
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in being a communicator to the public?
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I think about it in different ways, you know?
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Congress set us up in 1962,
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under Kennedy, who was then, of course, killed,
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and then we opened in 1968, under President Johnson.
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The brief was to collect the people who've changed America,
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made an impact, and that's good and bad, right?
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So as I said, there's no moral test
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to be in the Portrait Gallery,
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otherwise nobody would be there.
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I mean, the first 12 presidents enslaved people.
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But then, you know, portraiture, as we all know,
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has been an incredibly elitist art form,
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and it favored, in this country, those who could vote,
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white men who owned land.
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So if you were a woman, or once enslaved,
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or a migrant, or Jewish, or Muslim,
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you know, good luck, right?
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Getting your portrait done.
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They have that adage,
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"Well behaved women rarely make history."
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Well, you definitely didn't get your portrait made, either,
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unless you were a badly behaved woman.
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So this is an example of a conversation of, sort of,
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a panel that we're likely to be putting up
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in our first four galleries.
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We're rethinking how we tell the story of the United States,
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and we were all ready planning to do this.
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We lucked out in a couple of ways.
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When the pandemic hit,
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we were all ready scaling back our exhibitions program,
285
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because we had money to put in all new track lighting
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into the building.
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So luckily, you know, we had all ready scaled back.
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We had planned to do a slow roll out
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of a complete new look at portraiture,
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when, of course, the death of George Floyd,
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and Breonna Taylor, and others came along.
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And we've now done, what we call, sort of a prelude,
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sort of a precursor to a much larger conversation
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about, what we would say, the presence of absence.
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So this is a good example.
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But then, you know, apart from just the collection,
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then it's the other activities.
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So for example, you might want to pull up the video
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that I have here, that was,
300
00:13:40.210 --> 00:13:42.040
it's a really brightly colored...
301
00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:46.990
Okay, I'm wondering if your team could find the video
302
00:13:46.990 --> 00:13:49.880
of the Maspaz, the Dia de--
303
00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:50.713
There we go.
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If you could just play that for a minute.
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00:13:52.850 --> 00:13:55.570
This was a project that we just did,
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screened on the outside of our building,
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and it was in reaction to the fact
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that so many members of the Latinx community
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have disproportionately died from COVID.
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And of course, they have the tradition every year
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of Dia de los Meurtos, the Day of the Dead.
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And so we did a project with these two artists,
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projecting images on the outside of our building.
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You can see a work of art, there,
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that they put up on our steps,
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and indeed, an altar to ancestors.
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So we've been pushing a lot of things
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outside of our building.
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We are now open,
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but as well as just thinking about new acquisitions,
321
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we also very much think about contemporary artists.
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And to your point, Karen,
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about who's having the conversations about identity,
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and what does it mean to be a part of "e pluribus unum."
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It's on the great seal of America,
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which means, "Out of many, one,"
327
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but the country has never been united.
328
00:14:58.790 --> 00:15:03.790
It's always been a great promise that is an ongoing project.
329
00:15:04.100 --> 00:15:06.270
And so the other slide that you just saw there,
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with the truck with the images,
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is something we plan to do in the spring,
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00:15:11.550 --> 00:15:16.550
there you go, where we're working with six local artists
333
00:15:16.730 --> 00:15:20.420
to show their works on the side of one of these LED trucks,
334
00:15:20.420 --> 00:15:24.920
that would drive through all eight wards of Washington.
335
00:15:24.920 --> 00:15:29.460
They've even designed a face mask that they can give out,
336
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and art materials, to people in the community.
337
00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:35.290
So sort of getting out of the ivory tower.
338
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Our building was literally modeled
339
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on the Parthenon in Greece, so it looks really imposing.
340
00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:43.740
It looks like the Supreme Court, really scary place.
341
00:15:43.740 --> 00:15:45.003
There it is lit up.
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00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:50.110
This year was the anniversary of women getting the vote,
343
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100 years, in 1920, the passing of the 19th amendment.
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00:15:54.740 --> 00:15:59.740
On the anniversary of that day, all the Smithsonian museums
345
00:16:00.020 --> 00:16:01.930
lit the exteriors of their building
346
00:16:01.930 --> 00:16:05.660
in the colors of the movement, which was gold and purple,
347
00:16:05.660 --> 00:16:07.093
and you can see that.
348
00:16:07.093 --> 00:16:12.093
We had originally contracted with a local artist
349
00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:17.120
to do sketches that we would have on our social media,
350
00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:19.310
but he, Bradford, quickly turned into
351
00:16:19.310 --> 00:16:23.050
our Instagram artist-in-residence,
352
00:16:23.050 --> 00:16:25.350
and this is his rendition.
353
00:16:25.350 --> 00:16:28.740
So to your point about identity,
354
00:16:28.740 --> 00:16:30.700
for us, it's both, of course the collection,
355
00:16:30.700 --> 00:16:33.029
but also the programing that we're doing.
356
00:16:33.029 --> 00:16:35.610
And often the programs that we have
357
00:16:35.610 --> 00:16:39.060
don't actually fit into a collection scope,
358
00:16:39.060 --> 00:16:41.080
because they're not somebody who's changed
359
00:16:41.080 --> 00:16:42.980
America's history and culture.
360
00:16:42.980 --> 00:16:45.125
But it's an important conversation,
361
00:16:45.125 --> 00:16:47.390
because they were left out of the story.
362
00:16:47.390 --> 00:16:50.725
You know, portraiture is an extremely elitist art form.
363
00:16:50.725 --> 00:16:52.485
Yes. (laughs)
364
00:16:52.485 --> 00:16:54.580
To respond to that, we have an exhibition
365
00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:56.080
that looks at love stories.
366
00:16:56.080 --> 00:16:58.800
So lots of couples, lots of relationships.
367
00:16:58.800 --> 00:17:01.640
We had a plan to bring in some international content
368
00:17:01.640 --> 00:17:03.500
to support that exhibition,
369
00:17:03.500 --> 00:17:05.640
and it fell through because of the border closures.
370
00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:09.450
So we actually made a bigger exhibition
371
00:17:09.450 --> 00:17:10.440
of Australian content,
372
00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:13.610
and that's happening next year, in March.
373
00:17:13.610 --> 00:17:16.030
But in the short term, we went online with that exhibition.
374
00:17:16.030 --> 00:17:18.590
It's been really well received, and I think,
375
00:17:18.590 --> 00:17:20.260
you know, we normally don't work that way.
376
00:17:20.260 --> 00:17:24.520
We would, you know, curate an exhibition, open the doors,
377
00:17:24.520 --> 00:17:27.180
allow the public in, and do some online programming.
378
00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:28.660
So in advance of that,
379
00:17:28.660 --> 00:17:30.090
we've got the exhibition available
380
00:17:30.090 --> 00:17:32.170
for people to look on our website.
381
00:17:32.170 --> 00:17:34.140
So tell us a bit about your virtual programs.
382
00:17:34.140 --> 00:17:36.230
Let's just dig a little bit deeper,
383
00:17:36.230 --> 00:17:38.283
and hear a bit more about that.
384
00:17:39.870 --> 00:17:43.140
You know, we're learning, I think, like everyone,
385
00:17:43.140 --> 00:17:46.210
you know, we all put up material fairly quickly.
386
00:17:46.210 --> 00:17:48.370
We were lucky, we all ready had a lot in the can,
387
00:17:48.370 --> 00:17:51.543
so to speak, that we were able to pass out.
388
00:17:52.470 --> 00:17:57.060
We did see an enormous jump in our numbers.
389
00:17:57.060 --> 00:18:02.060
So for example, the Google platform, normally it gets,
390
00:18:06.115 --> 00:18:08.830
our NPG Google Arts and Culture platform,
391
00:18:08.830 --> 00:18:12.460
it increased by 600% in total page views,
392
00:18:12.460 --> 00:18:16.090
and the number of viewers increased by about 500%,
393
00:18:16.090 --> 00:18:18.680
and then our overall growth in social media
394
00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:20.400
climbed nearly 200%.
395
00:18:20.400 --> 00:18:22.403
And there was also, at the same time
396
00:18:22.403 --> 00:18:23.850
that this was all going on,
397
00:18:23.850 --> 00:18:26.270
the Smithsonian had an open access program,
398
00:18:26.270 --> 00:18:28.740
where all of our content, as much as is possible,
399
00:18:28.740 --> 00:18:31.390
is available to anyone, at any scale,
400
00:18:31.390 --> 00:18:32.560
you know, have at it,
401
00:18:32.560 --> 00:18:35.210
because we're funded by Congress.
402
00:18:35.210 --> 00:18:38.880
And just as an example, you know, around March of this year,
403
00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:43.880
we had about 100,000 looks at our Wikipedia comments.
404
00:18:44.560 --> 00:18:47.383
We'd been putting a lot of our images on that.
405
00:18:48.560 --> 00:18:53.050
At September we had 650,000 people looking at that.
406
00:18:53.050 --> 00:18:54.703
It's just been enormous.
407
00:18:56.020 --> 00:18:57.340
One of the things that we also did,
408
00:18:57.340 --> 00:18:59.160
and this was a little bit, I have to admit,
409
00:18:59.160 --> 00:19:01.100
the staff kind of indulged me,
410
00:19:01.100 --> 00:19:02.280
because I wanted to do something,
411
00:19:02.280 --> 00:19:04.220
you'll appreciate this, Karen,
412
00:19:04.220 --> 00:19:07.130
that was more than just sort of saying yes, no, maybe,
413
00:19:07.130 --> 00:19:08.810
let me think about it, you know?
414
00:19:08.810 --> 00:19:12.380
I wanted to have a bit of fun, so I had to audition.
415
00:19:12.380 --> 00:19:15.320
I had to sort of audition,
416
00:19:15.320 --> 00:19:18.520
but I became the host of a podcast that we have launched,
417
00:19:18.520 --> 00:19:23.343
called Portraits, and that has been super fun.
418
00:19:23.343 --> 00:19:26.100
It allowed me to do something that I enjoy doing,
419
00:19:26.100 --> 00:19:29.305
which is to talk to scholars and thought leaders.
420
00:19:29.305 --> 00:19:31.640
We just finished up the second season.
421
00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:33.970
In fact, we're doing a holiday special
422
00:19:33.970 --> 00:19:35.680
with Renee Fleming, if you know her.
423
00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:39.853
She's an opera singer, here, in the United States,
424
00:19:41.040 --> 00:19:46.040
and that's all ready hit 330,000 downloads on that,
425
00:19:47.550 --> 00:19:49.383
which has been, you know, great.
426
00:19:50.220 --> 00:19:53.030
You can see me interviewing LL Cool J.
427
00:19:53.030 --> 00:19:54.370
I don't know if any of you guys know,
428
00:19:54.370 --> 00:19:57.420
but he's a hip hop artist, he's now an actor.
429
00:19:57.420 --> 00:20:00.400
And it was just around the time of Black Lives Matter,
430
00:20:00.400 --> 00:20:05.030
and we had a big conversation about what was happening
431
00:20:05.030 --> 00:20:07.703
in America, which was kind of fascinating.
432
00:20:07.703 --> 00:20:11.080
On the left-hand side you can see one of our curators,
433
00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:14.660
Taina Caragol, talking about two works in our collections.
434
00:20:14.660 --> 00:20:18.050
So to our point, you know,
435
00:20:18.050 --> 00:20:20.440
I think we all came out pretty strong,
436
00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:25.440
but as time's gone on, and screen fatigue has set in,
437
00:20:25.970 --> 00:20:29.610
we're all sort of wondering what we do differently.
438
00:20:29.610 --> 00:20:31.100
There's so many choices.
439
00:20:31.100 --> 00:20:35.220
We had our first virtual opening on Saturday.
440
00:20:35.220 --> 00:20:37.130
We learned a lot, but I gotta tell you,
441
00:20:37.130 --> 00:20:38.940
it was a lot easier when you just gave somebody
442
00:20:38.940 --> 00:20:40.904
a drink and a piece of cheese, you know?
443
00:20:40.904 --> 00:20:42.590
(Karen laughing)
Now you've got to
444
00:20:42.590 --> 00:20:43.880
produce the whole thing.
445
00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:46.090
We spent money on it, you know,
446
00:20:46.090 --> 00:20:48.810
and so what we really need now,
447
00:20:48.810 --> 00:20:51.910
as well as curators, and writers, and historians,
448
00:20:51.910 --> 00:20:54.000
and registrars, and all the rest of it,
449
00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:56.650
I need filmmakers, and sound editors,
450
00:20:56.650 --> 00:20:59.990
and lighting technicians.
451
00:20:59.990 --> 00:21:01.447
It's a whole new world of problems.
452
00:21:01.447 --> 00:21:02.730
All of that stuff, right,
453
00:21:02.730 --> 00:21:06.583
we need to be a broadcasting department.
454
00:21:07.460 --> 00:21:11.100
So that is expensive, you know?
455
00:21:11.100 --> 00:21:13.400
People, I think, think that, oh, well, you know,
456
00:21:13.400 --> 00:21:15.680
it's gonna be so much cheaper, you can put it all online.
457
00:21:15.680 --> 00:21:17.210
It's actually not,
458
00:21:17.210 --> 00:21:19.630
I think if it's not as expensive,
459
00:21:19.630 --> 00:21:22.553
it might even be more expensive to do a lot of it.
460
00:21:23.710 --> 00:21:24.559
I take your point, too,
461
00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:27.100
about letting your staff have a bit of fun.
462
00:21:27.100 --> 00:21:27.933
Yeah. (laughing)
I'm gonna go
463
00:21:27.933 --> 00:21:29.300
off script, here.
464
00:21:29.300 --> 00:21:31.080
We have an exhibition called Pub Rock,
465
00:21:31.080 --> 00:21:35.840
which looks at music from the 60s right through to the 90s.
466
00:21:35.840 --> 00:21:38.014
I've had this fantasy that I'd love to do
467
00:21:38.014 --> 00:21:41.450
a radio program where I talk about music,
468
00:21:41.450 --> 00:21:44.440
because it's the era I grew up, having been born in the 60s.
469
00:21:44.440 --> 00:21:47.600
And I talk about music and play songs, more obscure songs,
470
00:21:47.600 --> 00:21:50.020
and sort of just thinking outside the square a little bit
471
00:21:50.020 --> 00:21:52.680
about what we are as an institution,
472
00:21:52.680 --> 00:21:55.220
and how we can engage with people.
473
00:21:55.220 --> 00:21:57.270
So let's talk a bit about the future,
474
00:21:57.270 --> 00:22:00.340
because everyone's interested to know what's next.
475
00:22:00.340 --> 00:22:02.630
For us, we've been looking very much
476
00:22:02.630 --> 00:22:05.220
at our collection development, as mentioned earlier,
477
00:22:05.220 --> 00:22:07.360
but in terms of programing,
478
00:22:07.360 --> 00:22:09.040
the National Photographic Portrait Prize,
479
00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:11.480
which is a huge winner for us every year.
480
00:22:11.480 --> 00:22:13.900
It brings in artists from all over Australia.
481
00:22:13.900 --> 00:22:17.230
In fact, we have close to 3000 entries, usually.
482
00:22:17.230 --> 00:22:18.800
As you can see it on the screen, there,
483
00:22:18.800 --> 00:22:19.980
some little snapshots of some
484
00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:22.510
of the imagery in that exhibition.
485
00:22:22.510 --> 00:22:24.650
And so we thought for next year,
486
00:22:24.650 --> 00:22:26.810
we'd look at the concept of Living Memory,
487
00:22:26.810 --> 00:22:30.713
which for many people, as a title for the exhibition,
488
00:22:30.713 --> 00:22:32.520
I think it's quite appropriate.
489
00:22:32.520 --> 00:22:36.810
We, in our own lifetime, have not experienced a pandemic.
490
00:22:36.810 --> 00:22:39.430
I think the people who have been largely effected
491
00:22:39.430 --> 00:22:42.980
by the pandemic are elderly.
492
00:22:42.980 --> 00:22:45.140
Maybe some of them lived through the Spanish Flu
493
00:22:45.140 --> 00:22:46.783
back in the 1919, 1920s.
494
00:22:49.190 --> 00:22:51.540
So Living Memory will actually capture
495
00:22:51.540 --> 00:22:53.230
the moment of this year.
496
00:22:53.230 --> 00:22:54.770
It's not a celebration, anyway,
497
00:22:54.770 --> 00:22:57.030
it's more of a reflection upon this year.
498
00:22:57.030 --> 00:22:58.900
So next year, that's what we're doing.
499
00:22:58.900 --> 00:23:00.110
We're doing an even better,
500
00:23:00.110 --> 00:23:02.400
a bigger and better portrait prize.
501
00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:04.900
We're regarding more artists,
502
00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:08.770
and inviting, certainly, a bigger shortlist of entries,
503
00:23:08.770 --> 00:23:11.410
and a great publication to match that.
504
00:23:11.410 --> 00:23:14.000
So that's towards the middle of next year.
505
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:16.930
What other programs or exhibitions
506
00:23:16.930 --> 00:23:19.730
do you have in the pipeline for the future?
507
00:23:19.730 --> 00:23:21.797
Well, firstly, I have to admire you for doing,
508
00:23:21.797 --> 00:23:24.480
'cause you do it every year, correct?
509
00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:25.620
Yes.
510
00:23:25.620 --> 00:23:27.670
We do ours every three years.
511
00:23:27.670 --> 00:23:29.360
I can't even imagine doing it every year,
512
00:23:29.360 --> 00:23:30.360
it's a lot of work.
513
00:23:30.360 --> 00:23:31.712
A lot of administration,
(Kim laughing)
514
00:23:31.712 --> 00:23:33.587
but it's worth it.
Sucks for you guys.
515
00:23:33.587 --> 00:23:37.220
You know, our portrait competition is all media,
516
00:23:37.220 --> 00:23:40.070
and we've had, one year we had a woman
517
00:23:40.070 --> 00:23:42.780
who made a self-portrait literally out of rice.
518
00:23:42.780 --> 00:23:44.900
It was a sculpture made out of rice.
519
00:23:44.900 --> 00:23:48.980
So that was quite interesting, but it's a lot of work.
520
00:23:48.980 --> 00:23:52.713
We started touring that, but kudos to you.
521
00:23:54.754 --> 00:23:57.280
We just opened our First Ladies exhibition,
522
00:23:57.280 --> 00:24:00.670
in fact, here's the book that matches
523
00:24:00.670 --> 00:24:02.900
the America's Presidents.
524
00:24:02.900 --> 00:24:04.240
So they've just gone up,
525
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:07.460
and we did that deliberately two weeks after the election,
526
00:24:07.460 --> 00:24:12.033
and this is the website, resources on the First Ladies.
527
00:24:13.229 --> 00:24:18.229
We are still really looking at a reduced public schedule,
528
00:24:20.830 --> 00:24:23.360
because of COVID still being so prevalent.
529
00:24:23.360 --> 00:24:24.510
I mean, we are open,
530
00:24:24.510 --> 00:24:28.840
but are numbers are less than a quarter of what they were,
531
00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:32.150
and we're normally open seven days a week,
532
00:24:32.150 --> 00:24:35.650
and now we're actually only open five days a week.
533
00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:37.800
Our big focus is an exhibition we're doing
534
00:24:37.800 --> 00:24:41.600
in the spring by a Californian artist.
535
00:24:41.600 --> 00:24:45.310
Her name is, Hung Liu, and there's a slide in the deck,
536
00:24:45.310 --> 00:24:47.913
there, if you can pull that up,
537
00:24:49.230 --> 00:24:52.720
and so it's about her story of immigration.
538
00:24:52.720 --> 00:24:57.070
She was actually in China during the cultural revolution,
539
00:24:57.070 --> 00:25:00.670
as a young woman, and then came to the United States.
540
00:25:00.670 --> 00:25:02.240
And what's been interesting
541
00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:05.210
is that she lives in Oakland, California,
542
00:25:05.210 --> 00:25:07.610
where the archives of Dorothea Lange,
543
00:25:07.610 --> 00:25:09.010
who you may know as a photographer
544
00:25:09.010 --> 00:25:12.313
who was during the Dust Bowl era,
545
00:25:17.982 --> 00:25:21.982
the financial depression of the 1940s and 1950s.
546
00:25:23.770 --> 00:25:26.220
So she was looking at those images,
547
00:25:26.220 --> 00:25:29.020
and she's very much related to them,
548
00:25:29.020 --> 00:25:32.680
and has looked at Dorothea Lange in her own situation.
549
00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:34.560
This is her "Resident Alien" card,
550
00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:36.992
which, by the way, I had one of those, too.
551
00:25:36.992 --> 00:25:39.660
(laughs) So this is what they call you
552
00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:42.900
when you're not actually a permanent resident, yet.
553
00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:45.320
You're a resident alien.
554
00:25:45.320 --> 00:25:48.830
So what I've asked my team to do
555
00:25:48.830 --> 00:25:51.223
is just try and get this open.
556
00:25:52.200 --> 00:25:55.090
We'll have a catalog, we'll have an exhibition,
557
00:25:55.090 --> 00:25:57.900
we're gonna do everything in our power to make that happen,
558
00:25:57.900 --> 00:26:02.460
and then everything else will likely still be changed,
559
00:26:02.460 --> 00:26:05.610
postponed, because we're not out of this yet.
560
00:26:05.610 --> 00:26:08.550
I mean, I think the one thing that has happened
561
00:26:08.550 --> 00:26:11.610
is that change has become our new normal,
562
00:26:11.610 --> 00:26:13.930
and so we've just have had to be flexible.
563
00:26:13.930 --> 00:26:15.870
We don't really have a choice.
564
00:26:15.870 --> 00:26:19.270
Yeah, I've watched online,
565
00:26:19.270 --> 00:26:22.480
and listened to conversations about the Obama portraits.
566
00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:23.750
I mean, I wanted to end with this,
567
00:26:23.750 --> 00:26:27.422
because I think it's a really interesting conversation.
568
00:26:27.422 --> 00:26:31.870
I'm a big fan of, I guess, those kinds of portraits,
569
00:26:31.870 --> 00:26:35.100
because especially, there seems to be a bit of a departure
570
00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:38.490
from the traditional mode of portraiture.
571
00:26:38.490 --> 00:26:40.490
If you look at, well, you would have looked at
572
00:26:40.490 --> 00:26:42.390
the George Bush, Laura Bush portraiture,
573
00:26:42.390 --> 00:26:44.430
and earlier, in the 1800s.
574
00:26:44.430 --> 00:26:45.660
So there's a real departure,
575
00:26:45.660 --> 00:26:50.150
do you think the success in terms of your attendances,
576
00:26:50.150 --> 00:26:51.630
is due to that departure
577
00:26:51.630 --> 00:26:55.083
from more traditional methods of portraiture?
578
00:26:56.430 --> 00:26:58.870
Yeah, I mean, I would have been incredibly
579
00:26:58.870 --> 00:27:00.710
depressed if our increase had just been
580
00:27:00.710 --> 00:27:03.980
because of these two paintings. (laughs)
581
00:27:03.980 --> 00:27:07.030
I mean, the good news was that we had increased attendance
582
00:27:07.030 --> 00:27:11.460
by about 30% by the time this unveiling happened.
583
00:27:11.460 --> 00:27:14.270
So as you mentioned, I started in 2013.
584
00:27:14.270 --> 00:27:18.550
By 2018, we were all ready on the upward trajectory,
585
00:27:18.550 --> 00:27:21.260
but this blew everything out of the water.
586
00:27:21.260 --> 00:27:23.543
And I think it's interesting,
587
00:27:25.490 --> 00:27:27.300
both of them have broken with traditions,
588
00:27:27.300 --> 00:27:31.220
but they've also very much responded to traditions.
589
00:27:31.220 --> 00:27:35.750
So Kehinde Wiley, who did the portrait of Barack Obama,
590
00:27:35.750 --> 00:27:38.300
knows our galleries extremely well.
591
00:27:38.300 --> 00:27:42.530
And if you look at traditional pictures of Abraham Lincoln,
592
00:27:42.530 --> 00:27:46.610
for example, John Kennedy,
593
00:27:46.610 --> 00:27:51.220
even number 43, the younger President Bush,
594
00:27:51.220 --> 00:27:53.010
there you can see similarities,
595
00:27:53.010 --> 00:27:56.120
and he's definitely looked at this sort of canon
596
00:27:56.120 --> 00:27:58.110
of presidential portraiture.
597
00:27:58.110 --> 00:28:01.020
But it was a surprise to the president, and to us,
598
00:28:01.020 --> 00:28:04.980
to see him put into this sort of garden of his life,
599
00:28:04.980 --> 00:28:08.280
so to speak, where all the flowers mean something.
600
00:28:08.280 --> 00:28:10.140
So just very quickly, you probably can't see them,
601
00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:12.920
but there are these little rosebuds that mean love.
602
00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:15.440
There are those fluffy flowers that are chrysanthemums,
603
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:18.400
that is the official flower of Chicago.
604
00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:20.900
The little white flowers are jasmine,
605
00:28:20.900 --> 00:28:23.914
which relates to the type of lays in Hawaii,
606
00:28:23.914 --> 00:28:26.980
where he grew up, and of course in Indonesia.
607
00:28:26.980 --> 00:28:28.420
You'll appreciate this, Karen, though,
608
00:28:28.420 --> 00:28:30.330
when I was first shown this picture,
609
00:28:30.330 --> 00:28:32.390
I said, "Oh, that's a agapanthus."
610
00:28:32.390 --> 00:28:34.570
The purple flowers, and everybody...
611
00:28:34.570 --> 00:28:38.210
I had instant cred with my staff, they go, "What?"
612
00:28:38.210 --> 00:28:39.986
And I said, "That's a agapanthus."
613
00:28:39.986 --> 00:28:40.819
Nice one.
614
00:28:42.270 --> 00:28:44.390
They call them African Lilies here,
615
00:28:44.390 --> 00:28:48.610
and of course it relates to his father's Kenyan background.
616
00:28:48.610 --> 00:28:50.730
But, you know, I used to be a bit of a gardener
617
00:28:50.730 --> 00:28:52.170
when I was in Australia,
618
00:28:52.170 --> 00:28:54.160
and I was glad that I could actually show
619
00:28:54.160 --> 00:28:56.460
a more multi-dimensional...(laughs)
620
00:28:56.460 --> 00:28:57.790
Fantastic.
621
00:28:57.790 --> 00:29:01.829
Yeah, the Sherald, you know, she deliberately paints
622
00:29:01.829 --> 00:29:05.317
the skin color in this gray, grisaille color,
623
00:29:05.317 --> 00:29:07.070
and that relates to the fact that
624
00:29:07.070 --> 00:29:09.490
for most African Americans,
625
00:29:09.490 --> 00:29:12.550
portraiture doesn't happen until the advent of photography,
626
00:29:12.550 --> 00:29:14.590
the black and white photograph.
627
00:29:14.590 --> 00:29:17.440
And so again, she's hearkening all the way back,
628
00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:20.113
Amy Sherald, the artist, to this tradition.
629
00:29:21.050 --> 00:29:24.370
They're both incredibly powerful, but also much beloved,
630
00:29:24.370 --> 00:29:26.880
and we are sending them on tour, actually.
631
00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:29.460
They'll be going, starting next year,
632
00:29:29.460 --> 00:29:33.890
they'll go to Chicago for the president's 60th birthday,
633
00:29:33.890 --> 00:29:37.610
and then goes on to the other cities of Brooklyn,
634
00:29:37.610 --> 00:29:41.445
Los Angeles, Houston, and Atlanta, before coming home.
635
00:29:41.445 --> 00:29:42.469
Fantastic.
636
00:29:42.469 --> 00:29:45.070
Well, if you're thinking of touring them internationally,
637
00:29:45.070 --> 00:29:46.310
call me. (laughing)
638
00:29:46.310 --> 00:29:48.210
I'd love to hang them.
639
00:29:48.210 --> 00:29:50.050
I had a lot of friends, all of a sudden,
640
00:29:50.050 --> 00:29:53.400
who are museum directors, when they heard about the tour.
641
00:29:53.400 --> 00:29:54.620
I mean, what's really nice,
642
00:29:54.620 --> 00:29:59.500
I don't know if you guys get it, but we just had 60 Minutes.
643
00:29:59.500 --> 00:30:03.230
The president asked for the 60 Minutes shoot
644
00:30:03.230 --> 00:30:05.280
to happen in our galleries,
645
00:30:05.280 --> 00:30:08.870
and so that was just played this passed weekend,
646
00:30:08.870 --> 00:30:11.400
where he talks about, he's got a new book
647
00:30:11.400 --> 00:30:12.930
that's just come out,
648
00:30:12.930 --> 00:30:14.920
and he's sitting in front of the Lincoln,
649
00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:16.270
and walks past his picture,
650
00:30:16.270 --> 00:30:18.150
but he also stands for a long period of--
651
00:30:18.150 --> 00:30:20.040
Actually, there was also another thing
652
00:30:20.040 --> 00:30:22.100
with CBS Sunday Morning,
653
00:30:22.100 --> 00:30:24.800
where he stands in front of that portrait of Michelle,
654
00:30:24.800 --> 00:30:27.130
and basically says it's kind of amazing
655
00:30:27.130 --> 00:30:28.210
that she still likes him,
656
00:30:28.210 --> 00:30:30.000
given what he put her through. (laughs)
657
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:32.750
So it's this really cute interview in front of our picture,
658
00:30:32.750 --> 00:30:35.340
so we were super happy. (laughs)
659
00:30:35.340 --> 00:30:36.173
That's fantastic.
660
00:30:36.173 --> 00:30:38.630
I guess the question everyone wants answered is,
661
00:30:38.630 --> 00:30:40.610
are you working on the Trump portraits right now?
662
00:30:40.610 --> 00:30:42.260
Have you got a plan?
663
00:30:42.260 --> 00:30:44.610
We will be, we'll definitely be working on it.
664
00:30:44.610 --> 00:30:47.830
What happens is, it's a little easier
665
00:30:47.830 --> 00:30:49.470
with a second term president,
666
00:30:49.470 --> 00:30:51.747
because they know that they're heading out,
667
00:30:51.747 --> 00:30:53.000
and we know they're heading out.
668
00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:54.640
And so, as with the Obama's,
669
00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:57.780
you have those conversations in the last year.
670
00:30:57.780 --> 00:31:00.820
In this case, we'll be starting fairly shortly
671
00:31:00.820 --> 00:31:02.530
with the Trump administration,
672
00:31:02.530 --> 00:31:04.980
and we work closely with the White House,
673
00:31:04.980 --> 00:31:08.210
because they get a set of portraits done, as well,
674
00:31:08.210 --> 00:31:10.450
and so there are actually four portraits made.
675
00:31:10.450 --> 00:31:12.670
A POTUS and a FLOTUS for them,
676
00:31:12.670 --> 00:31:15.870
and one for us, and we work together,
677
00:31:15.870 --> 00:31:18.840
but in the meantime, we don't put up
678
00:31:18.840 --> 00:31:21.200
the current president until they've left office,
679
00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:23.070
in the president's galleries.
680
00:31:23.070 --> 00:31:26.260
We've just acquired a really nice photograph
681
00:31:26.260 --> 00:31:28.160
of President Trump in the Oval Office
682
00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:32.030
that will likely go up, while the commission happens.
683
00:31:32.030 --> 00:31:35.620
So all of that is yet to come, and it'll be interesting.
684
00:31:35.620 --> 00:31:39.020
It's always a dialogue between the first family,
685
00:31:39.020 --> 00:31:40.810
and us, and all the rest.
686
00:31:40.810 --> 00:31:43.860
The negotiations that go on, and the secrecy,
687
00:31:43.860 --> 00:31:47.200
I guess you can imagine, is pretty intense.
688
00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:48.690
So yeah.
Oh, that's fantastic.
689
00:31:48.690 --> 00:31:50.470
I mean, in our collection,
690
00:31:50.470 --> 00:31:53.900
we don't actually collect portraits of our Prime Ministers.
691
00:31:53.900 --> 00:31:55.350
We do in an informal sense,
692
00:31:55.350 --> 00:31:58.593
but we're not the official collection for those.
693
00:31:59.436 --> 00:32:01.700
That work is done by the Parliamentary Collection
694
00:32:01.700 --> 00:32:03.290
here in Canberra.
695
00:32:03.290 --> 00:32:06.660
So that sort of takes us to the end of our conversation.
696
00:32:06.660 --> 00:32:08.780
It's been really fantastic talking to you.
697
00:32:08.780 --> 00:32:11.669
I think that's where we say goodbye.
698
00:32:11.669 --> 00:32:12.600
Goodbye.
And say goodbye
699
00:32:12.600 --> 00:32:14.480
to our viewers, and everyone
700
00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:16.570
who's been Zooming in, and listening.
701
00:32:16.570 --> 00:32:18.160
It's been really fantastic, Kim.
702
00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:20.830
I hope to see you in Washington sometime,
703
00:32:20.830 --> 00:32:22.080
when the borders reopen,
704
00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:24.540
or maybe you'll be coming to Australia.
705
00:32:24.540 --> 00:32:26.870
Well, we were planning to come home for Christmas
706
00:32:26.870 --> 00:32:29.670
this year, and that's gone out the window, unfortunately.
707
00:32:29.670 --> 00:32:31.730
So at some point, yeah.
708
00:32:31.730 --> 00:32:32.980
I'm a Melbourne girl,
709
00:32:32.980 --> 00:32:35.077
so at some point we had hoped to
710
00:32:35.077 --> 00:32:36.480
get back to family.
So am I. (laughs)
711
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:37.930
Yeah, exactly.
712
00:32:37.930 --> 00:32:39.170
But be well.
Well, thanks so much.
713
00:32:39.170 --> 00:32:41.300
And it was lovely, thank you so much for the invitation.
714
00:32:41.300 --> 00:32:42.640
We really appreciate it.
No problem.
715
00:32:42.640 --> 00:32:44.427
See you, bye-bye.