Elizabeth Ann Macgregor

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE AM FRSN is a curator and art historian who was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, Australia from 1999 until October 2021.

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor

OBE, AM FRSN
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor in January 2012
Born
Dundee, Scotland
NationalityAustralian
Other namesLiz Ann Macgregor
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
Occupation(s)Gallery director, art historian
Employers

Early life and education

Born in Dundee, Scotland, to a Church of Scotland priest who later became a bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church and his wife,[1]: 34:15  Macgregor's family moved to Stromness[1]: 35:50  in the Orkney Islands for most of her childhood, which she shared with many foster children her parents took in; they adopted her younger sister.[1]: 34:35  As part of her education there she studied five languages[1]: 32:15  and music. She played in the Youth String Orchestra of Scotland and planned on a career in music until a maths teacher told her that would be "a shocking waste of a good brain."[1]: 33:20  She attended the University of Edinburgh and graduated with a Masters in the History of Arts. She subsequently completed a diploma in Museum and Gallery Studies in Manchester, England.[2]

Career

On completing her studies, Macgregor's first job was with the Scottish Arts Council, for whom she was curator and driver of their mobile art gallery,[2] an experience she says taught her that people are not alienated from contemporary art by the art itself as much as they might be by the way it is presented.[1]: 38:15  She then worked for the Arts Council of Great Britain for three years, before spending ten years as director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham,[3] where she made it a priority to reach out to the area's non-white population.[1]: 44:00 

She was appointed director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in 1999 and moved to Sydney.[4] When she took over the museum was struggling financially, a decade after its creation, and bankruptcy threatened. Macgregor eliminated the regular admission fee, which increased visitation sixfold over the next decade as well as donations and revenues from the gift shop. The pressure this put on the museum's physical plant was eased by an addition to the former government office building on Circular Quay that housed it which nearly doubled its space[5] and allowed visitation to reach over a million by 2018.[6]

From 2016 to 2019 Macgregor served as President of the Board of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art for a three-year term.[7] She has established a strong working relationship with the Tate in London, resulting in the joint acquisition of works by 15 Australian artists.[8]

In March 2021 she announced that she would resign from the MCA, which she had helped weather the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,[9] effective October 2021, to return to Scotland and spend more time with her family.[10]

Writings

Macgregor contributed a chapter titled "Investment in Culture: Folly or Necessity? in the 2006 publication, Talking About Sydney: Population, community and culture in contemporary Sydney, edited by Robert Freestone, Bill Randolph and Caroline Butler-Bowdon.[11] She contributes the forewords for books on artists and exhibitions produced by the MCA. She also contributed an essay, "A Tale of Two Cultures", to Essentially Creative, edition 23 of the Griffith Review.[12]

Awards and honours

References
  1. Helen Dalley (20 June 2021). "Build It; They'll Come: Elizabeth Ann Macgregor". omny.fm (Podcast). Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  2. Sharp, Rachel (16 December 2019). "Women Of Style: Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE". InStyle. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  3. "Elizabeth Ann Macgregor". Griffith Review. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  4. "Elizabeth Ann Macgregor". Q+A. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  5. Brownell, Ginanne (20 March 2012). "A Makeover for Contemporary Art in Sydney". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
  6. Finkel, Jori (4 April 2019). "Topping a million visitors: how MCA Australia broadened the appeal of contemporary art". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
  7. "Australia: MCA Director is new Cimam, President of the Board", 2016, MENA Report.
  8. "AFR's 11 most influential women revealed". Australian Financial Review. 22 October 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  9. Blake, Elissa (7 May 2020). "'Our income vanished': Australia's galleries and museums buckle in Covid-19 storm". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  10. Morris, Linda (3 March 2021). "Museum of Contemporary Art director Liz Ann Macgregor to step down". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  11. Freestone, Robert; Butler-Bowdon, Caroline; Randolph, W., eds. (2006). Talking about Sydney: Population, community and culture in contemporary Sydney. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press in association with Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales and UNSW Faculty of the Built Environment. ISBN 0-86840-938-3. OCLC 70660685.
  12. "Elizabeth Ann Macgregor". Griffith Review. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  13. "Elizabeth Ann MacGregor". It's an Honour. Archived from the original on 2 March 2020. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  14. "Birthday Honours List — United Kingdom". The London Gazette. 10 June 2011. p. 24. Archived from the original on 14 May 2014. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  15. "Fellows - The Royal Society of NSW". www.royalsoc.org.au. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  16. "Nominations Open for 2017 NSW Creative Achievement Awards" (PDF). NSW Department of Industry. 16 February 2017. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  17. "Fellows of the Royal Society of NSW (M)". Royal Society of New South Wales.
  18. "Ms Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE". It's an Honour. 26 January 2022. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
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