Comments about, and memories of, Linda Slutzkin
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On a recent visit to the Art Gallery of NSW, I was heartened
to find a black & white photograph titled
“Swing Set” by Trent Parke. It was kindly donated
by Linda’s life partner Albie Thoms. The plaque reads
“Given in memory of Linda Slutzkin Head of Public
Programmes, Art Gallery of New South Wales”. I know
Linda would have been very pleased with Albie’s choice as
Trent Parke was a photographer Linda both admired and
supported. Linda’s warmth and professionalism was always
a priority in her dealings with staff and collegues. I’m
sure they appreciate Albie’s gesture as much as we, her
family do.
Thank you Albie, on behalf of us all.
I met Linda in 2003 when she curated the “Women of Macarthur” photographic exhibition photographed by Paola Talbert and funded by the then NSW Department for Women. Always on time, always prepared, always exactly right, her calm efficiency, respect for the works and her people skills were indispensible and I couldn’t have managed the project without her. I was shocked and saddened at her passing and Paola and I both attended her memorial service at Balmoral. More than 18 months later I still think of her and of her kindness and generosity of spirit. The world could do with more Lindas in it.
On behalf of Linda’s mother, Joan and her sisters Jenna and Michelle, I would like to thank Olivia Prunster for her heartfelt blessing for our much loved Linda.
A year has passed and Linda is close to us all. I followed up Jann Simmonds and Paul Milton after seeing them at Linda’s memorial service. That was good. I keep in contact with Michelle, Jenna and Joan. The blessing in the River Ganges sounds beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us. Linda was a special person.
I came to know Linda through the friendship my mum had with Linda’s sister Michelle (see Hedy Pardey’s comments [below]). My love of art was nurtured as a child when mum took us to the Art Gallery of NSW every school holidays and we would often pop into Linda’s office to say a quick hello. Those early visits to the Gallery instilled in me a desire to develop a career working in the arts which began as a work experience week spent with the wonderful Education/Public Programmes team headed up by Linda. I was inspired by the innovative and creative programs which Linda and the team developed and I valued her encouragement as I went on to study art history/administration at university (and then worked for a number of years at the Gallery).
To this day I am sure that the education and public programmes which Linda helped develop, continue to reach out and connect with the public, young and old. I know I am not the only one who delights in visiting the Gallery time and time again – to visit Art After Hours, listen to a guided talk or hear a music recital, and each time, I walk away with a different, yet inspiring experience, ready to come back for more.
It is hard to believe that just five months ago, on the morning of my farewell from the Gallery in June, Linda was here, looking radiant and full of life. She made such an effort for me that day, I can’t imagine anyone feeling more appreciated than I did, and it was largely due to her. She injected light, love and laughter into that wonderful celebration. There she was, still running the show, directing us all, making sure it was all perfect. For me, this event summed Linda up: instead of feeling depressed about her own, insurmountable health problems, she was – as usual – encouraging, supportive and excited about all the adventures I was about to embark upon.
I owe my amazing career at the Gallery to Linda: she hired me and then guided me. Sometimes she could be very tough and critical, but ultimately she believed in me, because we shared the same ideology, to make art more accessible. I know that, as I travel the world, taking Art Gallery Society tours, I will also take Linda’s spirit with me. I just hope that, one day, I can emulate her extraordinary ability to remain so calm and so clear.
Linda seemed very fragile at times, moving incredibly slowly, with tiny, fairy steps. And yet, for someone with such apparent fragility, she was really a tough person – no pushover, that’s for sure. She needed to direct and control – in a nice way – making sure everybody had art in their lives. Even on her deathbed, she was able to lift those long, languid fingers to direct the placement of all the flowers and cards that filled her hospital room. In true Linda fashion to the end, she wasn’t going to put up with a room full of objects that weren’t well curated. Our little corner of this big, ugly world is a more beautiful place because of Linda
(Delivered at a memorial event for Linda at the Art Gallery of NSW, 25 November 2005)I first met Linda nearly twenty years ago, when I arrived at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but I already knew and admired her by repute – as the curator of an exhibition, On the Beach, which she had arranged at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a travelling show, and which I had taken particular note of in Queensland. The show was an excellent and an innovative one. It examined the Australian cultural investment in the beach and the heroic body, and it had real intellectual backbone and a sophisticated aesthetic: they were qualities which later saw as hallmarks of Linda’s curatorial practice.
I subsequently came to know her within this Gallery as a wonderful woman, as an excellent curator and as the admirable head of the Gallery’s Public Programmes department.
Linda seemed to me to be the department’s ideal manager: an entirely productive combination of both the authoritative and the egalitarian. Within the context of the conflicts which sometimes characterise the gallery environment, Linda ran an extremely successful department under an expansive and passionate commitment to the notion of the art gallery as an institution for education, in the widest possible senses of the word, and she did so as an astute strategist and a very astute judge of character.
Her managerial style was simultaneously firm and warm. There was nothing of the self-aggrandiser in any of her roles in the Gallery, and she was unstintingly generous as a professional. She was never a stronger advocate than when she was arguing for the desires of her staff, either collectively or individually. Her strength as an independent thinker gave her a resoluteness on issues she felt important to the department, or fundamental to the principles of art education. The esteem in which the Public Programmes staff held and still hold her speaks of their knowledge of just how much Linda supported them over the 19 years she worked at the Art Gallery.
Linda as a curator had a deep-seated passion for, and a commanding intellectual grasp of, the projects which energised her, and a very sure grasp on how to interest people in art without becoming indulgent or patronising. She oversaw or advised on a number of important exhibitions in the Gallery over the 1980s and ’90s, but her most important exhibitions following On the Beach were, for me, Bohemians in the Bush, which she curated with Albie Thoms in 1991, and The Yellow House.
They were outstanding successes at the Gallery and both of them, those kinds of excellent ideas, excellently executed, which only strike one in retrospect as utterly logical to undertake. Each remains a classic of good exhibition practice and of the kinds of projects which are crucial for state art galleries to mount.
As a professional woman in the Gallery, Linda handled extremely gracefully the constraints of an environment which demanded that important projects carve substantially into one’s out-of-gallery life, which required weekend and night-time duties, and which did not generally recognise the extent of professional women’s lives as quite possibly involved equally in domestic roles such as that of parent.
Linda was entirely committed professionally, but she did not succumb to the trap of the seductive or enervating work environment to have her world described entirely in its terms. Her vision was always wider. She was an outstanding professional who understood all of the limitations to fulfilment that professional life can ultimately deliver, in the context of all that was delivered to her by being a partner and a mother.
She remained both a strong advocate and an acute analyser of art and this Gallery, and one of the strongest and warmest people I have had the pleasure to work with.
(Delivered at a memorial event for Linda at the Art Gallery of NSW, 25 November 2005)I have known Linda since 1958, when she came to my 10th birthday party with her sister, Michelle, who became my best friend. I grew up with the Slutzkin family and, at times was the surrogate fourth daughter, sharing many meals and holidays with them. Linda was the baby sister, always quietly doing her own thing and always being the gracious, feminine one.
Many years later at a Willoughby Girls’ High reunion, Linda was mentioned in the honour list with Yvonne Cawley/Goolagong and Yvonne Kenny. Pretty salubrious company.
I later became a teacher-lecturer at the Gallery (after she had retired) but her legacy and presence lived on.
Her parting words to me were to seek comfort and help from the Petrea King Quest for Life Centre at Bundanoon. I have taken her up on this for my Parkinson’s. Yes, Linda, typically helping others to the last. Thank-you for being part of my life.
I first knew Linda as a fellow
museum educator (in 1982), then as a boss. Linda reminded me of a lioness: fiercely
protective, nurturing ... and always elegant. However, her elegance was never distancing: she
was always playfully ‘down-to-earth’ and generous in so many ways, even to those outside her
immediate circle. Whenever I was with Linda, even near the end, I felt her lightness of spirit.
Thank you, Linda.
Linda was my boss in my first museum education job. I will always recall Linda for her liveliness, her pleasure in accessories and her skill as a tactician. It was Linda who spearheaded the introduction of the communication and interpretation strategies that Gallery audiences have come to expect of its exhibition program. The exhibition Bohemians in the Bush, which she and Albie curated, broke new ground. Linda boldly led far-reaching audience development initiatives. Primary school children who were first introduced to the Gallery’s collections on welcoming, fun guided tours by the Child Guides must surely be among the crowds at Art After Hours. Linda was unfailingly encouraging to me. As a Manager she tailored her style to the idiosyncratic nature of each Public Programs team member, investing all her dealings with warmth and flair.
Linda’s wonderful sense of humour and wicked asides always made visiting Public Programs at the AGNSW so enjoyable. The photos say it all with arms draped over the friends she had so much fun with – a warm and caring personality, always ready for a good time but underscoring that, the consummate professional, a brilliant art educator and a dear and valued museum colleague.
Linda made a great Head of Public Programmes, with just the right balance between authority and being able to be just ‘one of the gang’. She had the capacity to relate to everyone on their own level as well as being a very good listener when you needed her to be.
When I think of Linda, I think of Rescue Remedy which she always had in ample supply, just in case!