The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAG|GoMA) announced in Brisbane today that it will reopen Feb 16 after a month-long hiatus caused by catastrophic floods in the state of Queensland in Australia’s northeastern region. The floods began in December 2010 and continued into January 2011 – with damage estimates starting at AUD 1 billion – and led to evacuations from outlying regions as well as from central Brisbane, which is traversed by the Brisbane River.
The Queensland Government announced on Jan 14 that all facilities in the city’s Cultural Centre on the South Bank of the Brisbane River, which includes QAG|GoMA, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the State Library of Queensland, would be closed until further notice. Although QAG|GoMA sustained damage to a lower-level Children’s Art Centre, a café and workshops, no artworks were damaged by the waters. On Dec 18 the institution had just opened a major international survey, “21st Century: Art in the First Decade,” with works by artists ranging from Louise Bourgeois to Thomas Demand, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge and Xu Zhen, in addition to an intensive “21st-century” themed film program for its Cinémathèque. The exhibition had received more than 139,000 visitors in the weeks prior to the temporary closing. Despite the hiatus, the exhibition will conclude as originally scheduled on Apr 26.
On Jan 13, ART iT Official Blogger Shihoki Iida, currently on a long-term residency at QAG|GoMA, uploaded photographs of the flooding as seen from her apartment, as well as details on the then-status of the institution, here. According to Iida’s blog entry, after the experience of similarly severe flooding in 1974, the institution’s artwork storage facilities were placed on its upper levels by design, while staff further took the preventative measure of relocating works in exhibition to safer locations.