This thesis explores the desirability of Australia???s State museums to be inclusive of diverse cultures. In keeping with a cultural studies approach, and a commitment to social action, emphasis is placed upon enhancing the ability of State museums to fulfil obligations and expectations imposed upon them as modern collecting institutions in a culturally diverse nation. By relating the desirability and ability of State museums to attaining social justice in a multicultural Australia through broadening the concept of Australia???s heritage, the thesis is firmly situated within post-colonial discourse. The thesis analyses State multicultural, heritage, and museum legislation, in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, with regard to State museums as agents of cultural policy. Results from a survey, Greeks and Museums, conducted amongst Australia???s Greeks in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, reveal an anomaly between their museum-going habits and the perception of those habits as expressed by government policies promoting the inclusion of Australians of a non-English speaking background in the nation???s cultural programmes. In exploring the issue of inclusiveness, the thesis highlights the need for cultural institutions to shift the emphasis away from audience development, towards greater audience participation. The thesis outlines an initiative-derived Queensland Model for establishing an inclusive relationship between museums and communities, resulting in permanent, affordable, and authoritative collections, while simultaneously improving the museums??? international reputation and networking capabilities. By using the example of one of the nation???s non-indigenous communities, and drawing upon material obtained through the survey, and a catalogue containing photographs and lists of Greek textile collections found in the Powerhouse Museum (MAAS), Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, as well as collections owned by private individuals, the thesis focuses on the role played by museums in constructing social cohesion and inclusiveness.

This thesis examines the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne in the context of the history of museums, particularly those in Europe, the United States and Australia, during the lifetime of its creator, Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882–1961).Drawing on the collection of the Grainger Museum itself, and on both primary and secondary sources relating to museum development in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the thesis demonstrates that the Grainger Museum reflects many of the concerns of museums of Grainger’s day, especially of the years prior to his relocation to the United States in 1914. Many of those concerns were products of the nationalistic endeavours arising from political upheavals and redefinitions in nineteenth-century Europe, the imperialism which reached its zenith by the First World War, and the racialist beliefs, hierarchies and anxieties accompanying that imperialism. In particular, Grainger’s lifelong concern with racial identity manifested in hierarchical and evolutionary museum interpretations typical of his earlier years. I explore the paradox of Grainger’s admiration for the musical and material culture of the racial ‘other’ and his racially supremacist views, and the way he presented these two apparently conflicting ideologies in his Museum.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-112).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, 2003. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-353).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-90). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2004. / "August 30, 2004"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-135).

Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2007. / "June 15, 2007"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-74).

Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2007. / "June 15, 2007"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-73).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-40).