Patrick Greene steers Melbourne’s museums into popular culture.
As a lad growing up in the English county of Devon, Patrick Greene loved exploring Bronze Age stone circles and abandoned railways from the Industrial Revolution in nearby Dartmoor. His fascination for archaeology blossomed, and in his late teens his grandmother gave him a book by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley. Greene was captivated by Woolley’s accounts of unearthing royal tombs and treasures in Mesopotamia (the region around and including modern-day Iraq), which partly inspired his subsequent decade working as an archaeologist.
Fast forward to the present day and Greene is immersed in a collection of 170 historical artefacts on loan from the British Museum for Melbourne Museum’s The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia exhibition.
As CEO of Museum Victoria (which encompasses Melbourne Museum, IMAX Theatre and the neighbouring Royal Exhibition Building, as well as the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks), Greene has brought this and other blockbuster exhibitions to Melbourne Museum. His efforts have been rewarded with huge visitor numbers and multiple awards as he notches up 10 years in the top job next month. While the anniversary is cause for celebration, Greene is acutely aware of the challenges ahead in difficult economic times.
This year’s The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia follows a trio of blockbuster exhibitions – Tutankhamun, Titanic and A Day In Pompeii – which have all drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors to Melbourne Museum.
Since the latest exhibition opened on May 4, about 37,000 people have been enthralled by massive carved stone reliefs, stunning gold jewellery and treasures from royal households, bringing to life aspects of the great centres of ancient civilisation – Sumer, Assyria and Babylon.
“One of the reasons an exhibition like this works well is because although the objects are so ancient (some are 4000 years old), people can nonetheless relate to them very quickly,” Greene says, noting early versions of familiar items such as combs and crockery. “Ancient history is something that people are very interested in and we saw that with the Pompeii and Tutankhamun exhibitions.”
Big exhibitions play a crucial role in enticing newcomers to the museum. “We know that once people have been and seen the riches we have in our exhibitions they’ll want to come back,’’ Greene says.
However, his focus extends beyond the blockbuster events to the importance of the museum’s long-term galleries and extensive collections, recently valued at $500?million.
Greene sees their true worth in scientific terms. “Because we have collections from over a period of time [amassed since the museum opened in 1854], if you want to understand changes to the environment or biodiversity, these can tell you a lot about that,” he says.
A childhood fascination with unearthing history led both Greene and his younger brother, Kevin, on the path to becoming archaeologists.
Kevin, who specialises in Roman archaeology at England’s Newcastle University, remembers the first hint of his brother’s interest in curating.
“At a very young age, our father brought home an old unwanted glass-fronted cupboard,” he recalls. “Patrick and I proudly displayed various bits and pieces, including fossils and oddly shaped stones that we hoped might be ancient artefacts. That must have been Patrick’s first experience of curating a museum.”
Post-university, the elder Greene brother worked on excavations in Bath, and in 1971 he started on the Norton Priory excavation in Cheshire, an internationally important site that now boasts award-winning public attractions.
Findings at the site were so significant, Greene’s six-month stint became nearly
12 years, forming the basis of his PhD and a book, Norton Priory: The Archaeology of a Medieval Religious House – one of four he has written. “It was the largest excavation of a monastery by these [modern] standards,” he says. “We built a site museum and suddenly I found myself as a museum person.”
In 1983, Greene shifted his focus from medieval archaeology to industrial archaeology, as director of Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry.
“That was a fascinating process,” he recalls. “The whole project was designed to develop a very large, new museum in the buildings of the world’s oldest railway station.”
During Greene’s two decades in Manchester, the museum was named Museum of the Year (in 1990) and he received an OBE and an honorary doctorate in science.
In August 2002, when he decamped to the other side of the world to head up Museum Victoria, the prospects of its flagship attraction, Melbourne Museum, were dire. Faced with a projected $6?million deficit and a 19 per cent drop in attendance, people were queuing up to tell him what was wrong with the place.
“This was disappointing for a project that had opened just 18 months previously,” he says. “It was very apparent to me just walking around that there was a whole range of improvements we could make pretty quickly.”
He persuaded the government to reduce the admission price from $15 to $6 (it has since risen to $10), with continuing free entry for children and concession-card holders. He also pioneered permanent exhibits including The Melbourne Story and The Mind, and rejuvenated Bunjilaka, the Aboriginal cultural centre.
Both Greene and his wife, Julia, took to their new homeland and became Australian citizens in 2007. “We had been to an extraordinarily moving citizenship ceremony at the Royal Exhibition Building, in which 800 to 1000 people became citizens,” says Greene. “We thought, ‘We’re here, we want to belong’, and the Australian approach to citizenship is you don’t have to give up anything; this is something you add.
‘‘Running a museum like this, it’s important for me to talk about it as somebody who’s demonstrated commitment to the country, rather than as an outsider.”
Greene has embraced Melbourne life, adopting a footy team (“Richmond – a bit of a tall order, but we live in hope”), settling in Ashburton and taking two-year-old son Dominic on weekend outings, as well as to work. “Dominic is also one of our customers because he’s in the museum’s children’s gallery every week.” (Greene also has three adult daughters from a previous marriage and five grandchildren.)
Since Greene took the reins, membership at Melbourne Museum has climbed to more than 51,000. Visitor numbers at Scienceworks and the Immigration Museum have also reached record levels of 480,000 and 140,000 respectively.
Last year, Greene’s achievements were recognised when he was awarded CEO of the Year at the Australian Human Resource Institute Awards.
Melbourne Museum manager Brett Dunlop says Greene is regarded highly by staff. “He takes advice, rather than making unilateral decisions,” he says. “Taking a lot of views into account before making decisions has been overwhelmingly to the benefit of the museum.”
Greene says he enjoys his leadership role, but pays the compliment back to his staff: “I’m only as good as the people who work in the museum, and they’re very good.”
He is proud that the museum won the major tourist attraction title in the 2010 and 2011 Victorian Tourism Awards, and in March was named best major tourist attraction in the 2012 Australian Tourism Awards.
“I was absolutely delighted that we won that because it’s recognition of just how powerful the museum is as a drawcard for local, interstate and international tourists,” he says.
“It doesn’t top off all the efforts of 10 years, because they’re still continuing, but it’s a mark of how far we’ve come from a museum where all you read in the press was, ‘This is a white elephant’. To now have that mark is tremendous.”
Only one month after the award, however, state government funding cuts forced Museum Victoria to announce it would cut its 500-strong workforce by 10 per cent. Greene also flagged a reduction in the number of small exhibitions, and a recent statement revealed that year 10 student work experience placements would end from next year.
“I regret that we’re having to go through this process because any restructure is bound to be challenging,” says Greene. “I think we’re doing it as carefully and professionally as possible, with keen awareness that everything we’ve built up needs to be preserved in this process.”
He adds that funding received from the state government has not kept pace with rising costs. “We’ve done a tremendous amount to generate additional income ourselves and that’s filled a lot of that gap. But there comes a point where you cannot do that and have to cut costs, and that’s what we’re going through at the moment, having to save $3.5 million.”
Despite challenging times ahead, it seems Museum Victoria is in sound hands. Manager Brett Dunlop says staff focus and morale are strong and Greene’s skills and knowledge bode well for its future.
“Patrick has a very big picture view of the world and sees how the museum fits into not only the social and cultural fabric of Victoria, but also the economic fabric,” he says. “He’s someone who thinks beyond the museum.”
