For four years I was employed at TMAG to raise funds for research, exhibitions, education activities and events. I applied for grants, met with donors and supporters, and stewarded bequests from generous people in Tasmania, and across Australia and the world.

I know first-hand that TMAG has been starved of money and resources for decades. Every year when the budget came down the Tasmanian government provided just enough to keep the lights on and the doors open, which is the barest minimum for a state institution.

TMAG cares for our State collection. It is responsible for helping us to examine and address our collective history. It is a FREE source of knowledge parallel to formal education.

In Australia, there is a contract between the state and its people to support such public cultural institutions. There is an expectation that the government will shoulder the responsibility for their funding.

But research shows that national public expenditure for the arts peaked in 2018 and government spending on culture dropped well below that of our OECD peers. It has barely risen since then.

So TMAG, like many other such places, is compelled to have some income diversification and less reliance on government funding. This pattern of declining public funding forces a reliance on private donors.

Philanthropy is founded on the notion of the love of humankind expressed through deeds of practical benevolence. It is underpinned by trust in the institution or persons receiving the gift.

Trust in the durability of the place, the shared values and priorities of the people overseeing its governance and — most importantly in this context — the curators and experts with whom those donors connect.

Private gifts of art, objects and money have been critical to the existence of TMAG as it has grown in its many iterations.

You might be familiar with the names on the labels in TMAG’s galleries such as Bock, Rees, Glover, Greeno and Gough. But do you know these names?

Mrs JH Clarke: in 1951 she presented to TMAG the famous Portrait of Mathinna (the girl in the red dress) by Thomas Bock.

Miss J Beatie donated a 1904 photo of these very docks where we are sitting right now, revealing the changes to this place across the centuries.

That treasure trove of natural stories at the Herbarium contains pieces that were donated by scientists named Nelson, Scott and Kantivelas. And Jayne Wilson left a bequest to TMAG for a bursary to research those collections.

Then there are the Friends of TMAG — our wonderful organisers — plus the TMAG Foundation, TMAGgots (the former young friends), the volunteer guides and more.

These supporters number in their hundreds and, over the decades, have given countless hours of time, money and good will.

Possibly TMAG’s most highly-reference and reproduced collection item is the painting The Conciliation by Benjamin Duterrau, 1840. It was purchased by the Friends of the Museum with the Board of Trustees in 1945.

All these gifts to the museum happened because the benefactors trusted the Tasmanian government to adhere to its own Act requiring that it exhibit, promote, disseminate and otherwise make available the TMAG collections. And let’s not forget TMAG’s obligation to the Palawa community to reconcile the items that were stolen from their Ancestors to fill these collections.

TMAG has relied on the relationships between its professional staff supported by the kindness of the community, individuals, donors, sponsors and in-kind partners.

Yet there is only so much that the staff can do with community and donor support.

Bold and innovative exhibitions showcasing our state and its stories have died in the development stage due to a chronic lack of resources.

A failure to provide adequate funds for digitisation renders the collection inaccessible to students and researchers in Tasmania and beyond.

For years, water has dripped through the ceilings and into the premises that are meant to protect our collections, whilst also eroding the well-being of the curators entrusted with and deeply committed to their care.

Now, the government seeks to gut it further by banishing the very people who have kept our museum on life support. 

After years of underfunding TMAG, the ease with which this government magicked-up money for professional sport and mining juggernauts is a cruel twisting of the knife.

The Tasmanian Government’s callous cutting of the museum staff jobs is also a betrayal of patrons, benefactors and volunteers in an active and committed community.

And what do we lose by whittling away at this place full of stories and wonder?

Philanthropists and sponsors are not there to do the job of government, and they know that. Donors and collectors will give their precious items and support to other — dare I say it — mainland institutions.

We will lose our ideas, art and natural objects to other places because supporters will quite rightly assume that this government doesn’t care about TMAG.

Tasmania’s iconic and painstakingly curated sources of creativity, curiosity and knowledge will wither and literally fade.

The Tasmanian government must reinstate all staff who have been sacked and — at the very least — provide adequate funding to operate properly. Only by doing so it will honour its contract with Tasmanians of the past, today, and the future.

This is the transcript of a speech given by Dr Stephenie Cahalan, cultural historian and philanthropy expert, at the public meeting organised by the Friends of TMAG in Hobart on 8 October 2026