Advertisement

Betty Churcher gave art mass appeal

Betty Churcher, one of Australia's most beloved cultural ambassadors, has died aged 84 after a short illness.

The first woman to lead a major Australian art gallery, Ms Churcher was director of the Art Gallery of WA in the late 1980s before running the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra from 1990 to 1997.

NGA director Gerard Vaughan said Ms Churcher was a passionate promoter of the arts.

"Betty was a towering figure in the Australian art community and loved by so many," he said.

"She will always be remembered here with deep affection for her tireless promotion of our visual culture."

Born Elizabeth Ann Dewar Cameron in Brisbane in 1931, her love for art was ignited at age seven by Blandford Fletcher's 1887 painting Evicted, which transported her "to another time and place".

It propelled her to the Royal College of Art in London but her own painting stalled as she raised four sons with her husband, artist Roy Churcher.

She channelled her artistic passion into promoting a love of art as an educator and administrator. In 1987, Art Gallery of WA chairman Robert Holmes a Court appointed her as director, a pioneering step in the male-dominated gallery world.

She soon opened the gallery to more WA artists, educational programs and popular shows such as Egyptian Gold and the Phillips Collection, which featured Renoir's The Boating Party.

She also opened the restaurant/cafe.

Poached by the NGA, Ms Churcher became known as "Betty Blockbuster" for her major international exhibitions.

"I was not too keen on the nickname then because it was pejorative," she told _The West Australian _last year. "Several curators were very dismissive, saying I was running a three-ring circus."

After leaving the NGA, her warm, engaging style found a broader audience through her ABC television art shows Take Five and Hidden Treasures. She published notebooks of drawings and recollections about her favourite paintings, a project begun in 2008 when she found she was going blind with a melanoma in one eye and macular degeneration in the other. "The thought of near-total blindness plunged me into black despair," she said.

Her AGWA deputy director Seva Frangos said Ms Churcher was an innovative and charismatic director who modernised an old-fashioned institution.

"She had a democratic response to art which is that it can touch everyone and should be shared with everyone," he said.

University of WA Cultural Precinct director Professor Ted Snell said Ms Churcher was a beacon in the art world and a wonderful communicator. He said she transformed an ossified WA institution into a vibrant space where artists were celebrated and art was made more accessible.

Several curators were very dismissive, saying I was running a three-ring circus."Betty Churcher on her 'Blockbuster' nickname