Merle Hathaway

Merle Hathaway is an English-born Australian museum curator, exhibition curator, art advisor and project manager, active since 1980, and former gallery director.

Early life and migration Merle Hathaway was born in 1948 to sewing machine sales representative Lucy (nee Simmons) and mechanical engineer Stanley Hathaway, in Wing, Buckinghamshire where the couple and first child Hazel had moved from Coventry, having survived the bombing of that city in World War II. From 1946–1951 they moved again to New Forest and Ringwood in Hampshire and caravanned around the country while they awaited their successful application for the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme to emigrate to Australia.

The family left England on 17 November 1951 and arrived in New South Wales where they were initially housed in the migrant camp at Bathurst, then Ballarat Migrant Hostel. Six months later they had bought land and lived in a caravan while building their first house, in the new suburb of Wendouree.

Lucy Hathaway was for 17 years Supervisor of McCallum House, while Stanley Hathaway worked as a fitter and turner. Both were heavily involved in community activities. and for three years they travelled Europe, North Africa and Turkey, visiting museums, galleries, architectural and archeological sites. They returned to Australia in early 1973, settling in Buninyong, and Merle resumed and completed her diploma in 1973.

In 1973 they bought and began restoring a 19th century bluestone brewery in Buninyong. Inspired by London's ICA, they founded Gallery Link (1973-4), a youth activities group at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. As Coordinators they organised plays, concerts, lectures, films, poetry readings & other events at the Gallery. They also both were active assistants for Director Ron Radford, and Merle photographed for Gallery catalogues.

Merle studied for a Diploma of Education at Hawthorn Teachers College and began teaching at Sebastopol Technical School (1974–1980). The Education Department seconded her as art consultant for the Central Highlands. On return, with fellow Community Arts Officer the artist Paul Mason, Merle established Ballarat Arts Umbrella in 1989 in which she served as secretary. When the Arts Officer positions came under threat, and agitation to establish the Mining Exchange as an arts venue had failed. In 1990 they set up Artworks gallery in an old butchers shop in Humffray Street, rented to them for $44 per week, partly funded through Ballarat Arts Umbrella for which Merle also negotiated from the city council, with support from councillor Cath Laffey, a loan of $2,000 repayable over 3 years. Administration was managed by Sarah Sanders, Linda Blake and Anne Roberts and exhibitions were staged by artists including Jennifer Marshall, Dean Bowen, Daniel Moynihan, John Neeson, Rosemary Eagle, Kath Hardy, Loris Button and Rosalind Lawson.

Hathaway was Ballarat Community Arts officer over five years until 1991, during which time she ran a series of arts workshops for the over fifties, with groups convening to discuss the collection and join in practical sessions in various media, wrote An Introductory Tour: Suggestions for Teachers (1988), A Walking Tour Near the Gallery (1990), provided both text and illustrations for Yarrowee Walk (1991), and coordinated the 1990 Ballarat Next Wave Youth Arts Festival.

In 1991 at the beginning of ten years part-time appointment as education officer at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Hathaway was active in the Ballarat Arts Industry Council Steering Committee, newly formed to advise and lobby local, State and Federal Governments and liaise with industry and the community. An emphasis was to support the arts in Ballarat by developing a Council policy and raise funds. Toward this end Hathaway organised an auction of artworks and collectibles at the gallery in July 1991 in support of the Ballarat Arts Development Fund.

Hathaway was curator/educator for the Dromkeen Children’s Literature Collection, then Over 1993-4 Hathaway coordinated Arts in the Park in the Ballarat Botanic Gardens; curated a Ballarat Sculpture Festival; directed the Strategic Arts: Live Chess Game; established the Central Highlands Arts Register; and coordinated Days of Discovery with Ballarat Tourism.

Horsham Regional Art Gallery Merle Hathaway was appointed to the Horsham Regional Art Gallery in February 1995, became its Director in 1997, a position she continued until 2008 and was cofounder and Chair of Horsham Regional Arts Association. At HRAG she instituted a regular newsletter, and oversaw a program of exhibitions inclusive of artists in a wide range of disciplines, including: six ceramicists in Painting in the Round (1995); designer Richard Beck (20 March–21 April 1996); the historical exhibition Getting Together (1997); Time and timelessness in archival permanence: 100 years of Australian photography (7 February–16 March 1997); painter Neil Douglas (1997); Phiction: lies, illusion and the phantasm in photography (touring the collection to eleven Victorian venues); Joseph Brown (2007); and photographer Charles Page; won in 1995 a Local Government Award, Best Management of a Cultural Facility; and achieved Museum Accreditation status for the gallery, as only the second in Victoria, which enabled the gallery to receive loans of work from major institutions including the National Gallery of Australia. A specialisation that Hathaway continued from the initiative of her predecessor Jean Davidson in the gallery's collecting, with the assistance of Joyce Evans, was photography, an imperative which persists after Hathaway moved on in 2008, so that gallery holds one of the more notable photography collections in Australia, and continues to exhibit work by significant Australian photographic artists

Subsequently, Hathaway became Executive Officer of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria. Michael and Merle Young, née Hathaway, on returning from a European working holiday, bought what remained of the Brewery and the adjoining land. Their first job was to build somewhere to live, which they did by making a derelict building in a comer of the grounds into a comfortable little cottage, while still finding time to gradually restore the Old Brewery Building. When Michael and Merle decided to go their separate ways, Merle stayed on and continued the good work.With the building restored Merle, a constant supporter and frequent patron of the arts, held a continuing program of public concerts of jazz, classical and traditional music, in several of which she also performs on wind instruments, and participated in and led community activities and the Buninyong Festival, winning a prize in the 'Futuristic Fashion Competition' in the festival's 1987 iteration.

On her return to live in Buninyong from her position at Horsham in 2010, in October Hathaway held a concert by two acapella groups, Damask from Melbourne, and Ballarat's Singers of the Black Book, and an instrumental group of recorder, guitar, and Northumbrian pipes performing music both contemporary and from the 10th century and Renaissance, to raise funds for Friends of Buninyong Botanic Gardens and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Hathaway became involved in promoting tourism to Buninyong through its Progress Association, attending key meetings with Ballarat representatives in 2011. In 2012 the Golden Plains Shire appointed Hathaway as Arts and Culture officer. In 2016, Merle stood as an Independent in the local government elections.

Recent activity Since 2010 Merle Hathaway, has volunteered with the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, and since 2017 with the Royal South Street Society, the Ballarat Soup Bus and the Art Advisory Council of Wildlife Art Museum Australia. and four exhibitions and two publications by her fellow alumni, the photography students of Prahran College, for the Prahran Legacy project team.

Selected publications Books and catalogues Contributor to

Articles

Hathaway, Merle (2 August 2010) "Review: Human Interest Story", artsHub, Theatre and Dance Platform

Video Research and interview for

Awards 2020: Distinguished Alumna, Federation University.