A$10M Buxton Contemporary opens in Melbourne’s Southbank arts precinct

First published The Art Newspaper (print edition) March 2019

Image supplied

On March 9, 2018, a new art museum will open in Melbourne. Adjacent to the National Gallery of Victoria and just a short distance from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art sits the latest addition to the city’s rapidly evolving Southbank arts precinct. Buxton Contemporary is a 2,200 square metre, two-storey, purpose-built museum, designed by architects Fender Katsalidis and constructed on the grounds of the University of Melbourne’s Southbank Campus.

Dedicated solely to Australian contemporary art produced after 1980, Buxton Contemporary will house the $10 million Michael Buxton Collection (MBC) of over 300 works produced by 58 artists amassed by Melbourne property developer Michael Buxton over the last two decades.

The collection, along with $16 million towards construction and operational expenses was gifted to the University by Buxton in an arrangement that will see his collection gradually shift from private hands to a semi-autonomous management structure overseen by the University.  

“I’m on the committee for the next twenty years, that’s pretty-long, especially when you’re 73,” Buxton tells The Art Newspaper ahead of the museum’s official opening.   

Buxton is executive director of MAB Corporation, a construction firm he started with his brother Andrew in 1995, that has to date overseen $11 billion in building projects.

In 1995, despite little knowledge of contemporary art, Buxton started collecting. An astute businessman, he applied similar principles to art collection and engaged an advisory panel of experts and charged them with the task of building a significant collection of Australian contemporary art.

“We talked about what a museum collection means and came up with the idea that if you’re going to collect art [ … ] then you should collect them in depth over a period of time,” Buxton says.

Artists in the collection include internationally recognised names such as Patricia Piccinini, Bill Henson and Tracey Moffat; alongside early-career artists like Nick Mangan, Jess Johnson and Paul Yore.

Nicholas Mangan Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table, 2010 (image supplied)

MBC’s commitment to its artists has been a blessing for those in the collection. “Michael has been one of my biggest supporters,” says Nicholas Mangan a 38-year-old Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artists.  “It’s a continual dialogue with a particular collection and a fostering of your practice over a longer duration,  which is unique in Australia,” he says.

With the majority of the collection housed in a warehouse space, the MBC would often lend artists’ works to other institutions. In 2017 when Mangan staged a solo exhibition at KW Institute in Berlin, it featured his coral limestone sculpture Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table (2010), from the collection.

Now with the opening of Buxton Contemporary just a few weeks away and the collection about to enter a new phase, Buxton is magnanimous about the future of the museum that bears his name, “We’re probably going to see more of the art than we have in the last 20 years. It’s just fantastic to be able to share it with everyone,” he says.

Buxton Contemporary will open its doors on March 9, with the first exhibition The shape of things to come, curated by Melissa Keys and featuring 20 artists from the collection.

Buxton Contemporary (image supplied)

Buxton Contemporary (image supplied)

Buxton Contemporary (image supplied)