Accomplished Australian artist, teacher, curator and critic Betty Churcher had died aged 84.
Churcher dedicated her life to the study and practice of art, and she blazed a trail for women every step of the way. In 1982, Churcher became the first woman to be appointed dean of any Australian university department with her appointment as head of art and design at the Phillip Institute of Technology in Melbourne.
Five years later, in 1987, she became the first woman to lead a state art gallery when she was appointed director of the West Australian Gallery.
Next she became the first woman to direct a gallery at a national level. In 1990, she was appointed director of the National Gallery of Australia, a position she would hold for seven years.
Churcher was determined to break down barriers for women; in 2002 she said: “Just about everything I wanted to do I couldn’t, because I was a girl.”
“My determination to do things has been grounded in the fact that I was told very early and very firmly that I couldn’t.”
Churcher had many accomplishments outside of the firsts she achieved for women in art.
Her success began early in life, and in unlikely circumstances. Churcher was born to a father who did not believe in educating girls, and she was almost pulled out of school without graduating. Her talent in art made her teachers convince her father to let her stay on.
Immediately after graduating Churcher received a scholarship to study art overseas. She moved to the UK, where she attended South West Essex Technical College and, later, the Royal College of Art. Here she met her husband, Roy Churcher, whom she married in 1956.
The pair returned from Britain to Brisbane and had their first child. Until this point, Churcher had been practicing as well as studying art. She was an avid painter. But having children led her to decide to stop practicing and focus on her administration and criticism of the art world in Australia.
“I really did desperately want to be an artist. But the arrival of the children somehow shifted all that emotional energy that had earlier gone into painting. I decided then that if I was not going to be an artist, the next best thing would be working with art,” she said.
Her achievements and accolades in these endeavours came thick and fast in the years that followed.
In 1971 she took her first full time position as a university lecturer in art, at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College. The following year, she debuted as a national newspaper art critic.
In the following years she wrote and published her first book, Understanding Art.
In 1979, she moved to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where she would later became the country’s first female dean. She was appointed chairwoman of the Australia Council’s visual art board and the Council’s deputy chairwoman in 1984.
Next came her two historic directorship appointments – to the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1987 and then to the National Gallery of Australia in 1990. Here, she changed the gallery’s name from its original – the Australian National Gallery – to the name it currently has, to keep it in line with international standards and put in on the global map.
The changes she made at the gallery saw its popularity and standing increase rapidly, and she brought domestic and international audiences the likes of which an Australian gallery had never seen.
She retired in 1997, but her success did not end there. She launched and hosted ABC’s Take Five program, became a professor at the Australian National University, and was inducted into the Order of Australia in 1990.
She became unwell in the mid-2000s, slowing losing her vision and later receiving a cancer diagnosis. Through her illness, she continued writing and thinking about art, publishing three more books to high acclaim.
Her husband Roy passed away late last year and on Monday night, Churcher passed away at aged 84. The pair are survived by their four sons, Peter, Ben Tim and Paul.