THE Canberra Museum and Gallery has just declared itself a teenager.

The 16-year-old has just marked its coming-of-age by launching a major funding initiative, “the CMAG Fund for Canberra Region Treasures.”

First in line to donate at an exclusive launch late last week in CMAG, was one of Australia’s most eminent artists, the 86-year-old John Olsen, who waved an exemplary envelope containing what he said was a donation of “several hundred dollars”.

Olsen praised Deborah Clark’s recent retrospective exhibition of Australian artist Elioth Gruner’s work and which he had visited with his friend the artist Max Miller, calling it, “a splendid exhibition.”

Indeed Gruner was on everyone’s minds, with his painting “The dry road,” 1930, recently-acquired by CMAG. This subtle landscape of the view towards Mount Tennent and the Brindabella range would, it seemed, act as a trailblazer for donors, who were invited to contribute tax-deductible sums of $50, $100, $250, $500, and of course more, if wished.

Olsen told those present he had recently painted the Murrumbidgee himself and had decided “in due course” to donate one of those paintings to the CMAG.

“We are a new culture on an old raft,” Olsen said in a speech suggesting that while he very much admired Indigenous art, the Murrumbidgee had never been fully captured. The sense of land, he said, was one shared by all people. In a crazy world, he said, “we possess what we are possessed by— the land.”

Shane Breynard, now three years into his directorship of the Museum and Gallery, said that the collection of some 5,000 artworks was comprised mostly of prints, with a much lower number of paintings.

He praised the gallery’s donors, singling out one, Meredith Hinchliffe, for special note, but lamented the fact that with a $25,000 annual acquisitions fund and the Gruner alone costing in excess of $18,000, “you can see we must choose very wisely.” Clearly a new strategy to enhance the collection was required.

Chairman of the Cultural Facilities Corporation, John Hindmarsh, said that the Museum and Gallery, lived “a little bit in the shadows” of the major collecting institutions, but that the official launch of the fund would provide a chance to collect artworks and historical value from this region.

Hindmarsh welcomed, among the visitors, the former director of the National Gallery of Australia, Betty Churcher, and painter Mandy Martin, whose presence, he said, lent support to the fund.

“This is about our place in Australia,” he said, and predicted it would be “the start of a long-term commitment on behalf of the city.”

“Give early and give often,” Hindmarsh advised.

To donate to the CMAG Fund for Canberra Region Treasures, download the brochure at http://www.museumsandgalleries.act.gov.au/documents/CMAGTreasures_brochureFINALx.pdf and follow the payment and application process.