MOAD bids goodbye to champion of democracy Daryl Karp
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Daryl Karp finishes her Directorship of the Museum of Australian Democracy (MOAD) today, after nearly 10 years at its helm.
The formidable former film and television executive arrived to a rather sleepy institution in which staff numbers sometimes exceeded visitor numbers. But she leaves the place transformed—having doubled its visitors, delivered more than 70 exhibitions, expanded its family experiences, opened a new permanent gallery, and overhauled existing ones.
MOAD now takes its rightful place among the capital’s cultural icons as a dynamic meeting place of people, politics, principles and perspectives. Also, if you haven’t voted at MOAD on election day, are you even a Canberran?
Daryl loved her prime office position at the very front of Old Parliament House, overlooking the Rose Gardens, Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Parkes Place Lawns, and out onto the lake.
It used to be home to former Prime Minister Paul Keating when he was Finance Minister, within a building that houses much of the country’s democratic history, and which Daryl has helped transform into a space which sparks conversations about where we want to go as a nation.
Indeed, it is very difficult to leave.
Daryl’s last day may be today, but her last official duty is to open the Australian Women Changemakers Gallery. The event promises to be a star-studded, future-is-female, networking event par excellence with visits from Annabel Crabb, Dame Quentin Bryce, and new Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, among others.
Daryl Karp weaves people together. Image by Amanda Thorson.
Yet Daryl bristles slightly at the term ‘networker’ when used to describe her commanding powers of bringing people together—including activating Canberra’s very own “Culture Club”, a regular informal get-together of all the cultural institution heads to share experience, best practice, and vent at the way in which COVID brought the city’s tourism industry to a screeching halt.
“I feel the term networker sounds a little rapacious and in the personal interest. I am a person who builds. I think of myself as a tapestry maker in that I connect people together and weave a thread of people that can all rely on each other.”
This fabric-weaving capacity and direct but always warm communication style is well known around Canberra where Daryl is as comfortable feeding the findings of MOAD’s research into voter disillusionment and cynicism to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters as she is asking school children what they would do as Prime Minister as part of the Dear Democracy exhibition (and for the record, six-year old Emmanuel says “When I am prime minister, everyone will have to be nice to each other.)”
Her proactive collaboration with the bigger cultural institutions in the Culture Club has led to stronger ties between them so that when the front of Old Parliament House was set on fire last year during protests, every single director was on the phone that morning to offer help immediately.
It was a particularly bruising time for Daryl, who could not conceive that the symbolic front doors to the nation’s democratic birthplace could be set ablaze on purpose, nor that people would attempt to impede the firemen who sought to extinguish those flames.
It was a time when she realised that not every Australian held dear the concepts of democracy, openness, and the peaceful transition of power.
“I had a moment of questioning everything…It was an earth-shattering event from my perspective.”
But the building has since reopened, with original rubber floor carefully conserved, walls repainted and thousands of soot-blackened artefacts painstakingly restored and cleaned. The doors, which are made of four layers—one of which was burnt beyond repair and will be replaced with new jarrah—will be reinstalled in August once conservation work is completed.
Other challenges such as navigating decision-makers with their own ideas about what the building should represent, negotiating budgets, and surviving the pandemic have been less dramatic, but no less pressing. As has playing the smaller cousin to institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum, or the Australian War Memorial.
The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. Image: Adam McGrath.
“We don’t have their budgets and we don’t have the Queen’s Land Rover (on display at the NMA) or Blue Poles (drawing crowds to the NGA) but we do have this extraordinary building, and we have the powerful stories of what has taken place inside it.”
Holding true to the phrase “humble objects, hero stories,” Daryl has elevated MOAD’s story-telling capacity, no doubt using her personal expertise in the art of storytelling after a career in which she was the CEO and Managing Director of Film Australia, Head of Factual Television at the ABC, and a consultant for organisations as diverse as Macquarie University’s Department of Business and Economics, National Geographic Television, BBC in the UK, PBS in the United States, Screen NSW and a range of independent media companies.
“When I first came to the museum, I’d never worked in a museum before, and I remember they asked me at the interview what equipped me for the job. I thought about it and realised the thread that has taken me through my career is storytelling. I love the fact that stories allow you to connect in a visceral and emotional way with people.
“When I first started here, we drilled down to the essence of what sets us apart from all of the other institutions and what would encourage people to come back not once or twice but to make us a part of their lives. We are a museum of objects and ideas. So we distilled it to celebrating the spirit of Australian democracy and the power of our voices within it which has shaped our everything we do. ”
Daryl’s next job will be to head the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM). It will be in her hometown of Sydney, where her parents and one child reside. And for a woman who never quite stopped mourning the loss of the ocean when she moved inland, working in a building by the water certainly does have its advantages. “I’m moving to a museum that actually sits on the water which is about the only thing that would’ve taken me back there.”
“The Sea Museum plays to all of those things that I’m really interested in. But I will say, it is not quite the same as democracy. This is without doubt, the best job I have ever had. And I’ve had some pretty extraordinary gigs.”
Daryl has also been an avowed Canberra fan during her time here, loving the city for “the richness of its people, its culture, and its access.”
“I have realised that, actually, the decisions don’t happen in ministers’ offices, they happen in conversations outside the supermarket, or when you bump into people in random places. There is an underground intellectual economy here that you don’t find anywhere else.”
Daryl will remain a frequent visitor, not only because she wants to stay connected with her friends, but she has one grown child remaining in Canberra and she plans to continue her work as Chair of the Canberra Writer’s Festival.
She will also miss the level of engagement in the nation that Canberrans display on a regular basis.
“I find a level of interest and passion about the Australia that we could and should be and I don’t think you fully appreciate that until you have spent time living here. You know, I don’t think I have had a single conversation about real estate in Canberra. In Sydney that will be very different.”
Main image photography: Thorson Photography
