A pedestrian crossing on Abbey Road, London. A palatial mansion named Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. A bronze statue of a singer astride a guitar amplifier in Fremantle, Western Australia.
These sites draw thousands of music lovers each year.
Now an art gallery in the regional Victorian city of Ballarat is hoping it has struck gold with a new exhibition centred around not an artist, but one of the main tools of the trade: the guitar.
The exhibition, From Medieval to Metal: The Art & Evolution of the Guitar, features 40 instruments from America’s ever-touring National Guitar Museum, tracing the instrument’s history from its earliest incarnation to its shredding electric iteration.
Some of the instruments on show at the Ballarat exhibition. (Supplied: Art Gallery of Ballarat)
Included among the collection’s 40 instruments are an oud — the modern guitar’s Middle Eastern ancestor, which first appeared about 5,000 years ago — an extremely rare guitar-organ amalgamation known as a guitargan, and unique photographs of Johnny Cash, Joan Jett, and Lenny Kravitz to name a few.
The gallery’s director Louise Tegart said the exhibition came about serendipitously when a former colleague introduced her to HP Newquist, director of the National Guitar Museum.
“We saw it as an opportunity that we could build an entire exhibition around it that would have a really wide appeal,” Ms Tegart said.
HP Newquist has brought his National Guitar Museum’s travelling exhibition to Ballarat. (ABC Ballarat: Alexander Darling)
“I think it will be a show people travel to come and see.
“A few weekends ago there were some teenage boys going, ‘Is the guitar show on yet?’ — they were coming in a week early.”
Ms Tegart said numerous venues in Ballarat were also embracing the opportunity to schedule more music acts over the exhibition’s four-month run.
The long and winding road
Live music is a significant economic winner for regional Victoria, with the last and brought in $530 million to the economy in the latest count in 2019.
Musical museum exhibits have latched on to that success, with 200,000 people descending on Bendigo for the Elvis Presley’s estate exhibition in 2022.
But, according to Music Victoria, such events are the exception, rather than the norm.
“It would be great to see more of it. We see it in Melbourne, St Kilda, but I think it’s a great thing for people to tap into,” Music Victoria general manager Dale Packard said.
Some regional towns like Port Fairy, Queenscliff, Meredith, and Mildura have become synonymous with their annual music festivals.
But Mr Packard said if towns wanted to try to tap into the music tourism dollar all year round, it would take a concerted effort over time.
“It’s all about building a community and having people engage,” he said.
“You need the infrastructure, you need local champions, you need participation from the local music community and relationships outside of your community.
“It’s definitely doable, but it does require a lot of people committing to it over a long time.”
Are you ready for the country?
Further north, the New South Wales town of Tamworth is one example that has successfully tapped into this.
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More than 55,000 people visit the Tamworth Country Music Festival each January, injecting about $50 million into the local economy as part of a troupe of 300,000 tourists recorded annually.
Another idea new to Tamworth — perhaps ironically, given what’s happening in Ballarat — is an Australian National Guitar Museum.
Tamworth council’s manager of country music and events, Barry Harley, said that idea was in its “embryonic” stage.
“We have items with a story — guitars that belonged to Slim Dusty and Troy Cassar-Daley, but also Andrew Farris [from INXS] and other non-country artists,” Mr Harley said.
The Big Golden Guitar in Tamworth, New South Wales. (Wikimedia Commons: Rod Edwards)
He said he did not see Ballarat’s guitar exhibition as competition but more of a complementary offering.
“Anything in Australia that promotes live or country music is good for us,” Mr Harley said.
“People who see that have their minds stimulated with music, and they might go to other places [with music attractions].”
Ballarat’s Metal to Medieval exhibition will remain in regional Victoria until February 2025, after which it is scheduled to travel to Virginia in the US for an opening in May.