The art of belonging
A STRANGE THING happened the day Lorraine Tarabay was announced as the new chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney last July. She received congratulatory phone calls, emails and text messages from people all over Australia, but that wasn’t the unusual part. In some cases, the callers were in tears.
“I had an incredible reaction on that day and in the days following, from people of different and diverse backgrounds telling me how inspirational they found my story, that finally a person of non-English speaking background had been accepted as chair of one of our leading cultural institutions,” she says. “They’re not used to seeing that and it gave them hope and inspiration with respect to themselves and their children. I think it represents a change in the face of Australia, and acceptance of people from multicultural backgrounds in those positions.”
Not only is this first-generation-born Australian the first person of multicultural background to chair a cultural
