QUT Event

Dr Cherwell Hirst, Professor Peter Coaldrake, Professor Peter Lavery, Stephen Rainbird, Simone Garske, Julie Mannion, Bill and Shirley Robinson, Family and Friends.

Speech by – Cathy Muhling 2004

Thank you all for joining with us tonight in honouring the work of my father. Thank you for your kind words and your support of my family over the last six months.

Merv Muhling valued art and art education highly. His commitment to quality teaching and the creation of solid skills, technique and ideas in young artists was the hallmark of his time as a teacher.

He valued the Queensland University of Technology and the institutions it was founded on for their ability to teach young Queenslanders in an excellent way using some of the best teachers in the country. In our family home he spoke passionately about these things.

He valued the QUT art collection which he in part formed at its beginning. He was very proud of this collection and followed its development with interest.

His personal commitment to a unique Australian vision in sculpture, drawing on the past and bringing together a Master Craftsman’s approach to its construction created some amazing works, which with the support of the QUT will be further seen and studied in the years to come.

Our wish as a family is to see my fathers work appreciated by future generations of artists, and there is no more appropriate place to do this than through the QUT collection.

My Mother Val Muhling wished to gift some works from our collection to the QUT for this purpose, something we are all proud to do.

This is partly through a desire to commemorate my father but also because we want to make his legacy available to others, to be studied, viewed and enjoyed.

This would mean a lot to him.

Therefore it is with pleasure that on behalf of the Muhling family I formally gift these works to the Queensland University of Technology.