Power of the Real: How the MCA became the world’s most visited museum of contemporary art chronicles Elizabeth Ann Macgregor’s 22-year transformation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia from near-bankruptcy to the world’s most visited contemporary art institution. Macgregor reveals her bold strategies free access, community engagement and political negotiation amid sexism and scepticism. Power of the Real explores funding battles, landmark expansions, and the power of art to shape society. By the time Macgregor left in 2021, the MCA had embedded its reputation as the country’s leading contemporary art institution. But that reputation was very different when she took up the MCA directorship in 1999. Her peers warned her against the institution, its city and country. And not without reason: on the verge of bankruptcy, the MCA was at the centre of a battle for control that encapsulated its times and the city’s complex arts politics. Bringing to Sydney her experience driving an artbus around Scotland and putting a contemporary art gallery on the international map in Birmingham, one of the UK’s most unlikely contexts for art, this is the story of what an outsider noticed on her way to becoming an insider, and everything that changed in the process. Part memoir, part cultural blueprint, Power of the Real offers vital lessons on leadership, resilience, and the intersection of art, politics, and public life.
