On Friday 19th April, the President of the Myer Foundation, Rupert Myer AO, delivered the keynote speech at the Library’s 2024 Patron Dinner.

Rupert Myer presenting the keynote speech at the 2024 National Library Patron Dinner
Mr Rupert Myer AO

The topic of his speech was Library as Sanctuary, Librarian as Saviour.

In it, he reflected on the role of libraries:

They are places for gathering, for contemplation and joy, discovery, leisure and wonderment. They are places of authority, disquiet, curiosity and serenity, dissent, reform and battle. They are also amongst the few remaining truly public buildings, in a world where urban spaces feel highly privatised or secularised, and where most establishments only welcome you in if you’re willing to buy something. The library is a space which doesn’t impose any expectations on you or your wallet and, in that sense, it feels like the purest form of public benefit, which is almost revolutionary in the contemporary epoch.

And of librarians:

When Amazon recommends a book to you based on an algorithm, it is motivated to do so not by care or interest in you but by a desire to sell it to you. Naturally, we are dazzled by its predictive power. But it doesn’t resonate in the way in which powerful advice and encouragement can be given by a caring and interested person exercising full command of their knowledge and authority. Care and interest are the domain of librarians, and my observations and experiences have been that the impact is limitless.

Read the full speech (PDF, 251KB)

Rupert Myer AO is President of The Myer Foundation, Chair of A New Approach, Chair of the Felton Bequests’ Committee and a Board Member of The Aranday Foundation and The Yulgilbar Foundation. He served as Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) from 2012 until 2018 and as Chair of the National Gallery of Australia from 2005 until 2012.  

He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2015 and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012 and is an honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He holds a Master of Arts from Cambridge University and a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours from Melbourne University.

Table setting with a white table cloth and flowers with several other tables in the background
A view of the 2024 Patron Dinner

The National Library of Australia’s Patron Dinner is an annual thank you event for the Library’s philanthropic Patrons, who have supported the Library with donation amounts between $1,000 and $1,000,000.

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