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The carnage from the latest round of Australia Council funding continues, with the federal government's arts funding agency accused of delivering a major blow to the contemporary visual arts sector. 
???A coalition of artists, museum directors and the heads of art schools issued a joint statement on Wednesday attacking the outcome of the Australia Council's four-year funding program.
Sixty-five organisations failed to receive funding under the four-year program, including Object: Australian Design Centre, Asialink Art, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australian Centre for Photography and the National Association of Visual Arts.
One of the 42 newly funded organisations is in the visual arts sector, according to the statement.
"However, we raise significant concerns about the overall impact on the visual arts sector, with the loss of four-year funding to 40 per cent of contemporary art spaces and two invaluable support organisations." 
The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, said she was at a loss to understand these decisions.
"The loss of a significant number of these spaces will have an impact well beyond their scale," she said.
The dean of the UNSW Art & Design, Professor Ross Harley: "The Australia Council has been placed in the invidious situation of being forced to manage a significantly reduced operating budget at precisely the time it needs to invest in the nation's creative infrastructure."
The director of the University of WA's cultural precinct, Professor Ted Snell, said the "effective defunding" of visual arts organisations would cause long-term harm to the sector: "Short term it will puncture confidence, reduce opportunity, put many young arts professionals on unemployment and undermine the government's rhetoric of building 'a creative and imaginative nation'."  
Artist Shaun Gladwell, who represented Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale, said he owed his career to the support of contemporary art organisations such as Artspace and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.
"Professional support through the network of [contemporary art organisations] is instrumental in the development of projects that subsequently become seen internationally," he said.  "[Contemporary art organisations] offer a vital platform for my work and I value the professionalism and commitment to experimentation." 
Signatories to the joint statement include the directors of the Art Gallery of NSW, Monash University Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Bendigo Art Gallery, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
Other signatories include Sydney-based 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Artspace and the Australian Centre for Photography, Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Melbourne's Centre for Contemporary Photography, Gertrude Contemporary and West Space.
"We appreciate the difficult decisions that led to funding cuts but cannot understand how one vibrant sector can reasonably lose so much core infrastructure and be expected to continue to thrive," the statement said.
It concludes with a demand for additional funds to maintain critical infrastructure in the visual arts.
"We call on the Australian government to consider the long-term impacts of this loss of support and act to preserve the vibrancy of this sector and its significant contribution to the creativity of our nation."