Category: News

Art and art history related news. Please send news item and media releases to Katrina Grant webmaster@melbourneartnetwork.com.au The decision of what news to publish lies with the editors and their decision is final.

News: Hou Hanru named curator of the 5th Auckland Triennial

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Hou Hanru named curator of the 5th Auckland Triennial In 2013, the 5th Auckland Triennial will be led by the San Francisco-based, Guangzhou-born Hou, Hou Hanru. The organisers state that: Hou has an extensive record curating triennials, biennials and exhibitions internationally, from exhibitions in San Francisco and Madrid to the top biennales of Istanbul, Venice and Lyon. His name is synonymous with the rise of contemporary art across China and East Asia from the nineties until today. The Auckland Triennial, hosted at partner galleries across the city, is a three-month festival of contemporary art involving local and international artists. Initiated in 2000, it aims to encourage a focused but dynamic conversation about art and its relationship to the wider world. ‘I’m looking forward to being a part of this unique exhibition experience, and I am excited to be in New Zealand,’ says Hou. ‘The Auckland Triennial…

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News: JSTOR early journal content publicly available to anyone

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JSTOR early journal content publicly available to anyone JSTOR has announced that they are making journal content in JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.  This “Early Journal Content” includes discourse and scholarship in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, and in mathematics and other sciences.  It includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals. This represents 6% of the content on JSTOR. JSTORY states that “making the Early Journal Content freely available is a first step in a larger effort to provide more access options to the content on JSTOR for these individuals”. The Early Journal Content will be released on a rolling basis. For further information see the JSTOR website http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-journal-content You can browse a list of available content by discipline or by…

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News: Gerard Vaughan announces retirement from NGV in July 2012

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Gerard Vaughan announces retirement from NGV in July 2012 Press Release from the NGV reads: After thirteen years as Director National Gallery of Victoria, Dr Gerard Vaughan today announced he would retire from his role as Director in July 2012. Dr Vaughan was originally appointed Director of the NGV in 1999. Dr Vaughan said today that he believed the time was right to retire from his role: “In any field of endeavor knowing when to leave a role is crucial. I believe this is the right time to bow out. “I am very proud of our achievements over the past 12 years, and am confident the NGV is in good shape for the future. It has been a great privilege and pleasure to serve Victoria in the role of NGV Director. “In 2011 NGV celebrated its 150th anniversary, a very…

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Opinion: Thoughts on the NGV’s latest acquisition: Correggio’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist by David R. Marshall

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Opinion: Thoughts on the NGV’s latest acquisition: Correggio’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist by David R. Marshall The NGV today announced the purchase of a newly discovered painting by Correggio (Antonio Allegri) of the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist at Sotheby’s 7 July sale. By chance I was shown this painting in late May when I was looking at something else, and had an interesting discussion about it with the people from Sotheby’s, including their conservator who was doing the conservator’s report. It was not an attention-grabbing picture at first sight (especially as it was a little yellowed by varnish), but gradually the subtleties of Correggio’s hand and imagery began to emerge. It is an early work, which is always interesting with Correggio because, like Giovanni Bellini, he begins slowly,…

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News: Yale Center Offers Unprecedented Access to Largest Collection of British Art Outside the UK through New Online Catalogue

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Yale Center Offers Unprecedented Access to Largest Collection of British Art Outside the UK through New Online Catalogue – Redesigned website—britishart.yale.edu—features an online catalogue of the Center’s holdings, allowing seamless searching across the art collections and related library materials. – Publication-quality images of all art objects in the public domain available for free downloading. – An associated exhibition, “Connections” (May 20–September 11, 2011), including more than two hundred objects from the Center’s collections, demonstrating the value of being able to search across the institution’s rich holdings of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books, and manuscripts The Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, now shares its extraordinary holdings with the world through a new online catalogue. For the first time, visitors to the museum’s redesigned and expanded website have the ability to search…

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News: BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation launch Your Paintings website

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BBC and Public Catalogue Foundation launch Your Paintings website This new initiative from the BBC, the Public catalogue foundation and participating collections and museums from across the UK is not yet finished but it promises to be a fantastic resource for art historians working across a range of topics. The website states that ‘Your Paintings is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.’ Paintings that will be included on the database are any that are owned by state and local authorities as well as those held in charitable trusts for the benefit of the public. It will include the collections of the major national museum collections,…

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JOB: Assistant Professor (Art History), University of Western Australia

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Assistant Professor (Art History) (Ref: 3502) Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts University of Western Australia, Perth •       Tenurable appointment •       Salary range:  Level B AU$78,647 – AU$93,394 p.a. •       Closing date:  Friday, 13 May 2020 The Faculty has a vigorous and innovative academic program.  It teaches in three undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and art history. It also offers several postgraduate research programs including a Doctor of Philosophy.  The Art History program is a small research-intensive unit with an international reputation for outstanding research and teaching in art history. In 2012 it is embarking on an ambitious new Major in Art History with wide contributions in the European and Australian traditions from the medieval to contemporary periods with an emphasis on global and culturally diverse approaches and the cultural history…

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Call for Contributions: Research Projects and Dissertations on Early Modern Architecture

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Call for Contributions Research Projects and Dissertations on Early Modern Architecture The Early Modern Architecture website is calling for contributions to two lists of work-in-progress on Early Modern architecture that they are compiling. The first is an international list of Ph.D. dissertations from any discipline that address aspects of the architecture (design, theory, and practice) of Europe and its colonies, 1400-1800.  As soon as they have assembled a number of dissertations, they will post an initial list on their site. This list will continue to be updated. If you are supervising or writing a dissertation that is in progress or was completed during the 2010-2011 school year, please email them with the author’s and supervisor’s names, the dissertation title, and the names of your department as well as institution. The second is a parallel list of research projects in progress.  As with the…

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News: emaj (electronic Melbourne art journal) issue 5 is now available

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emaj (electronic Melbourne art journal) issue 5 is now available The editors are pleased to present the 2010 issue of emaj. This is the fifth issue of the journal, which was founded in 2005 as a research platform for postgraduate art historians. Over the past five years the journal has broadened its focus and publishes the work of  emerging scholars and established scholars. The table of contents for the latest issue can be found below – follow the link for full abstracts and articles. emaj is an open source journal and all articles are freely available to be downloaded without a subscription. http://www.melbourneartjournal.unimelb.edu.au/E-MAJ/currentissue.htm emaj is published annually in association with the University of Melbourne School of Culture and Communication. A call for papers for the 2011 issue will be available soon – see the website for further information. French, Floral and Female:…

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News: Website – Recreating Early Modern Festivals

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Website – Recreating Early Modern Festivals A new website has been launched by a group of scholars called ‘Recreating Early Modern Festivals’. The website has information about research projects based on Early Modern Festivals in Europe. The core group of researchers is based at the University of Edinburgh, with a steering committee made up of academics from universities in the UK, Italy and Spain. The aim of the website and of the broader research group is to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines in order to study Early Modern festivals, which are of interest to art and architectural historians, musicologists, social and theatre historians and so on. The group also wants to investigate the possibility of recreating these festivals as a way of furthering our understanding of them. At this stage the main content on the website is…

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Monash University Museum of Art Reopens

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Monash University Museum of Art Reopens with Launch Exhibition ‘Change’ The Monash Museum of Art has unveiled their new home with an exhibition entitled Change (27 October – 18 December). The new site is at Monash University’s Caulfield campus and includes a range of gallery spaces, a sculpture court, a public sculpture by Callum Morton, and a series of  ‘distinctive threshold spaces’ including the camopy, spine and light-well. The museum was designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects. The new design provides increased gallery space and will allow the museum to present an expanded program of exhibitions, special projects, education and public programs, as well as displaying works from the Monash University collection, which includes over 1800 works. The launch exhibition showcases this collection with works from the 1960s to the present day. Artist’s represented include John Brack, Charles Blackman, John Perceval,…

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News | Kenneth Reed Bequest for the Art Gallery of New South Wales

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Kenneth Reed Bequest for the Art Gallery of New South Wales Katrina Grant Kenneth Reed, a Sydney-based lawyer, has announced that  he will bequeath a substantial collection of old master paintings, as well as collections of Italian Maiolica and eighteenth-century European porcelain to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There are more than 70 items in total and the bequest will represent a significant addition to the gallery’s European collection. The paintings include a large number of landscapes – including view paintings and architectural capricci – several portraits and several religious a scenes. The most significant is perhaps the fully finished sketch or modello by the seventeenth-century painter Andrea Camassei ‘St Peter in prison baptising Saintss Processus and Martinian’ (c. 1630-1), which he painted in preparation for an altarpiece in fresco at St Peter’s in Rome. The fresco was…

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News: Digitised Manuscripts Website Launched by British Library

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Digitised Manuscripts Website Launched by British Library The British Library has launched a Digitised Manuscripts site. It features full coverage of 284 Greek manuscripts drawn from the library’s Additional and Harley manuscript collections. The manuscripts, dating from the sixth to the 18th centuries, encompass a wide range of literary, historical, biblical, liturgical and scientific texts. Some of the manuscripts are beautifully illuminated, including an artistic highlight of the collection, the Theodore Psalter (Add. MS 19352). Apparently this is part of an 18 month project, the site will continued to be enhanced and new content will be added over this period. It is a pilot for wider plans by the library to digitise all the medieval and early manuscript collections. Further details can be found here. In recent years the British Library has begun putting its collection online. Other digitsiation projects…

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News: Online books and a guide to some online databases

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Gutenberg-e online books Columbia University Press has a new site where it is publishing e-monographs. Gutenberg-e (not to be confused with Project Gutenberg) is an open access site that publishes award-winning dissertations as e-books. It appears that Gutenberg-e aims to “offer elements that cannot be conveyed in print: extensive documentation, hyperlinks to supplementary literature, images, music, video, and links to related web sites”. Of interest to art historians is Robert Kirkbride’s Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, which can be read here. The book has also been recently reviewed by Saundra Weddle on H-net. __________ JISC Collections JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) recently launched a page that acts as an introduction to their online resources. From here you can search across collections and browse the different collections. The collections have a UK focus but are likely…

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Vale Bill Kent

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It is with regret that we have learned of the death of Emeritus Professor Francis William (Bill) Kent on 30th August 2010. Professor Kent was the Founding Director of Monash University Prato Centre (2000-2004) and then Professor of History and Australian Professorial Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Monash University. Bill was one of the great Italian Renaissance historians, and a world authority on Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was a great supporter of art history and a friend to art historians. A Bill Kent Foundation has been established to honour his memory. Details can be found to the following website: http://www.monash.edu.au/giving/news/billkent.html

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