Is it Titian? Photo of Titian's Martyrdom of St Lawrence via The Telegraph.

Has the recent cleaning of Titian’s Martyrdom of St Lawrence revealed a self portrait of the artist?

Calls for an overhaul of Australia’s major funding body for the arts, with a review saying the Australia Council board needs to be reshaped to reflect the realities of 21st century artists.

A fascinating piece in the Getty Museum blog on its earthquake resistant pedestals for sculpture.

How much should the Metropolitan Museum of Art say about Gertrude Stein’s past collaboration with the Vichy regime in its current exhibition ‘The Steins collect’?

The World Heritage listed Royal Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne receive funding to re-open the dome and possibly create a new museum space.

The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies has a new website with reviews of all things eighteenth century, from musical performances to art exhibitions.

Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at Melbourne Univeristy, Robyn Sloggett, refuses to attend a panel on art forgery being run by the Art Series Hotels in protest following hotel management’s decision to offer guests prizes of fake Andy Warhol pictures.

The National Gallery of Australia has announced an exhibition of the work of Toulouse-Lautrec to be held from December 2012 to APril 2013. The exhibition will include important loans from major international institutions such as the Musée de Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; El Museo de arte Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid; the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and the Tate, London and many others.

Why Battersea Power Station in London must be preserved, an opinion piece from The Guardian.

Alasdair Palmer questions the restoration of Chartres cathedral arguing that it is removing all sense of the passing of time that is part of its fascination and mystery.

The Trouble with Scientism. Philip Kitcher on why history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge.

Jobs and Funding

West Space seeks a new director – Applications close June 7th.

Calls for Papers

Divine Artefacts: Stella Kramrisch and Art History in the 20th century (London, Courtauld Institute)  - closes 31st July.

Politeness and Prurience: Situating Transgressive Sexualities in the Long Eighteenth Century (September 2013, Edinburgh) – closes 10th September 2012.

July 12-14, Sydney

The 2012 AANZ conference will be held in the third week of the Biennale of Sydney, Together <> Apart and will address major debates and issues raised by this year’s biennale theme ‘all our relations’. It will focus on how networks of artists, curators, critics, museums, and publics structure art. It will ask: what are the stakes, outcomes, and tensions of collaborations and partnerships between artists and art institutions?

This question concerns historians and critics of art of all periods as well as being a live issue for art now and offers a coherent point of intersection for the AAANZ”s diverse constituencies.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Thierry de Duve, author of Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx, Revamping Kant, Pictorial Nominalism, Kant After Duchamp, and Clement Greenberg Between the Lines.

Dr Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, previously held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. She has curated shows of Catherine Opie, Luc Tuymans,Andrea Fraser, Paul Chan, Félix González-Torres, Zoe Leonard, and Louise Lawler.

A basic program is available on the AAANZ website http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2012_conference/program/

Online registration now open: http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2012_conference

Early bird registration closes on Monday 10th June.

For all enquiries contact AAANZ http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2012_conference/general-information/

A Free Panel Discussion at the University of Melbourne

The Persian manuscript tradition has continued for centuries through the great authors Firdausi, Omar Khayyam, ‘Attar, Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi, Sa’di, Hafiz and Jami. These writings of universal themes transcend time and place and through this engage modern audiences as they did during their authors’ lifetimes. Preservation of the physical texts allows us to engage with the material and explore a people’s cultural identity. Upon further examination of the material components contained within the manuscripts we can uncover clues about the community in which the manuscripts once sat and better understand their cultural practice. Through greater understanding and conversations like this panel, our cultural understanding can deepen and provide opportunities for engagement with the wider community.

Dr Mammad Aidani teaches and conducts research at SHAPS, The University of Melbourne. His teaching and research interests are in the genres of Textual interpretations (hermeneutics) and lived narratives in the areas of displacement, memory as well as literature, theatre and creative writing. He has worked extensively with local community groups on identity, belonging and the role of creative writing and storytelling.

Sophie Lewincamp teaches paper conservation at CCMC, The University of Melbourne. She is currently conducting historical and scientific analysis of the Middle Eastern Manuscripts Collection, Baillieu Library.

Susan Scollay is an art historian and curator specialising in the Islamic world. She is guest co-curator of the exhibition Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, a project that developed from her ongoing doctoral research at La Trobe University, and editor of the exhibition publication.

Date: Wednesday, 20 June | 6:00pm

Venue: Theatre C, Old Arts Building, The University of Melbourne.

Bookings and enquiries online here.

Camilla Prasch 'MEGA 2009', red dyed snap fasteners, nylon thread, silicone discs 31.0 x 11.0 cm Collection of the artist. Photo: Dorte Krogh © Camilla Prasch. Image via NGV website.

Offering after hours access to NGV’s Contemporary Exhibitions space, as well as a bar and lounge, this series features talks and activities by curators, artists and industry experts. In association with Mari Funaki galleries partake in this exclusive opportunity to wear and be dressed in jewellery pieces by the curator of the exhibition, Dr Susan Cohn.

About the Exhibition

Unexpected Pleasures looks at what we mean by jewellery from a number of different perspectives. Taking as its starting point the radical experiments of the Contemporary Jewellery Movement that challenged a conventional understanding of the language of personal adornment, and looking instead at the essential meanings of jewellery, the exhibition brings together important work from around the world, and looks at it from the point of view of the wearer as well as the maker. Contemporary Jewellery in this sense is at the intersection of art and design.

 Curated by Dr. Susan Cohn for the Design Museum, London with exhibition design by Ab Rogers Design and graphics by Barnbrook.

Date: 5:00 – 7:30pm, Thursday 24th May.

Venue: NGV International, Enter via Arts Centre forecourt.

Free entry. No bookings required.

Discipline places such art within a global context: issue 2 features a guest-edited section by Maria Fusco, editor of The Happy Hypocrite, author of The Mechanical Copula (Sternberg Press, 2010) and Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, UK. It is also features the first ever translation of a work by the Italian philosopher, Emanuele Coccia.

Because it is completely independent, every aspect of the issue has been carefully crafted and curated: it is in full colour, ad-free and has been beautifully designed by Amsterdam-based designers Annie Wu and Ziga Testen.

Discipline 2 features:

Artist Pages by A Constructed World, Elizabeth Newman, Sandra Selig, Kate Meakin, Rongsolo (Agatha Gothe-Snape and Brian Fuata), Paul Knight, Christopher LG Hill and S.T. Lore.

Essays by Amelia Barikin on Ash Keating; Francis Plagne on Matt Hinkley; Helen Hughes on Callum Morton and Bianca Hester; Timothy Morton on Yukultji Napangati; Helen Johnson on Mira Gojak; David Homewood on Robert Rooney and Simon Klose; Kate Warren on Omer Fast; Adrian Martin on art criticism; Vivian Ziherl on Lip magazine; Tim Alves on Vernon Ah Kee; Sarinah Masukor on Vernon Ah Kee; Nikos Papastergiadis on Terry Smith; and James Parker on Simon Reynolds.

Translation Emanuele Coccia by Connal Parsley

Guest Edited Section by Maria Fusco, featuring: Nikolaus Gansterer and Moira Roth, John Berger, Yve Lomax and John Bevis.

Special Poster Insert by Janet Burchill

Discipline 2 will be launched Friday 18 May 2012, 6–9pm at The Sporting Club Hotel in Brunswick. Copies of Discipline 2 will be on sale for $20.

For more information or to order a copy of Discipline, please email: info@discipline.net.au or call 0437 740 945.

Website: http://www.discipline.net.au/

La Maison Rouge Paris, 17 February–20 May 2012

Review by Victoria Hobday

Fig 8. Bertrand Lavier (1949-) Ifafa V(Stella), 2008, purple and green neon, 191.8 x 348 x 16.5cm, Galerie Yvon Lambert.

Neon has a long association with the streets, with commercial culture and with Paris. In 1902 Georges Claude, one of the founders of the company Air Liquide, discovered that the process of extracting gases such as helium and oxygen from air left behind a number of rare gases. Amongst these gases was neon and argon that when they are contained in a vacuum and an electric current is passed through them produces a glowing red and electric blue light respectively. The first neon sign was erected on the rooftop of a building on the boulevard Champs-Elysées in 1912 and spelt out the word ‘Cinzano’ the first of many signs to illuminate the streets of Paris.

The lights attracted photographers in the 1920s such as Leon Gimpel (1878–1948) who produced early colour photographs (autochromes) of neon lights and film such as Les Nuits Electriques made by Eugène Deslaw (1888–1966). However there was little interest from artists in the medium between 1930 and 1950 apart from single artists who would incorporate the lights into other assemblages, notably one of the earliest individuals was the Czech artist Zdenek Pesanek (1896–1965) whose assemblage of bronze female torsos and neon lights bathed the form in an electric blue light.

One hundred years after the first neon appeared in Paris an exhibition has opened looking at Neon art. Who’s afraid of red, yellow and blue? is laid out in the labyrinth of the Maison Rouge as if one is exploring a small city. (Maison Rouge is a not for profit contemporary art foundation inaugurated in 2004 by Antoine de Galbert.) The rooms flow into and intersect with each other as if streets and all of them vibrate with colour and in some instances the flashing of lights. The more violently flashing pieces such as Francois Morellet’s Neon dans l’espace (1969/96) (Fig. 1) is contained in its own smaller vestibule, partially because it is quite hard on the eyes and partially so that it doesn’t overwhelm other pieces, the hidden but flashing light draws the viewers like moths. The show is not rigidly chronological but a central room at the core of the show is dedicated to the early and seminal works of neon art.

In this main room we see works by artists such as Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth and Lucio Fontana who were exploring the medium of illumination in different ways from the 1950s onwards. Fontana brings the medium of light to the work Concetto Spatziale (#65B6) (1965) (Fig. 2) through illuminating the holes in a canvas from the back so that they shine, creating a representation of space that glistens due to the light behind the canvas. Flavin made his ‘icons’ in the early 1960s creating works that were devoid of defined meaning. He described them as ‘ dumb, anonymous and inglorious’ as the arranged florescent tubes resisted narrative or abstracted meaning and instead engaged with the properties of architectural space, arrangement and the pure effects of light.

Flavin’s blocks of domestic florescent lights seem strangely flat when sitting in an exhibition that positively hums with light. I found this odd as usually whenever I have seen his work in past exhibitions I have always been struck by how much they stand out when shown with other contemporary work. However, light or neon is often used in exhibitions a bit like spice added to a meal and in small amounts it has an exotic quality. When a show is based solely upon a single medium such as neon light it flattens the effect of the works. When all that is possible with neon is to bend the tubes it would seem that the possibilities of creating original works or individualising the medium to typify an artists oeuvre are also somehow limited. The works appear to scream out for attention from every corner and every wall, like a playground of noisy children all wanting you to look at them.

Words form the backbone of this exhibition. Many works mine the commercial heritage of the medium that provokes a response based on the early use of neon as a form of advertising. The audience is accustomed to neon advertising something that is desired or well-known, a famous brand, a restaurant’s name, a skipping girl. Therefore when the medium reiterates this with the use of language the artist’s words and ideas are writ large … literally. Sometimes as in the work of Eric Michel, La lumière parle (2011), the works speak about themselves in a circular manner. In others, such as Douglas Gordon’s Everytime you switch me off, we die a little (2011), these words are written in lowercase letters and turns a corner after the comma, playing both with the medium and the double entendre. These textual works are unashamedly concerned with the meaning and directness of words and ideas ‘up in lights’. Jason Rhoades’ Untitled (2004; Fig. 3) is a large work that instead of ignoring or hiding the technology of wiring and transformers, incorporates these elements into the work. Words hang from a large grid of poles that make up a cube the size of a small room and are surrounded by a tangle of red electrical cords, this jumble of neon words illuminate the work as a whole. Below there are items that seem almost an afterthought, a book lies open on a chaise (suggestively shaped like a bicycle seat), small stools are arranged around the central bench, clothes tied into a bundle sit off to one side. The meaning of the words seem random and obscure as if the artist had rescued signs from a variety of venues. In fact these words relate to his famous private events—Black Pussy Cabaret Soirée Macramé—the words all refer to unexpected terms suggested by artist and audience for female genitalia. The result is a chaotic jumble of words that seem completely disparate. Textual works fall back, not suprisingly on much of the literary arsenal of paradox, double entendre, and humour. Kendell Geers work T:error (2003) changes between the word ‘terror’ and then the ‘t’ flashes intermittently like a faulty hotel sign to make the word ‘error’. The red letters and the faulty sign evoke the stock in trade element of horror films while at the same time revealing meaning that is hidden within another word.

The following room concentrates on works that are geometric and emphasise the purity of shape and colour. Laddie John Dill’s Light on the Arno (1971) (Fig. 4) is a line on the wall that elegantly changes colour from the blue on the end through a fine and glowing thread of light in the middle to a pink glow at the other end. The simplicity of this work is immediately pleasing and well placed after viewing so many words and slogans. The focus of this work is the medium itself. The piece defies semiotics and associations and instead demonstrates the beauty of glowing gases in glass tubes. Other geometric works emphasise shapes that are familiar and repeated in daily life, architecture and the natural world. Arcs, cubes and spirals are all represented in two dimensions and some in three or in the case of Ivan Navarro’s Sentinel (2010) (Fig. 5) the lights seem to dissappear down a corridor behind a glass door affixed to the wall. Some of the works trace irregular shapes in space that hang precariously in the middle of the room, these works successfully use the sculptural qualities of neon as they hang from the ceiling and allow the audience to walk around the work as though experiencing a brilliant graphic line drawn in the air.

The show winds through one brilliantly lit room after another, passing through the work by Carlos Cruz-Diez Chromosaturation (1965–2011) (Fig. 6) that uses the coloured light that saturates the three sections to trick your eyes and change the colours that you see as you move from one to another. Following this there is a number of works that reinterpret other artworks, changing them to brilliant phoenix-like versions of their terrrestial selves. Berthan Huws Neon (2007–8) (Fig. 7) appropriates Duchamp’s famous readymade of the bottle rack in glowing red neon, pushing the concept of appropriation of objects into art another step further from the original use and meaning of the object. Equally in Ifafa V(Stella) (2008) (Fig. 8) Betrand Lavier whose work is steeped in the conceptual appropriation of objects and other artists works, reinterprets a painting by Frank Stella creating a glowing tonal rendition of the original.

Finally in the last section of the exhibition there is a video work, Averse (2007) by Delphine Reist that shows a room lit by unforgiving white florescent tubes. One by one at irregular intervals the tubes fall from their fittings and smash on the concrete floor below. With the loss of each tube the room gets dimmer until, inevitably, there is darkness. It is here with the layer of video art added to the spice of a neon work that somehow the meaning is reactivated. The physicality of the light is a component but not the only part of the work, the act of watching the demise of lights, the sound of smashing glass; the flow of some form of narrative invigorates this work.

In watching this last piece I began to feel that, enjoyable as it is to view the textual works or the purity of the light forms, there is a layer of complexity that is sorely lacking in many of the neon works. There is no doubt that in the scheme of the self referential history of a medium, the reflection of one piece next to another and the different approaches to neon art that have occurred during the past century are interesting and provide a narrative of the development of neon art. However, beyond exploring the power of words and geometry in lights or the references to other artistic works one is left wondering how much further light can be bent and twisted to produce new meaning? In the final analysis this exhibition at the Maison Rouge may be seen as an important moment in the recognition of neon art, not so much as a careful retrospective but rather as a moment of reflection and critical illumination.

© Victoria Hobday 2012

La Maison Rouge – Foundation Antoine de Galbert, 10 Boulevard de la Bastille, Paris 75012.

Open Wednesday to Sunday 11.00 to 19.00. Late opening on Thursday nights to 21.00.

[Click on thumbnails to view larger versions]

Fig 1. Francois Morellet (1926-), Neon dans l’espace/ Neon in the space, 1969/96. Blue Neon, plexiglas base 240 x 80 x 80 cm. Galerie Denise René, Paris.

Fig 2. Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Concetto Spatziale (#65b6) /Space Concept, 1965. Watercolour on Canvas, white neon. Fondation Lucio Fontana, Milan.

Fig 3. Jason Rhoades (1965-), Untitled, 2004. Aluminium structure, 48 neons, cables, transformers, fabric, table, bench, book. 300 x 500 x 500cm. Collection Frank Cohen.

Fig 4. Laddie John Dill (1943-), Light in Arno (detail), 1971. Neon, 200 x1 cm. Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris.

Fig 5. Ivan Navarro (1972-), Sentinel, 2010. Red neon, aluminium, mirror, one-way mirror. 218.5 x 101 x 12cm. Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris.

Fig 6. Carlos Cruz Diez (1923-), Chromosaturation, 1965–2011. Light environment, variable dimensions. Galerie Denise René, Paris.

Fig 7. Bethan Huws (1961-), Neon, 2007–8. Orange neon. Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris.

Fig 8. Bertrand Lavier (1949-), Ifafa V(Stella), 2008. Purple and green neon, 191.8 x 348 x 16.5cm. Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris.

The Breakfast Club is a series of talks events, presented in partnership with the Next Wave Festival, and held at breakfast time: on weekdays at 8am, on weekends at 10am.

From the Wheeler Centre:

“We’re interested in how the world and art collide. In a time of intense political confusion, it’s hard to articulate the changes so many want to see. Artistic practice, with its complex arsenal of the subconscious, is well placed to be a key player.

We’re not interested in expert-led formats; we want big opinions, good discussion and personal stories. And coffee (that’s important).

Each event runs for two hours, and will be punctuated by a series of provocations from artists, key thinkers and our international curators-in-residence.

Arrive at any point. Pull up a chair and a croissant. And dive on in.”

Saturday 19th May 10am ‘The Breakfast Club: This Isn’t a Movement, It’s a Moment: When Public Space, Politics and Art Collide’

The past two years have seen people take to the streets in more and more countries, seeking out change without knowing how to articulate it yet. As Spring warms up the city streets, a different and much harsher kind of authoritarian resistance has greeted New York’s occupiers. So what can we expect from public space in our cities? Where are the spaces that allow the fluid spontaneity and the cut and thrust of debate – city squares, football fields, theatres, libraries, media, the internet? When public space and politics collide, art that creates those cracks of light may be the best tool we have.

Sunday 20th May 10am ‘Can Art be Both Beautiful and Effective?’

Detail from Festival Book C.22.c.12, from the British Library. Via the Oxford Digital Humanities Site.

Major galleries and museum get a funding boost in the latest federal budget, while the Melbourne Museum announces job losses and changes to its exhibitions program to cover funding shortfall.

Apart from shocking human toll, Syria’s artistic and archaeological heritage is also suffering from air strikes and looting.

Researchers use science to shed new light on Albrecht Dürer ahead of  an exhibition.

Young historians accused of ‘damaging academia‘ in a bid for stardom.

Dutch Churches are closing down and their sacred art is finding new homes in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

David Packwood has launched an online connoisseurship project on the painter Nicolas Poussin. He states that the “Poussin Connoisseurship Project positions itself within that new paradigm of digital connoisseurship; it aims to bring the traditional catalogue raisonné into the realms of hyperlinks, digital databases and the expanding universe of art history on the web.”

Also new in the world of digital humanities is a project from the University of Oxford which presents over 3000 Early Modern festival books online and provides bibliographic details and historical information about the festivals, along with links to digitized versions of the texts.

The Walters Art Museum donates 19,000 freely-licensed images of its collection to Wikimedia Commons.

The NGV unveiled the restored ‘Crossing of the Red Sea’ by Nicolas Poussin (as covered on MAN here and here). Also picked up by the ABC in this TV news report.

Outgoing NGV director Gerard Vaughan in The Age ‘Just as Melbourne starts buzzing the NGV is forced to slam its doors shut’

Old news now that Munch’s ‘The Scream’ sold for $119.9 million to an unknown buyer. Most of the media just excitedly talks about records being smashed but there have been a few pieces written questioning the ridiculous sums of money being spent on art. Jerry Saltz  ’This is Why I Hate Big Money Auctions’ and Jonathon Jones in The Guardian.

The Burlington Magazine’s most recent editorial has caused quite a stir with its criticism of the Tate Britain. The discussion has also been picked up in The Telegraph and The Guardian.

Challenges to the academic publishing model – this is all still largely focused on the sciences and big journal publishes like Elsevier, but it has a lot of ramifications for the humanities as well.

Can facial recognition software help in the study of painted portraits? A group of scholars at the University of California Riverside plan to find out.

Should indigenous rock art be moved? The Boston Globe reports on the Burrup Peninsula.

Ukrainian government accused of swapping paintings lent by the National Art Museum for fake replicas.

Art dealer claims to have spent 2 million pounds getting a painting authenticated as a Turner.

Calls for Papers

The Workshop in the Early Modern Period (UAAC Montreal, 1-3 Nov 12) – deadline 4th June

Art history Supplement July Issue “History of painting” – deadline unknown, contact journal.

Ex certa scientia: Literature, Science and the Arts – An International Conference, Portugal – deadline 30 June 2012

CHArt - Computers and the History of Art Group. Deadline June 1st

Jobs

Early Career Fellowships in History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh – closes 23rd May.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Sarah Sharkey Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global Irish Studies at UNSW – closes 15th June

Assistant Professor in Rock Art studies at the University of Western Australia – closes 8th June.

Job at Tate Britain overseeing digitisation project – Project Manager, Transforming Tate Britain – closes 12th June.

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 1991, cibachrome photograph (164.3 x 125.0 cm) (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Rudy Komon Fund, Governor, 1992 PH181-1992 © Adam Fuss. Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York.

Sat 19 May, 2pm - Light-writing & shadow play – The poetics of light and darkness in photography

This lecture looks at this special significance of light to the meaning and practice of photography historically, and considers how this fascination with the poetic, philosophical and emotional qualities of light continues in the work of contemporary photographic artists.

Speaker Dr Melissa Miles, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Monash University

Sat 9 Jun, 2pm – Editing light, imagining colour

This lecture compares the historical, psychological and metaphysical attributes of contemporary colour appearance models against industry leading photo-editing Adobe Photoshop software capabilities, and argues for a radical reconsideration of the practices currently employed in the artistic production of digital images.

Speaker Les Walking, artist, educator & consultant

Fri 14 Sep, 12.30pm - Shadow catchers – The history of the photogram

This lecture explores the intriguing history of photograms and the resurgence of interest in these camera-less images by contemporary photographers.

Speaker Isobel Crombie, Senior Curator, Photography, NGV

Venue: NGV International, St Kilda Rd.

Bookings: Ph +61 3 8662 1555 (10am-5pm daily), Event CodeP1282.

Cost: $18 Adult / $12 NGV Member / $14 Concession (per lecture), $44 Adult / $26 NGV Member / $32 Concession (full series)

More information: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/programs/public-programs/lecture-series-light-works

Narelle Jubelin, 'ECRU' 1998 (detail) Por Timor Library and Community Centre, Lisbon, renovation architect Teotónio Pereira, 1992

Narelle Jubelin: Vision in Motion teases out some of the historical and theoretical intersections underpinning contemporary art’s engagement with modernist architectural discourses. Join Vision in Motion guest curator Ann Stephen, who will discuss the exhibition, together with the legacy of modernism on art, architecture and design, with a guest panel including artist Callum Morton and architectural historian, theorist and critic Karen Burns.

Dr Ann Stephen is an art historian and curator whose work spans modernism and Australian art. In 2009 she curated an exhibition on Narelle Jubelin’s work Cannibal tours, at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne to accompany Modern times: The untold story of modernism in Australia, 2008-9. Her recent exhibition and books include: On looking at looking: The art and politics of Ian Burn, 2006; Modernism & Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967, 2006 and Modern Times: The untold story of modernism in Australia, 2008, both co-edited with Andrew McNamara and Philip Goad. She is Senior Curator, University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney.

Callum Morton is one of Australia’s most distinguished artists, and he has participated in a wide range of exhibitions nationally and internationally. His recent architectural and public projects include Valhalla, Venice Biennale 2007 and Melbourne International Arts Festival 2009; Hotel, Eastlink Freeway 2008; and Grotto, Fundament Foundation, Netherlands, 2009. Morton’s large-scale permanent public sculpture Silverscreen (2010) provides a spectacular entrance to the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA). More than 20 metres high, and constructed from galvanized steel and energy-efficient LED lights, Silverscreen is inspired by the mid-twentieth century form of the drive-in cinema screen, and makes reference to a number of canonical sculptural, museum and architectural forms. Callum Morton was recently appointed Head of Fine Arts at Monash University. He is represented by Anna Schwartz and Roslyn Oxley9 in Australia, and by galleries in London and Los Angeles.

Dr Karen Burns is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. She is an architectural historian, theorist and critic with research interests in the development of design discourse, partnerships and knowledge transfer between architects and manufacturers in 1840s and 1850s Britain, frontier domesticity in Port Philip and Van Diemen’s Land, 1828-1845, contemporary feminist theory, women in architectural workplaces and a history of post-68 feminism in architecture.

Date: 5.30pm-7.30pm, Wednesday 23 May

Venue: Monash University Museum of Art

Bookings: Free but bookings essential - email muma@monash.edu or phone (03) 9905 4217

http://monash.edu/muma/events/forum_jubelin.html