Joanna Mendelsshon (Program Director, Art Administration, School of Art History and Art Education at University of New South Wales) has written a fantastic article for The Conversation in which she succinctly lays out the reasons why universities, like La Trobe, need to teach art history. La Trobe university’s art history department is set to be abolished, with a consultation period over the changes to the university’s humanities program to end this month. While one art history department might not seem like much, the repercussions will be felt throughout academia and the art world. If it is cut, it will leave only one fully…
Melbourne University Art History Seminar Series Semester 2 2012
Melbourne University Art History Seminar Series Program for Semester 2, 2012 Time: Wednesdays 1-2 pm. Venue: Old Physics, G16 (the Jim Potter Room), University of Melbourne, Parkville All welcome. Enquiries to Felicity Harley McGowan fharley@unimelb.edu.au July 25 Prof. Barbara Larson University of West Florida, MacGeorge Fellow | Darwin and the Creator’s Divine Breath August 1 Lachlan Turnbull University of Melbourne | The Contexts of Early Christian Art August 8 Caroline Wallace University of Melbourne | Messing up the Museum: Theatrical Art Activism in 1960s New York August 15 Pamela Tuckett University of Melbourne | Sir Charles Eastlake and some paintings for Colonial…
Lectures | Revealing the Collections of Melbourne University
Revealing the Collections This program of lectures will showcase some of the rich but little known collections of art and visual culture held at the University of Melbourne. In addition to one of the largest art collections in Victoria, the University houses collections in such diverse areas as classics and archaeology, international Indigenous cultural material, decorative arts, 20th century poster designs, decorative arts, public sculpture and artists’ archives. Come and listen to a series of lectures by art historians, educators and students, who give their insights into the history and significance of their favourite collections.This program of lectures is hosted by…
Talk | An Invitation to ‘Modern’ Melbourne: Reconsidering the 1956 Olympic Games Poster Dr John Hughson
An Invitation to ‘Modern’ Melbourne: Reconsidering the 1956 Olympic Games Poster Dr John Hughson The poster designed by Richard Beck for the Games of the XVI Olympiad introduced a significant stylistic interruption to the imagery used to promote the Olympic occasion and its ideals. Posters for the previous summer Games, since 1912, had featured different renditions of the semi-naked male athletic body. In stark contrast, Beck’s poster dispensed with human figuration instead offering a sparse geometrical design said to depict an invitation card. While there is little evidence in the formal records to indicate the commission of a specified design,…
Opinion | Mark McDonald: From La Trobe University to the British Museum, and the slashing of Art History and the Humanities in Australia
From La Trobe University to the British Museum, and the slashing of Art History and the Humanities in Australia Mark McDonald Over the past months I have closely followed news of the proposed closure of the Art History programme at La Trobe University. It has given me cause to reflect on the history of the department—now a major associated with History, following an earlier downsizing—the scholars who have taught there, past and present, the many students who have passed though its doors and the many contributions they have made. These and similar cuts proposed or already executed to the humanities…
AAANZ Letter | Save Art History at La Trobe
The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand have also allowed their letter concerning the slashing of art history at La Trobe to be published. The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand expresses great concern at the possible closure of art history at La Trobe University. This is particularly to be deplored because the program has healthy numbers with strong retention rates, is cost-effective in its current placement within the School of Historical and Cultural Studies and is being taught by staff with exceptionally high research outputs. Since the 1970s La Trobe’s scholarly art historians have made a significant contribution…
Seminar | Barbara Larson: Darwinism and the Creator’s Divine Breath: The Evolutionary Landscape of the Spiritual in Symbolism
Melbourne University Art History Seminar Darwinism and the Creator’s Divine Breath: The Evolutionary Landscape of the Spiritual in Symbolism Professor Barbara Larson, University of West Florida & MacGeorge Fellow, University of Melbourne Darwinism, with its reliance on competition and random selection in nature, has been tied to materialism and atheism and was a major point of reference in certain scientific circles that excluded religious explanations behind the existence of living beings and the earth that supported them. However, the widespread acknowledgement of deep time and rejection of the limited historical scale of biblical creation even by the devout opened the stage to…
Exhibitions | New exhibitions at MUMA Liquid Archive and Pretty Air and Useful Things
MUMA exhibitions July to September 2012 Liquid Archive | Pretty Air and Useful Things Exhibition Dates: 19 July - 22 September 2020 Opening Function: 3.00 - 5.00pm, Saturday 21 July 2020 Monash University Museum of Art, Caulfield Campus Opening remarks at 4.00pm by Nikos Papastergiadis, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne Pre-opening: A welcome and blessing of Joyce Campbell’s project Te Taniwha will take place at 2.30pm See the website for more detail http://www.monash.edu.au/muma/exhibitions/ About the exhibitions Liquid Archive Curator: Geraldine Barlow Artists: Laurence Aberhart | Bashir Baraki | Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin | Joyce Campbell Zoe Croggon…
Letter | Save Art History at La Trobe
Patrick McCaughey, former director of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Yale Centre for British Art, has kindly allowed his letter protesting the slashing of art history from La Trobe to the Vice Chancellor of La Trobe university to be published. Dear Vice-Chancellor, Some colleagues have contacted me recently about the possible closing of the art history program at La Trobe University. If this is the case, I write now to urge you to re-consider the matter. Everybody would recognize that times are tough for Australian universities in general and for the humanities in particular. Having to close down good…
Symposium | Controversy: When Art Touches a Nerve, MPRG Symposium 2012
Controversy: When Art Touches a Nerve Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Symposium 2012 Speakers include Julian Burnside AO QC, human rights advocate Professor Alison Young, University of Melbourne, expert on law, crime and culture Jane Clark, Senior Research Curator at MONA, Tasmania Dr Mark Nicholls, Film critic and Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies, University of Melbourne Ivan Durrant, artist Dr Vivien Gaston, curator and art historian Immerse yourself in a day of informative and lively debate about controversy in art in the grounds of the historic villa Beleura. Well known artists, historians, critics and lawyers will discuss how art continues to…