Tag Archive for La Trobe University

News | Karen Quinlan appointed Professor of Practice and new Director at La Trobe Arts Institute

Professor John Dewar with Professor Karen Quinlan and Mr Craig Niemann, Chief Executive Officer, City of Greater Bendigo

Under a new initiative, announced jointly today by the City of Greater Bendigo and La Trobe University, Ms Quinlan will take on an unprecedented leadership role in the Victorian and national arts industry by leading two of Victoria’s prominent regional arts institutions. Today’s announcement confirms that the La Trobe Arts Institute has appointed Karen Quinlan as both its first Professor of Practice and new Director. Professor Quinlan will continue her role as the Director of the highly successful Bendigo Art Gallery and concurrently lead the La Trobe Arts Institute to achieve its ambition of building a vital cultural and creative sector in regional Victoria and establishing La Trobe University as a leading arts destination in its own right. Vice-Chancellor Professor…

Lecture | Continuum and Urban Boundary Propositions – Ash Keating | La Trobe University

Ash Keating, West Park Proposition (2012), Truganina, Victoria. Photo by Greta Costello for Ash Keating

Melbourne artist Ash Keating will present a public lecture as part of his Artist Residency with the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University.Keating will discuss his current work on the project Continuum and Urban Boundary Propositions, which he will discuss in detail in this upcoming lecture. Ash Keating has exhibited extensively in galleries and created numerous large-scale, site-responsive art projects in Australia and internationally since 2004. He recently undertook a major painting commission in collaboration with RMIT University and Peter Elliot Architects in Melbourne for RMIT’s A’Beckett Urban Square. Recent projects include North Wall Billboard on the NGV International for Melbourne Now (2013), Continuum for Palimpsest at the Mildura Biennale (2013), West Park Proposition for Artist’s proof #1, Monash University Museum of Art (2012); Gertrude Modern and Namsan Plus for City Within the City,…

Lecture | Djon Mundine OAM: A Personal History of Aboriginal Art | La Trobe University

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The history of Aboriginal art has a number of overlapping, blurred edge phases; it is market driven and of European historical conceit on one side, and the offering up of icons, ideas, and possibly a moral-memory insistence on the (Aboriginal) other side. Djob Mundine is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales. With an extensive career as a curator, activist, writer and occasional artist, Djon worked in Arnhem Land as Art Adviser to the Milingimbi, Maningrida, and Ramingining Aboriginal communities for sixteen years. Djon was concept curator of The Aboriginal Memorial, 1987-88, now on permanent display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Over 1993-4 he was travelling curator for the important Aratjara exh., that travelled to…

Conference | Nature in the Dark: a trans-disciplinary conference | La Trobe Bendigo

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Nature in the Dark is a trans-disciplinary conference on animal perception at the intersection of the arts, science and conservation It is a spin-off from the Nature in the Dark – project, a continuing art/science/conservation collaboration between the Centre for Creative (CCA), La Trobe University, and the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA), this conference will address our relationship to animals in a wider ecological context by approaching it from artistic, scientific and conservationist angles The yawning gaps in our understanding of the intricate connections of eco-systems, which we are still facing today, accentuate also the shortcomings of a cultural understanding of our environment in the time of rapid loss of habitat and biodiversity. It underlines the necessity to address these…

Lecture | Vic McEwan – Contemporary Creative Arts at Work in the Community

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Vic McEwan, artistic director of the artist led organisation Cad Factory, will present examples of a new mode for art making which partners deeply with business, health and communities. Dispelling myths that engaging with communities dilutes the artistic output, he will highlight the opportunities that exist to engage high level, experimental, contemporary art making while enaging directly with the practical world. McEwan will share examples from previous partnerships with organisations such as SunRice and exploration of things as complex as The Murray Darling Basin Plan, as well as talking about future project as part of his Arts NSW Regional Arts Fellowship. Vic McEwan, Inaugural ARTS NSW Regional Fellow, is a riverina based composer, sound and installation artist, producer and director…

Seminar | Frank Heckes – Picasso’s Blue and Rose Period Reconsidered

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901 © Estate of Pablo Picasso

Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods Reconsidered This seminar will consider Picasso’s life and artistic development from 1899 to 1905. Detailed analysis will be given to major works of the Blue Period, such as Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas) (1901), Self-Portrait (1901), The Blue Room (1901), La Vie (1903) and the haunting La Celestina (1904); and such Rose Period works as The Harlequin’s Family and The Family of Saltimbanques (1905). Dr Frank Heckes, BA in Art and Spanish (University of California, Davis), MA in Spanish (Indiana University), MA in Art History and PhD in Art History (University of Michigan), is an Honorary Research Associate in Art History at La Trobe University, where he previously lectured for twenty-seven years. Frank is a…

Seminar | La bella sirena: Portraits of female musicians in seventeenth-century Italy, Mark Shepheard

Bernardo Strozzi,	'A Viola da gamba Player (Barbara Strozzi)', c. 1640, Gemäldegalerie (Dresden, Germany)

La bella sirena: Portraits of female musicians in seventeenth-century Italy Mark Shepheard PhD Candidate in Art History in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne The portrait of the musician in early modern Italy was intimately linked to the status of music-making as a profession. The confined role of women in public life denied many of them the opportunity to pursue music as a professional practise. Ecclesiastical institutions, one of the principal sources of employment for musicians, were firmly closed to women. Instead, female musicians were usually engaged at secular courts as musically gifted ladies-in-waiting rather than as professionals. Even after the establishment in the mid-seventeenth century of commercial opera houses, some of which employed female singers, women…

News | Art history helps us understand our society and identity, so why is it under threat?

An article published today by Anthony White (Lecturer in Art history at The University of Melbourne and head of the Victorian chapter of AAANZ) in The Age addresses why it makes no sense for La Trobe to cut a department with healthy enrolments, strong postgrads and dedicated, high-achieving staff. THE recent proposal by La Trobe University to cut its humanities subjects has provoked vigorous criticism in Australia and internationally. Among the proposals to close disciplines (including linguistics, Indonesian, gender and religion studies), the plan to discontinue art history has drawn a particularly sharp response. The La Trobe University program has produced some of the finest art historians and curators in Australia. Many have gone on to successful careers at museums…

News | Why La Trobe needs to support cultural life in Australia

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 fledged art history department left in Victoria, limiting the choice for students and affecting the future of Australian galleries and…

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 in other tertiary institutions in Australia will result in a country that is significantly poorer, culturally speaking, and these actions…

AAANZ Letter | Save Art History at La Trobe

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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 to the intellectual life of this country and overseas. Students have benefited from outstanding teaching to establish professional careers in…

Letter | Save Art History at La Trobe

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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 academic programs and limiting the offerings of the university must be an unpleasant aspect of academic administration. You have my…

News | La Trobe University Cuts Art History Program

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La Trobe University Cuts Art History Program Katrina Grant It is a sad day for the discipline of art history in Australia with the news that art history is to be cut from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University along with gender, sexuality and diversity studies, Indonesian, linguistics and religion and spirituality. The restructure was released to staff yesterday. In addition to slashing the number of subjects and disciplines available the Faculty will also cut forty-five jobs. It is one thing to see disciplines shrink in terms of staff and subject offerings but once a discipline disappears completely it seems unlikely that it will return. The University of Melbourne is now the only university in Victoria to…

Research Seminar | Helen McDonald ‘Issues of Contemporary Motherhood in the art of Patricia Piccinini’

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Issues of Contemporary Motherhood in the art of Patricia Piccinini Helen McDonald As part of the La Trobe Art History Seminar Helen McDonald will speak on the topic of her new book – Patricia Piccinini: Nearly Beloved (Sydney: Piper Press) 2012 McDonald questions the idea that Patricia Piccinini’s art is ‘ethical aesthetics’, as one commentator has described it. She explains how allegories of motherhood and the body are central in Piccinini’s art, enabling it to evoke primal human feelings—in all their strangeness—about relating to others in a world of accelerating technological change. In that it is driven by emotion, confounds reason, prevents judgment and expresses ambivalence, Piccinini’s art reflects the moral dilemmas that prospective mothers confront. Helen McDonald is Honorary Research Fellow…

Seminar: Dr Sheridan Palmer ‘Hegel’s Owl: the Biography of Bernard Smith and the Importance of Distance’

La Trobe History Research Seminar Dr Sheridan Palmer Honorary Fellow, Australian Centre, University of Melbourne Hegel’s Owl: the Biography of Bernard Smith and the Importance of Distance Date: Thursday 22 September, 12:05 to 1:15 pm, Venue: Seminar Room, Ground Floor, Borchardt Library, Melbourne (Bundoora) Campus For more information please contact Dr Robert Kenny (Convener)  Phone: (03) 9479 1132 or  Email: r.kenny@latrobe.edu.au or history@latrobe.edu.au (RSVP not required).