Tag Archive for Melbourne Museum Lectures

Lecture | Contemporary War: A message from Afghanistan

"Afghan National Army Perimeter Post with Chair, Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan", 2007-9. Source: Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

Contemporary War: A message from Afghanistan In 2007, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green were appointed Australian Official War Artists - as “contemporary” war artists in that immensely high profile tradition. They were deployed for six weeks in combat zones and remote military bases (both Australian and U.S. bases) across Iraq, the Gulf and Afghanistan, later finishing a 33-painting commission and a series of mural-size photographs documenting those wars for the Australian War Memorial. As critic Ray Edgar noted, “If the Australian military was after a gung-ho endorsement of the Iraq conflict, clearly they had recruited the wrong troops.” Their method was to work with documentary objectivity in apparently neutral but very large photographs of silence and stillness, or apparently literal,…

Lecture | Preserving Afghanistan’s Rich Heritage - Robyn Sloggett

A collapsible nomadic crown, (Tillya tepe), 100 BC - 100 AD National Museum of Afghanistan Photo © Thierry Ollivier / Musée Guimet via Melbourne Museum website

Preserving Afghanistan’s Rich Heritage Afghanistan’s cultural objects tell the stories of some of the world’s most significant events, interactions and exchanges. They have been collected as part of war and conquest, peace and scholarship, through legitimate trade and illegal looting, and are preserved in institutions around the world. In this lecture Robyn Sloggett examines the ways in which these rare and precious objects have been cared for and explores the threats that make cultural objects vulnerable to destruction, deterioration and loss. Robyn Sloggett is Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include attribution and authentication of Australian paintings, the development of materials conservation in the Asia-Pacific, collection development and history, scientific…

Talks and tour | Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul | Iain Shearer and Susan Scollay

A collapsible nomadic crown (Tillya Tepe), 100 BC - 100 AD Source: National Museum of Afghanistan Photo © Thierry Ollivier / Musée Guimet

Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul Internationally noted archaeologist Iain Shearer introduces the exhibition. A graduate of University College, London, Iain is a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society and recent Sackler Scholar for Afghanistan and Iran at the British Museum. His extensive experience while working and researching in Afghanistan will bring this exhibition to life. An illustrated talk by Susan Scollay will provide a brief overview of some of the outstanding gold jewellery, weapons and other objects excavated from the tomb of an ancient Central Asian nomad warlord and the luxuriously adorned females buried nearby. As well Susan will highlight some of the precious objects that were traded along key branches of the Silk Road that criss-crossed Afghanistan in the 1st…

Lecture: Restoring our Icons – The Royal Exhibition Buildings

Melbourne International Exhibition, September 25, 1880. Image from the State Library of Victoria

Restoring our Icons National Archaeology Week 2010 Lecture Series Tuesday 18 May 2010, 6-7pm Peter Lovell and Fraser Brown talk about work on Australia’s first built World Heritage Listed site. Major conservation and restoration work has been undertaken on the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens over the past four decades. Architecture and heritage consultants Peter Lovell and Fraser Brown from Lovell Chen have actively contributed to the renaissance of the complex that culminated in its 2004 inscription on the World Heritage List. Projects undertaken at various times included the removal of massive additions, external and internal fabric conservation, and subtle adaptive reuse works. They were responsible for reroofing works, including the stabilisation and re-slating of the dome, and extensive…