Australian Identity Through Cultural Materials Conservation | Inaugural Professorial Lecture by Professor Robyn Sloggett AM. Hosted by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
The material world surrounds us: feeding our senses, our imagination and our curiosity. We inherit and we create cultural and scientific records that help us make sense of this world. Cultural materials conservation employs materiality to understand and protect these records, integrating knowledge acquired in the sciences and the humanities with that developed by cultural knowledge holders and practitioners. Conservation studies provide unique understandings of how cultural knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and the materiality that surrounds us, can come together to shed light on significant questions of knowledge and identity.
In this lecture Professor Sloggett explores the valuable contribution that cultural materials conservation makes to the continual quest to understand our place in the world. She examines how conservation studies expand our understanding of Australia’s diverse epistemological traditions and their significance in contemporary Australian life and expand opportunities for economic innovation, referencing Australia’s rich, ancient and continuous Indigenous knowledge, the disciplinary genealogy of the Western history of ides and our place in the Asia-Pacific region. Her lecture concludes by addressing the question: Without a national strategy for the preservation of its cultural and scientific record is Australia risking identity amnesia?
Professor Robyn Sloggett AM is Director of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include attribution and authentication of cultural material, materials conservation in the Asia-Pacific, collection development and history, studies in materials and techniques, and the preservation of cultural material held in regional and remote communities. She has received a number of awards for her work including the Bathurst Macquarie Heritage Medal in May 2016, Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2015, International Council of Museums Australia Award for International Relations in 2013, AICCM Award for Outstanding Research in the Field of Material Conservation in 2012, and AICCM Conservator of the Year Award for Services to the Conservation Profession in 2004.
Date: Thursday 16th June 2016 6:00 PM to 7:00PM
Venue: Public Lecture Theatre 122, Old Arts Building, The University of Melbourne, Parkville
Free. Bookings are essential - t o register visit: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/RobynSloggett
Registrants are invited to attend the pre-lecture reception from 5.15pm
For further information contact Brenda Jackson atjacksonb@unimelb.edu.au or phone 8344 1521
This Lecture is a part of the SHAPS 2016 ‘Identities’ Public Lecture Series.