Pursuing Public Health in The Preindustrial World, 1100-1800. This project aims to recover community-health practices in three world regions before the takeoff of European industrialization. It challenges a common chronology and geography in public health history by examining how especially non-urban societies in Europe, the Middle East and India adjusted their behaviors and environments to manage health risks, often relying on the principles of humoral (or Galenic) medicine. A multidisciplinary ....Pursuing Public Health in The Preindustrial World, 1100-1800. This project aims to recover community-health practices in three world regions before the takeoff of European industrialization. It challenges a common chronology and geography in public health history by examining how especially non-urban societies in Europe, the Middle East and India adjusted their behaviors and environments to manage health risks, often relying on the principles of humoral (or Galenic) medicine. A multidisciplinary team will conduct spatial, material, pictorial and text-based analyses, which will collectively extricate public health from Eurocentric narratives of modernization and illuminate preventative-medical cultures often ignored or studied in isolation.Read moreRead less
Human kind: transforming identity in Australian and British portraits 1700-1900 in the National Gallery of Victoria. The National Gallery of Victoria's outstanding collection of Australian and British portraits, spanning the Enlightenment and the dawn of Federation, say much about this nation's cultural evolution within a global context. This project will produce the first interdisciplinary study of these portraits, enabling their online publication and extensive educational programs.
Albrecht Dürer’s Material World – in Melbourne, Manchester and Nuremberg. This project aims to analyse prints in the world-class collection of the iconic Nuremberg artist, Albrecht Dürer, in Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, and to track their 20th-century migration as objects of civic identity from Manchester to Melbourne. A focus on Dürer’s fascination with the technology and craft of objects aims to show how his creativity was rooted in the vibrant entrepreneurial climate of Nuremberg ....Albrecht Dürer’s Material World – in Melbourne, Manchester and Nuremberg. This project aims to analyse prints in the world-class collection of the iconic Nuremberg artist, Albrecht Dürer, in Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, and to track their 20th-century migration as objects of civic identity from Manchester to Melbourne. A focus on Dürer’s fascination with the technology and craft of objects aims to show how his creativity was rooted in the vibrant entrepreneurial climate of Nuremberg c.1500 and to provide a new scholarly path for exploring the relationship between prints and material culture. Expected outcomes include major collaborative articles, an agenda-setting book, exhibitions, website, and community masterclass. These will benefit ongoing research, museums and galleries, and the broader public.Read moreRead less
Australian art exhibitions 1968-2009: a generation of cultural transformation. The years 1968 to 2009 witnessed a transformation in the way Australians saw the art of their country. This project investigates the impact of increased funding (government and private) and new scholarship on the curating of art exhibitions, and traces the reconfiguration of Australia’s art history that took place in exhibitions during this period.
A Baroque Archbishop in colonial Australia: James Goold (1812-1886). This project aims to investigate the cultural vision of the first Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, James Goold (1812-1886), whose architectural patronage changed Melbourne. An Irishman educated in Italy, Goold was a passionate collector and missionary bishop. He imported a library and late Italian Baroque paintings to convey the intensity of European religious experience. When Goold was appointed to Melbourne, it was a provinc ....A Baroque Archbishop in colonial Australia: James Goold (1812-1886). This project aims to investigate the cultural vision of the first Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, James Goold (1812-1886), whose architectural patronage changed Melbourne. An Irishman educated in Italy, Goold was a passionate collector and missionary bishop. He imported a library and late Italian Baroque paintings to convey the intensity of European religious experience. When Goold was appointed to Melbourne, it was a provincial town, but the discovery of gold and the commissioning of St Patrick's Cathedral made Melbourne an international metropolis. The project will examine Goold’s collection and communicate the results through an exhibition and conference. The research may change our understanding of the narratives of Colonial Australia.Read moreRead less
Bauhaus Australia: Transforming Education in Art, Architecture and Design. This project aims to examine the influence of Bauhaus-inspired émigrés on Australian cultural life. An under-examined but profound influence on Australian cultural history was the forced migration of émigré and refugee modernists from Germany and central Europe, who transformed art, architectural and design education from the 1930s to the 1970s. German and central European training, inspired by the Bauhaus, centred on sys ....Bauhaus Australia: Transforming Education in Art, Architecture and Design. This project aims to examine the influence of Bauhaus-inspired émigrés on Australian cultural life. An under-examined but profound influence on Australian cultural history was the forced migration of émigré and refugee modernists from Germany and central Europe, who transformed art, architectural and design education from the 1930s to the 1970s. German and central European training, inspired by the Bauhaus, centred on systematic approaches to pictorial method and design, colour theory and art education, all underwritten by an all-encompassing social ambition. This project aims to provide a new cross-disciplinary history of modernism in Australia that shifts focus from solo contributions to the networks of education, where modernism’s impact was most public, widespread and influential.Read moreRead less
Eurasian exchange and artistic transformation in art. This project aims to bring European and Chinese art history into dialogue. It explores the early Italian Renaissance in the larger geopolitical context of Mongol Eurasia and the Yuan Empire, to address the questions of influence, contact, and exchange. In reframing the development of early European art as a fundamentally cross-cultural phenomenon, this project aims to offer a better understanding of the roots of our own global visual culture. ....Eurasian exchange and artistic transformation in art. This project aims to bring European and Chinese art history into dialogue. It explores the early Italian Renaissance in the larger geopolitical context of Mongol Eurasia and the Yuan Empire, to address the questions of influence, contact, and exchange. In reframing the development of early European art as a fundamentally cross-cultural phenomenon, this project aims to offer a better understanding of the roots of our own global visual culture. The project will benefit and enrich the study of cross-cultural contact and exchange in art history as a larger field, leading to the re-examination of art in the Australasian region.Read moreRead less
Outsider artists and the reformulation of Australian art. This project aims to produce an understanding of outsider artists, their lives, their histories, and the socio-historic context in which they made their work. “Outsider artists” includes artists experiencing incarceration, disability, mental illness and other forms of marginalisation. Integration of their work will lead to a deeper understanding of mainstream art in Australia to paint a richer, more complex picture of the history of Aust ....Outsider artists and the reformulation of Australian art. This project aims to produce an understanding of outsider artists, their lives, their histories, and the socio-historic context in which they made their work. “Outsider artists” includes artists experiencing incarceration, disability, mental illness and other forms of marginalisation. Integration of their work will lead to a deeper understanding of mainstream art in Australia to paint a richer, more complex picture of the history of Australian art. The project will alter the perspective of arts policy and agencies, and of Australian artists themselves.Read moreRead less
Curating Photography in the Age of Photo Sharing. This project aims to develop new curatorial models to enable Australian art galleries to respond effectively to changes in the medium of photography wrought by digital technologies. By conducting the first comprehensive analysis of nearly five decades of Australian photography curating and comparing it to curatorial approaches in related institutions locally and internationally, the project seeks to: identify the crucial role of photography exhib ....Curating Photography in the Age of Photo Sharing. This project aims to develop new curatorial models to enable Australian art galleries to respond effectively to changes in the medium of photography wrought by digital technologies. By conducting the first comprehensive analysis of nearly five decades of Australian photography curating and comparing it to curatorial approaches in related institutions locally and internationally, the project seeks to: identify the crucial role of photography exhibitions in the shaping of Australian visual culture; and develop opportunities for curators to better engage with the current proliferation of images, including new forms and practices of photography enabled by the Internet.Read moreRead less
World-pictures: Path-finding across a century of wars, 1917-2017. This project aims to redefine war art in artistic and scholarly research. Public understandings of war are significantly shaped by war art and images of war. This project will investigate the artistic potential of scholars’ methodologies –timelines and the atlas form – to revise the Australian understanding of the century-long and global aftermath of war from WW1 into the present, in major exhibitions of new art. The project will ....World-pictures: Path-finding across a century of wars, 1917-2017. This project aims to redefine war art in artistic and scholarly research. Public understandings of war are significantly shaped by war art and images of war. This project will investigate the artistic potential of scholars’ methodologies –timelines and the atlas form – to revise the Australian understanding of the century-long and global aftermath of war from WW1 into the present, in major exhibitions of new art. The project will to investigate how international 21st century artists explored recent wars and will produce a systematic, art historical account of international 21st century war art. The project aims to provide a better understanding of Australia’s heritage and of war art.Read moreRead less