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
Facing new worlds: comparative histories of Australasia and North America. This project aims to develop comparative research into Indigenous and settler experiences in Australasia and North America in order to discover new connections or distinctions between the two regions for both public and academic audiences. The project will centre on a major exhibition with a focus on biography and life representation and will develop new methodologies for examining the shared or different histories of com ....Facing new worlds: comparative histories of Australasia and North America. This project aims to develop comparative research into Indigenous and settler experiences in Australasia and North America in order to discover new connections or distinctions between the two regions for both public and academic audiences. The project will centre on a major exhibition with a focus on biography and life representation and will develop new methodologies for examining the shared or different histories of complex indigenous-settler relations across "New World" sites. The expected outcomes of this project are to promote a deeper appreciation of Australia’s place in a Pacific world with as yet unexplored links to the Americas, and also to model new ways for art history and socio-cultural history to come together to explicate a shared, complicated past.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.
Immortal Egypt: cultural tradition and transition during the first intermediate period at Meir. The project will gain new knowledge about the development of ancient Egyptian culture by examining well-preserved tombs dating from the Old through to the Middle Kingdom periods at the cemetery of Meir and analysing the ways in which art, architecture, and socio-religious institutions at the site were maintained or altered over a span of 900 years.
Visual cosmopolitanism, national identity and imperialist ambitions in garden spaces. Visual cosmopolitanism is an ideal created through the global movement of art forms. This project will contribute to current debates about the globalisation of art by tracing the concept back to artistic practices and aesthetic theories of the enlightenment through a focus on experience within the eighteenth-century garden.
Forgotten Empire: the Art and Culture of the Elamite Civilization (ca. 4000-525 BCE). The Elamite civilisation (circa. 4000 to 525 BCE) formed a remarkably rich but almost unexplored background to later Persian imperialism. This ancient Iranian culture, whose importance has never been recognised, is characterised by a remarkable longevity and an outstanding combination of highland and lowland artistic and cultural traditions. The aim of this project is to articulate the history of the art and cu ....Forgotten Empire: the Art and Culture of the Elamite Civilization (ca. 4000-525 BCE). The Elamite civilisation (circa. 4000 to 525 BCE) formed a remarkably rich but almost unexplored background to later Persian imperialism. This ancient Iranian culture, whose importance has never been recognised, is characterised by a remarkable longevity and an outstanding combination of highland and lowland artistic and cultural traditions. The aim of this project is to articulate the history of the art and culture of the Elamite civilisation for the first time based on analysis, interpretation and publication of its archaeological and artistic record.Read moreRead less
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