Object Matters

In this episode of Object Matters Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chris Jones the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s Collection Manager, Documentation. An oil painting by Walter Armiger Bowring (1887-1971) in the museum’s art collection titled Cellist of c. 1927 has long intrigued Chris. A musician in an artists studio looks not a musical score but rather an abstract painting. Chris ponders if Bowring is gently mocking the 1920s modernist concepts popularised by Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, Roy De Maistre and others about the relationship between art and music and questions who the cellist in the painting may have been. Chris also explores the role of data management and digitisation in a museum. 

Artwork: Walter Bowring, 'Cellist', c.1927, oil on canvas, University Art Collection, UA1968.3

Guest: Chris Jones is responsible for the administration of the Sydney University Museum's collections database Axiell Emu and associated digitisation projects. He has previously worked in museums and archives in New Zealand, and the National Gallery of Victoria before joining the University in 2012.

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museumand Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

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Dr Shuxia Chen, Curator of the China Gallery at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, joins Dr Craig Barker to welcome the Year of the Ox with two artworks from the collection. Photocopy works by Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee and Beijing artist Wang Youshen from the late 1980s and early 1990s are discussed in reference to Shuxia’s own art historical research and together we examine how artists were looking for new ways to combine Eastern and Western traditions during that creative and experimental period.


Artworks

Wang Youshen, Portrait Series: Document I, 1990, mixed media, University Art Collection, UA2001.34

Guest: Dr Shuxia Chen joined the Chau Chak Wing Museum as its inaugural China Gallery curator in 2019. Her research interests include the relations between art, society and politics, cultural networks and artist groups in Asia.

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museumand Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

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Diana Wood Conroy, Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong is an artist, author and archaeologist with a long connection to the Chau Chak Wing Museum collections - as an undergraduate student in the 1960s she assisted in the Nicholson Museum stocktake and redisplay of the collection. Since the 1970s Diana has worked primarily in tapestry and has collaborated with Tiwi artists. Her practice explores relationships between classical, Aboriginal and personal worlds in tapestry and drawing, and her works are held in national and international collections.  

 

A fragment of a Pompeian wall painting painted c. 60-79 AD is the starting point to discuss Diana's own archaeological work in Paphos, Cyprus, as well as exploring the concept of the artist in both ancient and modern cultures. In Paphos, Diana has studied and worked to reconstruct Roman wall paintings exposed by Australian archaeologists over the past two decades.

Object record: NM80.49

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museumand Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

Guest: Diana Wood Conroy, Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong, artist, author and archaeologist.

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Conservation is one of the most important and often most misunderstood roles within a museum. In this episode of Object Matters Dr Craig Barker is joined by the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s former Conservator Alayne Alvis to discuss the function of conservation and the role of a conservator in the process of collection management and exhibitions. The object the pair discuss dates to c. 730-720 BC and is a Neo Assyrian carved ivory plaque of a female figure that Alayne has worked very closely with. Excavated by Sir Max Mallowan from Fort Shalmaneser at Nimrud in Iraq in the 1950s, the discussion leads from the difference between field conservation and museum conservation, the ethics of working with ivory and the crime writer Agatha Christie’s role in the excavation of Assyrian ivories.

What can we learn from objects as a result of the close analysis and detailed observations afforded by conservation treatment?

Object record: NM59.12.

Muse article: Bollen, E. and Alvis, A. (2013) The Mystery of the Nimrud Ivory, MUSE, 5, pp. 15-17

Guest: Alayne Alvis was Conservator for the collections of the University of Sydney for over a decade, and the inaugural Conservator for the Chau Chak Wing Museum. 

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museumand Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram. 

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Museums often amass much ephemeral material as well as collection objects; these ‘minor’ pieces can enhance our understanding of the broader pattern of collecting.

In this episode, Dr Craig Barker is joined by Candace Richards, Assistant Curator of the Nicholson Collection. Together they discuss a ‘Promesse de mandat territorial'; a French bank note issued in 1796, two years before the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. The note came to Australia via the family of the noted figure in Egyptology and University of Sydney alumnus Grafton Elliot Smith (1871-1937).

This single piece of paper provides an opportunity to talk about European colonial influence in Egypt in the 18th,19th and 20th centuries, and the rush for European powers to uncover Egyptian antiquities. It also enables a discussion on the concept of object biographies and understanding how objects have their own histories, including the importance of these modern objects within collections of ancient artefacts and the modern engagement with ancient Egypt as explored in the Chau Chak Wing Museum exhibition Pharaonic Obsessions: Ancient Egypt, an Australian Story.

Object: 'Promesse de mandat territorial', 100 franc paper bank note, France, 1796, Donated by Mrs Elwyn M Andrews and Miss Elizabeth C Bootle in memory of their great-uncle Sir Grafton Elliot Smith 1984, Nicholson Collection, NM2017.2  

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram. 

Guest: Candace Richards is an archaeologist and Assistant Curator of the Nicholson Collection at the Chau Chak Wing Museum. Follow Candace on Twitter and Instagram.


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Subscribe to Muse Extra, our monthly newsletter and follow @ccwm_sydney on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Learn more about the Chau Chak Wing Museum at sydney.edu.au/museum

Director David Ellis joins Dr Craig Barker to discuss his love of mineralogy and the remarkable history of a mineral from deep in the earth’s past, and its journey from Broken Hill to the Chau Chak Wing Museum.

Cerussite is a mineral consisting of lead carbonate and as such is an important ore of lead. Indeed the name is based on the Latin word cerussa or white lead. Cerussite mineral specimens can also be extraordinarily beautiful and highly valued by collectors. The specimen David has chosen for this episode is no different. Acquired at Broken Hill in New South Wales in the 1890s, it passed through several hands before ending up at the University of Sydney.

The specimen represents the important role the teaching of geology at the University of Sydney from the 1860s onwards had in Australia’s economic and social history. David also takes on the journey from the conception of a new museum for the University’s collections, to the opening of the new institution and his vision for the Chau Chak Wing Museum.  

Specimen: Cerussite, collected in 1890s by Edward William Aldridge, Macleay Collections (SC2010.25) 

 

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head, Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram. 

Guest: David Ellis, Director, Chau Chak Wing Museum.

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Subscribe to Muse Extra, our monthly newsletter and follow @ccwm_sydney on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Learn more about the Chau Chak Wing Museum at sydney.edu.au/museum

What can a jar of tiny brains tell us about human history and the role of museums in contextualising colonisation?
 
In this episode, Dr Craig Barker is joined by Dr Jude Philp, anthropologist and Senior Curator of the Macleay Collections. Together they discuss a jar of partially dissected bird and small mammal brains, each individually wrapped in muslin or gauze. These specimens were collected by Russian scientist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay from the Madang province of Papua New Guinea in 1876-77 and donated to the University of Sydney by his Australian widow Margaret in 1889. From the jar tumble stories of Miklouho-Maclay’s extraordinary life and adventures, his service to science, and remarkably open-minded attitude towards understanding human cultures and despair at European colonial impact upon the lives of others.

The jar, and other items collected by Miklouho-Maclay also provide an opportunity to discuss some of the ethical considerations related to the collection of animal and human remains at the time which sit at the centre of modern debates about the roles of museums in understanding and contextualising colonisation and giving voices to those who lost them during the colonial era.

Miklouho-Maclay’s work was much admired during his lifetime: as legendary Russian author Leon Tolstoy wrote to him, "I do not know what contribution these collections and discoveries will make to the science which you serve but your experience among the natives is epoch-making in the science which I serve, namely the science of how people may live with one another. Write that story and you will make a great contribution to the service of humanity" (quoted in Mikloucho-Maclay: New Guinea Diaries 1871-1883, translated by C.L. Sentinella (1975 Kristen Press).


Guest: Dr Jude Philp, anthropologist and Senior Curator of the Macleay Collections at the Chau Chak Wing Museum. 

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Manager of Education and Public Programs, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

Object details: Jar of partially dissected bird and small mammal brains collected by Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay in 1876-77. Macleay Collections, NHB.8040.  __
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Deep time is a geological concept - the idea of unimaginable lengths of time. Our guest this episode is Matt Poll, Curator of Indigenous Heritage at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, who selects a stone axe to illustrate the deep time history of Sydney. 

The hand axe was found on the lands of the Deerubbin peoples of western Sydney, at Castlereigh, Penrith Lakes. Located by Father Eugene Stockton, it was donated to the Macleay Museum in 1984. It has since been dated using the scientific technique of thermoluminescence to c.45,000 years old: a true example of the deep time history of the people who inhabited the Sydney basin long before European settlement.

Matt and Craig discuss the significance of objects such as this axe in terms of understanding the relationship between land and the Aboriginal people of Australia and in the value of overturning preconceived notions of history and archaeology in this country.
 
Guest: Matt Poll, Curator Indigenous Heritage and Repatriation Project, Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum.

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Manager of Education and Public Programs, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

Object details: Mogo, (hand axe) Deerubin peoples, Sydney 

Castlereigh, Penrith Lakes GaK.3014 - 26,700 +1700 -1500 T/L DATE c.45,000. Donated by Father Eugene Stockton 1984, ET2014.431 [ET85.5.82.4].  __
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Senior Curator of the University Art Collection, Dr Ann Stephen introduces us to Dr John Joseph Wardell Power (1881-1943), painter, author, medical doctor and philanthropist. In this episode, Ann introduces his life and work by focusing on a single painting, Femme à L’ombrelle (c. 1926), in the Chau Chak Wing Museum collection. JW Power, as he preferred to be known, is renowned in Australian art for his generous bequest to the University of Sydney which aimed to bring the latest ideas about contemporary art to the people of Australia; resulting in the establishment of the Power Institute and the foundation of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

In contrast, his own work as an expatriate Australian artist who spent the 1920s and 30s painting and exhibiting in Europe is little known. Equally at home in London, Paris and Brussels he moved between these cities, immersing himself in both contemporary and historic art. His own hybrid style of painting, part-surreal, part abstract marked him as a member of the international avant-garde. As the renowned dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler recalled “We all knew Power, but we knew him as an artist, we did not know him as a rich man or a surgeon.” His widow Edith Power gifted some 1300 of his works to the university in 1961.

Ann explains why art critic Robert Hughes once commented that, had Power painted these pictures in Australia, “he would possibly be now regarded as the most important figure in our early avant-garde”.

Guest: Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator of the University Art Collection and chair of Art Monthly Australasia. Ann's research focuses on modernism and conceptual art and she is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Manager of Education and Public Programs, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

Artwork details: JW Power, Femme à L’ombrelle (c. 1926), oil on canvas 130 x 79 cm, JW Power collection, University of Sydney, managed by Museum of Contemporary Art, Edith Power bequest 1961, PW1961.83.

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Art historian Dr Ann Elias came across the haunting image of a scallop in an aquarium while researching ocean histories and early 20th century underwater photography. Captured by the camera while opening its valves, the scallop almost appears to be grinning at us. Dr Elias was immediately reminded of the work of artist Odilon Redon, who created hybrid human and non-human creatures in his paintings and drawings. The gaze of the scallop also captured the attentions of philosopher Henri Bergson and University of Sydney marine biologist William John Dakin, who proposed contradictory theories about the similarities of scallop eyes and human eyes. Science, philosophy, art and dreams are all on the table in this deep dive into an underwater lantern slide.
 
Guest: Associate Professor Dr Ann Elias is Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney and researcher with the Sydney Environment Institute.

Host: Dr Craig Barker, Manager of Education and Public Programs, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram.

Collection item details: 'Mollusca - Pecten', Zoology Department Lantern Slide Collection, c. 1909-10. Photograph by Francis Ward.  __
 Subscribe to Muse Extra, our monthly newsletter and follow @ccwm_sydney on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Learn more about the Chau Chak Wing Museum at sydney.edu.au/museum