Exhibitions In Focus: Insights from the Hamilton Gallery HG:60 Project

Join Dr Matthew Martin, Dr Mark Erdmann, and Assoc Prof Alison Inglis as they share insights on art history and curatorship ‘in the field’. During 2021, the panellists collaborated with Hamilton Gallery to deliver an acclaimed exhibition, book, and symposium that commemorated the Gallery’s 60th Anniversary. Panellists will share insights about the process of engagement with curators and exhibition designers, how they developed an overarching vision for collection objects, the challenges of collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team from around Australia during the pandemic, and anecdotes about how they uncovered and documented hidden treasures in Hamilton Gallery’s collection.

The discussion will take place online, via Zoom, and include opportunities for audience Q&A.

Zoom Link: https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/88082959442?pwd=b0FMRHRHSEhWSHBJQlcxQ0k0eFV5UT09 , Password: 150289

Panellists:

Dr Matthew Martin is an art historian and curator with a particular interest in the luxury arts of the European long eighteenth century. From 2006 to 2019 he was a curator in the department of International Decorative Arts in the National Gallery of Victoria and is now Course Co-ordinator for the Master of Art Curatorship Program at the University of Melbourne. Matthew’s research interests include the cultural aesthetics of eighteenth-century European porcelain and the medium's connections to the European alchemical tradition;  the historiography of the decorative arts and their display in museums; collecting and patronage amongst seventeenth and eighteenth-century recusant elites; and Chinoiserie and artistic exchange between Europe and Asia in the eighteenth century. He is a member of the board of Art Exhibitions Australia. His recent publications include: “Continental Porcelain Made in England: The Case of the Chelsea Porcelain Factory” in Jennifer Milam and Nicola Parsons (eds), Making ideas visible in the eighteenth century (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022); and “Porcelain and Catholic Enlightenment: The Zwettler Tafelaufsatz”, Eighteenth-Century Life 45:3 (2021).

Dr Mark K Erdmann is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in Japanese pre-modern architecture, particularly of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the intersection of space, painting, carpentry, and power. His research focuses on castles, warrior elite residences, palaces, as well as the Jesuit mission in Japan and their impact on visual culture. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2016 and Masters from the University of London in 2001. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Azuchi Castle: Oda Nobunaga and the Origins of the Japanese Castle. Erdmann is also a founding core member of the Azuchi Castle Screens Research Network, a group of scholars and artists attempting to discover the fate of a lost painting of Azuchi Castle gifted by Oda Nobunaga to Pope Gregory XIII via the Jesuits in 1585. He is also working on an annotated translation of Shōmei(Elucidation of the Craft), a secret sixteenth-century architectural manual written by Heinouchi Masanobu.

Associate Professor Alison Inglis is Co-Director of the Australian Institute of Art History at the University of Melbourne, and recently retired from her long-term role as Co-ordinator of the Master of Art Curatorship program. Her research interests include 19thC British and Australian art and the history of collections and exhibitions. Alison’s membership of cultural, educational and public boards and committees includes: Member of Museums Board of Victoria (2015 - present); Member of Board of Directors, Heide Museum of Modern Art 2005 –2015 ; Council of Trustees, NGV 1995 - 2003; Member of the University’s Indigenous Cultural Collections Advisory Group 2011 - 2015; Member of Donald Thomson Collection Administration Committee 1998 - 2015. Recent publications include: Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening Our Eyes, with J. Mendelssohn, C. Speck and C. De Lorenzo (Thames & Hudson, 2018); For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation, with P. Macdonald (Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2014).

Image caption: Installation photograph, HG:60 Exhibition, Hamilton Gallery, 2021-2022.