Please email admin@aaanz.info for an entry form or any enquiries.

We require two copies of the relevant publication with each entry by Thursday 31 July 2013, postal details are on the entry form.

Winners will be announced at the 2013 AAANZ Conference Interdiscipline in Melbourne 7–9 December 2013.

Prize Categories 

Best book ($500 supported by The University of Sydney)

Best anthology ($500 supported by The University of Sydney)

Best large exhibition catalogue ($500 supported by The University of Melbourne)

Best small exhibition catalogue ($100 supported by The University of Western Australia)

Best scholarly article in AAANZ Journal ($500 supported by The University of Sydney)

Best essay/catalogue/book by an Indigenous Australian or New Zealand Mâori (NZ$500 supported by Christchurch Art Museum)

Best artist lead publication, essay/catalogue/book (NZ$500 supported by Massey University)

University Art Museums exhibition catalogue ($1000 supported by the University Art Museums Association)

All applicants are required to follow the logo design brief and submission guidelines below.

Logo design brief

• The purpose of the competition is to design a logo for the AAANZ conference 2013, ‘interdiscipline’. The logo should reflect the theme of the conference, ‘inter-discipline’.
• The logo will be used online and in print.
• Flexibility is a key requirement, including the need to re-size easily and to look effective in black and white as well as colour. The final version of the logo will need to be suitable for high quality printing. Colours used must be in CMYK.
• The logo must contain the words, ‘inter-discipline’ and ‘Art Association of Australia and New Zealand conference 2013’. It must not contain any other text.

For more information download the design brief and submission guidelines (pdf) AAANZ Logo Competition Poster

Deadline for entries May 15th 2013

Enquiries purnima.r@unimelb.edu.au 

Katrina Grant

The Kongouro from New Holland by George Stubbs. Potential buyers need to find £5.5m to keep it and its companion picture of a dingo in Britain via The Guardian.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has chosen not to replace Senior Curator of Asian Art Jackie Menzies after she retires, a decision that has surprised many, considering the gallery’s large collection of Asian Art (there will continue to be two curators of Asian Art). Perhaps, though, this role is to be absorbed into the recently advertised position for a Director of Collections at AGNSW.

Liberal arts degrees may not come with a job description attached, but you are just as likely to end up employed and probably a more well-rounded person as well – Nicolaos Jones On the Liberal Arts and the Advantages of Being Useless (may need to be logged into academia.edu to read)

The problem of inflation in academic reference writing – should academia follow most other areas of employment and only seek references at the final stages?

‘Walsh is explicit about what his museum is not: it’s not a rich man gratefully giving back to his community. It’s not an attempt at immortality, as he frankly admits that his collection may be deemed worthless in another decade. It is a theatre of strange enchantments…’ Richard Flanagan in the New Yorker on David Walsh.

An update on last year’s Caravaggio ‘discovery’ (when a group of Peterzano drawings were controversially re-attributed to Caravaggio) the comune in Milan is now taking the two art historians to court to sue for civil damages ‘in relation to the explosive events’, a translation (thanks Mark Shepheard!) of Il Giorno article Peterzano drawings (word doc).

The Art Newspaper also reports that Milan is putting a Michelangelo sculpture in a prison to ‘have a positive impact on the psyches of the inmates’ - Michael Savage disagrees with the move.

Wall labels are a source of constant discussion – and frequent frustration – amongst art historians, artists and anyone who regularly visits museums. Angus Trumble writes that ‘There are labels that swagger; labels that boast; labels that snigger, scold, or prevaricate; labels that sit determinedly on fences. Some labels are too bossy, too chatty, or too starchy. Some labels cause you indigestion; others send the visitor empty away.’ While the Grumpy Art Historian bemoans some below par labels as the Ashmolean.

‘Museums Grapple With the Strings Attached to Gifts’ - Patricia Cohen in the New York Times on the issue of donor’s restrictions on major gifts.

No self-respecting historian could have missed the hullabaloo about the University of Leicester’s announcement that they believe that the skeleton excavated from beneath a car park is that of Richard III. Some healthy scepticism coupled with enthusiasm from Art History News.

An export ban has been placed on some paintings by George Stubbs of kangaroos, after an Australian buyer expressed interest. The Australian seems to be under the erroneous impression that because the paintings represent something Australian that Australia is their ‘home’ , but they were painted in England by an English artist.

Medieval frescoes in Albania have been irreversibly damaged after thieves tried to pry them from the wall, sad photos in this article.

Jed Perl in The New Republic asks if Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei is a wonderful dissident, but a terrible artist.

Katrina Grant

The church of Santa Maria della Scorziata, lying in ruins via The Art Newspaper

‘Don’t mock China’s Eiffel Tower’ – a fascinating article on the hundreds of instances of ‘duplitecture’ in China, where mostly Western European monuments (though there is a Sydney Opera House and the White House is the most popular facsimile), and in some cases entire towns are reproduced as tourist attractions or as towns to be lived in.

What is the deadweight loss of museums? Some musings on the economics of Museums – should they sell their lower tier works? Use more wall space?

Tyler Green on the ‘Baltimore Museum of Arts shameful rentals’ – the museum is apparently ‘renting out’ its most significant works by Matisse, and not just for your usual loan exhibitions, ‘the BMA is simply renting out a substantial selection of its art collection. It apparently hoped no one would notice…’

Also Tyler Green’s recent podcast interview with Christine Sciacca, curator of the Getty’s “Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350″ is worth listening to (as are his podcast interviews generally).

UNESCO has released a statement promising to help Mali restore and rebuild its damaged heritage including help to rebuild the mausoleums of Timbuktu and the tomb of Askia in Gao, to preserve the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu.

Australian businesses should recognise the skills of arts and humanities graduates, especially when several CEOs and other senior figures completed degrees in classics and history, not economics.

‘Pompous paradoxes, plagues of adverbs, endless sentences and strained rebellious poses’ – It’s  International Art English! A user’s guide from the Guardian.

Why a fake Rembrandt can sometimes be a good thing from Artful Science.

The ever-popular debate over blockbuster art exhibitions (are they good or bad?) is discussed in the Guardian. Some good points raised including whether institutions shy away from doing something more challenging, and whether blockbusters are necessary to draw in new audiences, but some rather odd statements as well, including that ‘To create a blockbuster exhibition is quite a political statement.’ Really? I can’t think of one, not that blockbuster exhibitions can’t make interesting statements about art, or rethink an artist’s oeuvre, but are these political statements?

Talking of blockbusters there is a preview of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Turner exhibition in The Australian, the exhibition open on February 8th.

The president of the Modigliani Institute arrested by the Italian art forgery unit after a two-year investigation.

Arrests have been made over the sacking of the Girolamini library in Naples – revealed last year by art historian Tommaso Montanari, who has an update on his blog (in Italian).

A report has also raised concerns over the neglect of Naples artistic and architectural heritage with many churches, palaces, museums and libraries closed, stripped of furnishing and art or missing funds that were meant to pay for restoration.

Katrina Grant

Charles Le Brun's rediscovered "The Sacrifice of Polyxena."

Ben Eltham in Crikey with good news for people in, or aspiring to, the creative industries. ‘New census data on Australia’s cultural and creative industries allows us to peer inside a dynamic sector for the first time in five years. And the news is generally good… Australia’s creative and cultural employment is growing faster than employment in the rest of the economy.’

A new blog called the ‘Grumpy Art Historian’ has some interesting musings on bad acquisitions.

The Ritz has discovered they own a Charles Le Brun painting of ‘The Sacrifice of Polyxena’ and plan to sell it at Christies.

The Art Gallery of South Australia has announced a rehang (pdf) of their European collection. they have moved away from the traditional chronological hang to a thematic one. The release states that ‘each room in the refurbished wing embodies a distinctive thematic idea which relates to the world in which we live.’ The rehang will be interesting to see, thematic hangs can be good but they can also fall a bit flat, with works taken out of context to make a single point about ‘death’ or ‘love’.

Roy Strong has criticised English museums for being too safe, saying ‘”There’s a real fear of being controversial beyond certain [contemporary] works of art and what I call the Britart scene… ‘ An interesting idea that only contemporary art is allowed to be controversial while ‘old’ art is confined to what is popular with the broader public. Although aimed at UK institutions Strong’s comments have a relevance here as our galleries and museums bring out a lot of shows from the V&A, which suggests that maybe some of our galleries defer to safe exhibitions about ‘glamour and money’ too.

This article on whether art history is just for the elite has done the rounds a bit already but I couldn’t resist including it, along with some responses from Bendor Grosvenor here and here.

The Louvre has opened new galleries dedicated to Islamic Art, which ‘places arts from the Islamic world on a par with those from the museum’s seven other departments.’

Erwin Panofsky’s thesis titled “The Creative Principles of Michelangelo, particularly in relation to those of Raphael”  written during the 1920s but never published is now to be published after it was rediscovered in Munich’s Central Institute for Art History last year.

Earlier in January the National Gallery in London gained another Titian with the new attribution of a potrato of Girolamo Fracastoro, for years kept in storage, but not everyone is convinced, see other opinions on the Grumpy Art Historian and Art History Today

The BBC reports that three people have been arrested in Romania for the theft of paintings from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal Museum last year, the theft included a Monet, Picasso, a Matisse and a Freud. Unfortunately the paintings have not yet been found.

Turkey has been accused of blackmailing museums around the world for the return of works by threatening to cut access to archaeological sites. The museums argue that the works requested were obtained legally and they are under no obligation to return them.

Online resources | A few new online resources

The Walpole Society’s British Art History Resources

A free online Palaeography course for scholars

 Cambridge Digital Library has put thousand of ancient religious texts online

The Vatican has created a database of art and artefacts in Italian churches – database link here

The journal also has a new website at http://emajartjournal.com

EMAJ publishes emerging and established scholars from around Australian and internationally. The journal is fully refereed and open access. You can read the abstracts below and visit the website here to download the full article.

emaj issue 6, 2011-2012

EDITORS

Nicholas Croggon, Jane Eckett, Justine Grace, Katrina Grant, Helen Hughes, Tim Ould, Francis Plagne

ARTICLES

A tournament of shadows: Alighiero Boetti, the myth of influence, and a contemporary orientalism | NIGEL LENDON

This paper examines the evolution of the historical and theoretical literature that has developed about the work of the avant-garde Italian artist Alighiero Boetti produced in Afghanistan from 1971 until 1994. Characterised by a set of interrelated cultural and historical fictions, I propose that this collective narrative has evolved to constitute a contemporary orientalist mythology. This is particularly evident in the literature following his death in 1994, and most recently in anticipation of his retrospective exhibitions in the Museo Reina Sofia, Tate Modern, and the Museum of Modern Art in 2011–12. Prior to his death, the literature on Boetti primarily took the form of catalogue essays, journal articles and biographies. These drew heavily on a small number of interviews conducted with the artist, plus accounts and memoirs given by his wives, partners, and curatorial collaborators. Since his death, the literature has further proliferated, and today a greater emphasis is placed on a growing number of secondary authorities. Recent monographs, catalogue essays, and auction house texts draw heavily on the anecdotal accounts of his agents and facilitators, as well as his employees and archivists. In exploring what I describe as the mythologies informing the contemporary reception of his work, I examine the claims of his influence over the distinctive indigenous genre of Afghan narrative carpets which were produced both within Afghanistan as well as by diasporic Afghans in Iran and Pakistan in the years following the 1979 Soviet invasion until the present. The attribution of political intent in the later Boettis, whether attributed to the artist or on the part of his agents, is a recent invention worthy of challenge. Finally I argue that such interpretations of his attitudes and practice might be described as a form of late orientalism, a mode of representation occurring through the appropriation of tradition and the projection of cosmopolitan values and practices onto this most conflicted and exoticised cultural context of the contemporary era.

An editorial approach: Mike Nelson’s corridors and The Deliverance and The Patience | HELEN HUGHES

This essay contrasts the contemporary British artist Mike Nelson’s approach to constructing his large, multi-room installations with his approach to editing the numerous artist books that he has produced since 2000. This comparison reveals several compositional symmetries between the two, namely pertaining to narrative non-linearity and meta-fictionality. The logic of montage is shown to similarly underscore both the books and the installations. This essay argues that the corridors connecting the different rooms of Nelson’s installations function in a similar way to the logic of montage: they play an integral role as the support that binds the structure of the installation (its multiple rooms) together as a whole. This essay argues that the corridor is the primary viewing framework of the installation for the viewer, and that this vantage point is significant because the necessarily partial vision of the installation from the space of the corridor demonstrates the logic of installation art more broadly. I conclude by mapping the key compositional elements of Nelson’s artist books onto his installations, taking the 2001 work The Deliverance and The Patience as a case study, to show that the books do not exemplify the artwork as with traditional exhibition catalogues, but rather parallel it. That is, a structural continuity is established between these two facets of his work.

Seeing Scale: Richard Dunn’s Structuralism | KEITH BROADFOOT

Writing on the occasion of a retrospective of Richard Dunn’s work, Terence Maloon argued that ‘structuralism had an important bearing on virtually all of Richard Dunn’s mature works’, with ‘his modular, “crossed” formats’ being the most obvious manifestation of this. In this article I wish to reconsider this relation, withdrawing from a broad consideration of the framework of structuralism to focus on some of the quite particular ideas that Lacan proposed in response to structuralism. Beginning from a pivotal painting in the 1960s that developed out of Dunn’s experience of viewing the work of Barnett Newman, I wish to suggest a relation between the ongoing exploration of the thematic of scale in Dunn’s work and the idea of the symbolic that Lacan derives from structuralist thought. This relation, I argue, opens up a different way of understanding the art historical transition from Minimalism to Conceptual art.

Futurismo in Guerra: The Aesthetics and Reception of 1940s “Aeropainting of War” | CHRISTOPHER ADAMS

In its final phase (1940-44) Italian Futurism remained a vibrant and multi-faceted movement. However, its enduring Fascist sympathies throughout the dark years of World War Two have proved a major obstacle to an objective appraisal of its achievements during this period, which has come to be associated almost exclusively with a genre known as aeropittura di guerra.

A late manifestation of the Futurist machine aesthetic and fascination with industrialised conflict, this ‘aeropainting of war’ is extremely problematic, ideologically speaking. Nevertheless, as an expression of the movement’s belief that war was ‘Futurism intensified’ this tendency demands closer attention than it has hitherto received, despite its unpalatable glorification of violence. Examining the formal characteristics of such work, this paper challenges the habitual presentation of aeropittura di guerra as visually crude and unimaginative, subservient to the retrogressive aesthetics of a regime increasingly in thrall to the anti-modernist cultural policies pursued by its Nazi ally, and reveals its imagery to be much more varied and inventive than is often supposed. It also examines contemporary responses to this genre, and suggests that far from being marginalised and suppressed by Fascist ideologues, Futurism’s unique ability to evoke the drama of aerial warfare did not go unrecognised — or unrewarded — by the political and cultural establishment of the day.

The Unmarriageable Artist: the History Paintings of Edgar Degas | ROBERTA CRISCI-RICHARDSON

In this paper, Edgar Degas’ history paintings are read as the painter’s reflection on the irreconcilability of married life and artistic vocation, a major theme of discussion among artists and writers in nineteenth-century France. In The Young Spartans Exercising (1861) we see bachelors being banned from participation in the Gymnopaediae. In The Daughter of Jephthah (1859-60), Semiramis Building Babylon (1861) and Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1865), Degas shows famous unmarried women, femmes fortes who have chosen to pursue spiritual rather than mortal passions, all alter-egos for the artiste célibataire who chooses devotion to art over a family-centred bourgeois life. This article contributes to the view that Degas was neither a misogynist nor a narrow-minded bourgeois. Far from having preconceived patriarchal ideas on marriage and women, Degas choose to remain an artiste célibataire in accordance with the more extreme aspects of the nineteenth-century French cult of the artist as genius. It is the idea of the exceptional status of the artist that Degas elaborates in his history paintings, and that rendered him unmarriageable.

Nowhere man: The Countryside of Fred Williams after Western Desert painting | DARREN JORGENSEN

Two monographs on Australian artist Fred Williams, published by Patrick McCaughey and James Mollison during the 1980s, have recently been joined by a third, Deborah Hart’s Fred Williams: Infinite Horizons (2011). While the first two argue that the artist’s work bridged a schism between Australian landscape painting and an internationalist contemporary art of the 1960s, the rise of Western Desert painting invites a new reading of his landscapes. Ron Radford’s Preface to Hart’s new monograph wants to reconcile the artist’s relationship to Western Desert painting with an anecdote about Clifford Possum’s visit to the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1984. Possum was enthusiastic about a painting by Williams, and Radford sees in this enthusiasm a reconciliation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ways of seeing. Such different readings of Williams and his work, authored in different historical periods, reflect different moments in the unfolding of national anxieties that constitute the history of Australian art.

Unorthodox Dreams — Modernist Aesthetics in Early Australian Artists’ Film | DANNI ZUVELA

Katrina Grant

Portrait of Adolf and Catharina Croeser on Oude Delft, Jan Havicksz. Steen, 1655, from Rijksmuseum, Rijkstudio.

The Rijksmuseum is the latest museum to make a massive number (125 000 so far) of high quality, zoomable images of its collection available online without any copyright restrictions. The museum is encouraging people to create galleries of their favourite works, print out the images on posters or ‘re-mix’ them to create new art.

Looters are stripping ancient sites in Bulgaria – reports suggest that as many as 50 000 people could be involved in daily trasure hunting raids.

Ben Eltham in Crikey on the contribution  the arts sector can make to engagement with Asia.

One of America’s foremost art critics Dave Hickey says he is walking away from the arts world because it is ‘calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing.’

James Farago on Art.sy,and the Myth of the Online Art Market, a website that ‘promises to connect promises to introduce users to art they’ll enjoy via a sophisticated recommendation engine’. Farago suggests that selling art in the digital space doesn’t work well in the digital space because ‘A work of art gains meaning and importance not from intrinsic qualities, but from its position within a network of institutions—museums, galleries, art schools, magazines, etc.’ But surely one of the reasons is a little more simple than that, selling art is fundamentally different to selling music or movies, there are fewer things to be sold. When an internationally famous musician relesses a new single anyone can buy it, when a famous artist makes a new work only one person can buy it.

The Art Newspaper reports that Peru’s “Sistine Chapel” shines again - San Pedro Apóstol de Andahuaylillas, on the Andean Baroque route, has undergone a four-year, $1.5m restoration.

On the 500th anniversary of the Sistine Chapel’s unveiling the Vatican is contemplating restricting visitor numbers, both to improve the visitor experience and for conservation reasons.

The BBC has an interesting series of radio programs on the Sistine Chapel with experts such as Martin Kemp and  A.C. Grayling available to listen to here.

The Art Gallery of South Australia has joined the Google Art project.

10 Reasons not to write about the Art Market (pdf link).

State museums and galleries have recently announced several exhibitions for 2013. The NGV is following up its summer Neo Impressionism exhibition with Impressionism for its 2013 Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibition with ‘Monet’s Garden: The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris’. This will be the tenth Melbourne Winter MAsterpiece at the NGV since they began in 2004 (with an Impressionism exhibition…) The Melbourne Museum, Queensland Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales adn the Western Australian Museum will all host the travelling exhibition Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul over 2013 and 2014. While the MCA in Sydney has announced a Yoko Ono exhibition to open in November next year.

Hurricane Sandy has done a lot of damage to art galleries in Chelsea in New York.

The Royal Academy in London is to host a broad survey exhibition of Australian art.

The Getty Research Institute has bought the ‘less controversial’ material from the archive of the Knoedler & Company art gallery in New York, which closed abruptly last year after charges that it was selling fakes. Thomas Gaehtgens, the director of the GRI, says “This archive can give us the basis for telling the story about how the museums in America have been built or developed.” The archive includes details of the sale of hundreds of paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in the 1930s by the Soviet government.

Tom Flynn on the Rotterdam art theft, disputing the idea that art thieves are stupid and won’t find buyers for their loot.

The National Museum of Australia is holding a new exhibition where the public can talk to the museum’s conservators and watch them at work. The exhibition is apparently a response to the Museum’s open days where that chance for people to discover more about the conservation and care of objects in the collections has been very popular.

‘The liberal arts and sciences have no economic value… Taught in the right spirit, they are useless from an economic point of view.’ Johann Neem argues that defending the liberal arts solely on their perceived economic value could be their downfall.

Beth Harris and Steve Zucker on why museums need to join the conversations taking place about the future of education. ‘Curators, educators, and administrators should be conversant with the debates and new models that are emerging.’

Also on the future of learning and academic life – Ernesto Priego argues that rather being ‘narcisstic echo chambers’ blogs used in an academic context are ‘synonymous with collegiality – the cooperative relationship between colleagues.’

While Bednor Grosvenor has some interesting thoughts on why Art History needs to change and why art historians should be embracing the digital world to help them reach a wider audience.

Artful Science on the problem of ‘weeping paintings’ – a conservation issue that affects recent oil paintings from the past couple fo decades.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has begun to make its out-of-print exhibition catalogues available online and you can download the full text free of charge.

How did a self-described German hippie pull off one of the biggest, most lucrative cons in art-world history? Vanity Fair on the Beltracchi case.

David Walsh has reportedly settled his case with the ATO and has declared that MONA is now safe, which is good as the museum has helped Hobart to get on a list of the top 10 cities to visit by Lonely Planet.

An interesting case of a scientist who has used ancient Roman mosaics to track changes in the size and distribution of the dusky grouper fish.

Katrina Grant

News

New NGV director Tony Ellwood gave a speech to the Melbourne Press Club on the 23rd August (full text in The Australian) where he outlined plans for the NGV under his leadership, some more specific than others. The continued focus on the apparent need for more and more contemporary art at the NGV strikes me as misplaced. A collection will always have its gaps (I’m sure many of us could think of a certain period we would love to see a few more examples of). However, the NGV does a lot for contemporary art, there is always contemporary art on display in both the NGVA and NGV International, including a dedicated space at the NGV International. They collect (it seems to me) a significant amount of contemporary art, including Australian artists. In some ways the anxiety seems to be prompted by the press, in particular The Age (for instance, here Gabriella Coslovich gets excited about the new plans). Melbourne does contemporary art well, we have ACCA, we have Gertrude Contemporary, amongst many others as well as lots of smaller galleries that show the work of Australian and International contemporary artists. As has been noted before on MAN by David Marshall, the NGV is virtually the only place in Melbourne that does something other than contemporary, or twentieth century, art, and it’s shame some in the press see that as a failure instead of the strength that it is. I am genuinely interested in others opinions of this and the comments below are open (click through the site if reading this in an email), please leave a comment!

Something of an online debate has been raging over the definition of connoisseurship and its place in art history. It was spurred by this post from Bendor Grosvenor’s Art History News where he took issue with Dana Arnold’s description of connoisseurship as ‘elitist’, amongst other things. Some took issue with his criticism of Arnold and it has provoked a bit of debate with Grosvenor publishing a series on interesting responses and examples of connoisseurship. David Packwood has also published a series of comments on the debate on his site.

Does copyright matter? – Author Tim Parks considers the history, uses and uselessness of copyright laws.

Art historians welcome an open approach to copyright from museums such as the National Portrait Gallery in the UK.

‘Does some fine madness yield great artists, writers, and scientists? The evidence is growing for a significant link between bipolar disorder and creative temperament and achievement.’ Claudia Slegers in The Conversation

Teaching historical method through hoaxes – T. Mills Kelly describes how he asked his students to create historical hoaxes in an effort to make his them better historians.

Jonathan Jones attacks Damien Hirst, describing him as a ‘national disgrace‘.

What do you do if you find out one of the paintings in your collection is actually a Picasso? Dust it off and put it back on display? Not if you are the Evansville Museum in the States, they are flogging their recently ‘discovered’ Picasso.

‘Stop apologising for your Arts degree’ – Writer Mehal Krayem on how she learned to stop worrying and be proud of her arts degree. Excellent advice. If those of us who are studying/ have studied arts, or those of us who teach it, can’t stand up and be proud of it and defend its place in education then there is little hope that we will stop the attacks on the humanities in Australian universities.

Should the Buddha’s of Bamiyan be rebuilt?

The world’s worst art restoration in Spain is old news by now having caught the world’s attention in the way serious conservation never does.

Contemporary art is easy to hate, but maybe that’s a good thing argues Simon Critchley.

Calls for Papers

Knowing Inside Out – experiential knowledge, expertise and connoisseurship (July 2013, Loughborough UK) – deadline 15th November, 2012.

Call for Contributions – Re-Visions. The journal of international postgraduate students art & design research – deadline  17th September, 2012.

Funding and Jobs

Australian

Lecturer in Asian Art History, University of Sydney - closes 30th September, 2012.

Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts, University of Tasmania - closes 31st October, 2012.

Curator of Public Programs at Craft ACT, Canberra - Closes 17th September, 2012.

Curator and Exhibition Manager at Craft ACT, Canberra - Closes 10th September, 2012.

International

CASVA fellowships, senior, visiting and predoctoral, Washington – various deadlines.

Lecturer, School of Fine Arts, within the College of Creative Arts, Massey University Wellington – closes 15th September, 2012.

Senior Lecturer/ Reader in the History of Art 1500-1700, University of Glasgow – College of Arts, School of Culture and Creative Arts – deadline 7th September, 2012.

Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer in Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy, University of Glasgow – School of Culture and Creative Arts – deadline 24th September, 2012.

Curator, Royal Academy of Arts, London – deadline 19th September 2012.

Senior Research Assistant/Research Fellow, University of Southampton -Winchester School of Art – deadline 7th September, 2012.

Guild Research Fellow: Contemporary Art, University of Central Lancashire – School of Art, Design and Performance – deadline 15th October 2012.

Assistant Professor of Visual Studies (tenure-track), University of California, Berkeley, Department of History of Art – deadline October 15th, 2012.

Research Fellowships, University of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College – deadline 28th September 2012.

Research Fellowships, St John’s College, University of Cambridge  - deadline Monday 1st October, 2012.

Fellowship Opportunities in American Art 2013–14, Smithsonian American Art Museum (range of different fellowships) – Deadline January 15th, 2013.

Curator: Late Medieval Europe, Prehistory and Europe, The British Museum – deadline 20th September, 2012.

Katrina Grant

News

A fascinating overview of the Czartoryski Raphael on the Three Pipe Problem, this painting is one of the famous looted paintings of World War II and remains lost: possibly destroyed, possibly in a bank vault somewhere. The provenance is mysterious and it is hard to be certain of whether it is even by Raphael himself.

The state of the humanities, including art history, was a topic of discussion on Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily program, guests included Melbourne University’s ANthony White, Monash University’s Raelene Francis and Queensland University’s Paul Makeham.

More to listen to here with NPR’s interview with art forger Ken Perenyi - ‘An Art Forger Tells All’

Ann Stephen has written a conference report on this year’s AAANZ conference, held in Sydney in July.

The reflections on Robert Hughes continue - Simon Schama writes in the Daily Beast that he ‘brought a furious passion, a love of verbal combat, and a electric prose style to the study of art.’

In a move that would certainly not have sat well with a critic like Robert Hughes, Tyler Green has written on the issueof non-profit museums hiring out its curatorial staff as art consultants to collectors or a corporations.

New chairwoman of the Queensland Art Gallery’s board of directors says finding a new director is top priority.

Profile of new NGV director Tony Ellwood - ’the way museums and galleries are being used is changing. They are becoming social environments, where young people especially come to look at art and each other.’

Are Tyrants good for  art? An article by philosopher John Gray takes Harry Lime’s memorable point that brotherly love only produces cuckoo clocks and asks whether culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony.

The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has introduced an online database for its entire Kraus map collection, the collection highlights the foundations of modern cartography.

New website for Codex Australia an ‘organisation dedicated to hand-made book and to the artists who make them.’

The Getty Museum and the Capitoline Museums in Rome have formed a partnership, that will include sharing works on long-term loans and sharing a framework for conservation and restoration.

A  geochemist at Berlin’s Free University has developed a technique to authenticate pieces of the Berlin Wall.

Archaeologists in Afghanistan are covering up antiquities to protect them from lotting and/or destruction.

Calls for Papers

Fourth Anglo-Italian Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies “Comparing Eighteenth-Century British and Italian Narratives”, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, 5-7 September 2013 – deadline 30 December, 2012.

 Jobs and Funding Opportunities

Senior Lecturer/Reader in Modern/Contemporary Art, University of Glasgow, School of Culture & Creative Arts – deadline 7th September 2012.

Research Fellowship (Arts and Social Sciences), Jesus College, University of Cambridge – deadline 12th September, 2012.

Curator of Bronze Age Collections, Prehistory and Europe, The British Museum – deadline 14th September, 2012.

National Art Scholarships for Year 11 students in Australia at the National Gallery of Australia – deadline 22 October, 2012.

Open-rank appointment in the History of Architecture, Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University – deadline 15th October 2012.

Early Career Lecturer in the History Art, Courtauld Institute – deadline Monday 17th September.

Creative Arts Postgraduate Scholarship, La Trobe University – deadline 31st October.