Alumni Profile: Lorinda Cramer
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Degree: Arts (Hons) 1998 Current Position: Curator, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne Lorinda Cramer's interest in cultural heritage began during her undergraduate studies at Melbourne. Only a few years later she would find herself on an island in the Philippines, helping to display and preserve the local culture as part of an AusAID volunteer program. Lorinda's subsequent career has taken her to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and now to Melbourne's Chinatown, where she is the curator of a museum dedicated to the history of Australia's Chinese community. |
I studied archaeology and art history at the University of Melbourne and cultural heritage management and museology at the University of Canberra. After graduating, I worked in International Admissions at the University of Melbourne. I left that role to go to the Philippines on a six-month Australian Youth Ambassador for Development assignment.
I spent six months in Tagbilaran City, on the central Filipino island of Bohol, where I worked with a local university to establish a photographic museum of Boholano life and culture. As well as helping to develop the policies, guidelines and structure of the museum, I trained the museum staff in areas such as collections management, research, documentation and exhibition development. It was wonderful to go through the process of establishing the museum with local counterparts, have the museum open, and leave knowing that they would be able to carry on the work.
Following my return to Australia I moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, to work at the Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame where I was responsible for the on-site historic collection and heritage precinct, together with planning, promoting and installing a program of temporary and touring exhibitions. While in Kalgoorlie, my interest in Chinese Australian heritage was sparked through the construction of a Chinese garden on site, built by craftsmen from Beijing. When the role at the Chinese Museum came up I was very excited, and this has bought me back to Melbourne.
My role as Curator involves acquiring items for the collection, developing and maintaining the Museum’s cataloguing, improving storage conditions and supervising support staff. I’m also responsible for establishing an exhibitions and activities program that relates to the Museum’s collection and promotes Chinese Australian history.
At the moment I’m spending most of my time developing an exhibition for China, titled An Australian Way of Life: Chinese Contribution to Australian Society, which will tour to Shenzhen in May.
The Museum also has a number of very dedicated volunteers who I work with on a variety of projects, from cataloguing and digitizing the collection and researching collection items, to installing exhibitions.
I like the diversity in what I do – no day is the same as another – and I love working with our collection. There are some amazing artefacts in our collection and I particularly enjoy working with our textiles. It’s also wonderful to see the support in the community for the Museum, and talk to people whose background the Museum displays.
I loved my time studying at the University of Melbourne – the great diversity of really interesting classes offered in the Arts Faculty got me interested in cultural heritage and the arts, but uni was also very much about the wonderful people I met there.
In my spare time I enjoy travel, meeting up with friends, and visiting new exhibitions in and around Melbourne.
