Past Exhibitions 2006-2007
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Past Special Collections Exhibitions
Past Art in the Library Exhibitions
Past University of Melbourne Archives Exhibitions
Past exhibitions at the Ian Potter Museum of Art
Past exhibitions at the Medical History Museum
2007
Facing Percy Grainger
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 25 October 2007 to 3 February 2008
Originally presented in 2006 by the National Library of Australia in association with the Grainger Museum, Facing Percy Grainger is a major exhibition that explores the life, artistic world and musical achievements of this unique Australian. Forever associated, perhaps to his detriment, with the tuneful 'Country Gardens', Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was a celebrated pianist and composer, a pioneering folklore collector, musical inventor, social commentator and archivist.
Percy Grainger was an obsessive autoarchivist who left the University of Melbourne a diverse and internationally recognised archive and artefact collection numbering over 100,000 items. His collection reflects his many enthusiasms and parallel interests including his experience as a virtuosic concert pianist, his career as a composer and arranger, and ‘free music’ experimenter, his pioneering work in folk song collecting and his untiring voice as a social commentator.
This colourful and thought-provoking exhibition will be on display at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne Parkville campus from 25 October until 3 February 2008.
A substantial catalogue of essays published by the National Library of Australia accompanies this exhibition.
Curators: Brian Allison and Astrid Britt Krautschneider
John Harry Grainger: Architect and Civil Engineer
Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 22 October 2007 to 7 January 2008
Accompanying online exhibition
Accompanying book: Brian Allison (ed.), John Harry Grainger: Architect and Civil Engineer, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2007.
John Harry Grainger: Architect and Civil Engineer on the Culture Victoria web site
An exhibition that investigates the life and works of John Harry Grainger, father of Percy Grainger. Opening on 22 October in the Leigh Scott Gallery at the University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library, the exhibition highlights the extraordinary achievements of this gifted architect and engineer who has been largely overlooked by history.
Grainger’s most complex engineering project in Australia was the design for Princes Bridge over the Yarra River in Melbourne. He also designed an innovative swing bridge over the Latrobe River near Sale in Gippsland.
Grainger worked as an architect in a number of lucrative partnerships winning prestigious design prizes which included the ‘Georges’ building in Melbourne’s Collins Street, the northern wing to Melbourne Town Hall as well as the impressive French Renaissance revival style art gallery and library in Auckland, New Zealand. Grainger also held the post of principal architect in the Public Works Department in Perth Western Australia. By the end of his relatively short working life he had designed buildings in all states of Australia as well as in New Zealand and Colombo.
The majority of items displayed in this exhibition are drawn from the Grainger Museum collection. A substantial catalogue of essays published by the University of Melbourne will accompany the exhibition.
Curators: Brian Allison and Astrid Britt Krautschneider
From Nature: John Gould and Margaret Stones
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 6 September 2007 to 20 January 2008
Drawn from the University of Melbourne Art Collection, this exhibition features 17 hand-coloured lithographs, mostly from John Gould's famous publication The birds of Australia (1840-48) and completed by artists Elizabeth Gould, Henry Constantine Richter and William Hart, alongside more than 30 botanical illustrations in watercolour and ink by Australian artist Margaret Stones, dating from the early 1940s to the late 1970s.
Cypriot Antiquities
Classics and Archaeology Gallery, Ian Potter Museum of Art, 5 September 2007 to 30 March 2008
An exhibition of Cypriot antiquities from the University's Classics and Archaeology Collection opened at the Ian Potter Museum of Art on 5 September. The exhibition was curated by Dr Andrew Jamieson, R.E. Ross Trust Curator and Lecturer in the Ian Potter Museum of Art and the Centre for Classics and Archaeology. The University’s collection is representative of the human history on this strategically important island and includes a wide range of Bronze and Iron Age artefacts that were brought to Australia by the late Professor JR Stewart from the 1930s until the early 1960s.
Missionaries of Civilisation: The Commercial Travellers' Association of Victoria
eigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 18 June to 5 October 2007
Before the development of retail chains, commercial travellers rode the nation’s back roads, dusting off their sample kits in front of the keen eyes of storekeepers.
Many would spend weeks away from their families living in hotels, mixing with other commercial travellers and drinking with locals. In addition to their valued merchandise they were carriers of gossip and conveyers of news from town to town.
Commercial Travellers’ Associations sprung up in each Australian state in the second half of the nineteenth century. These influential bodies created support networks for the often isolated traveller.
An exhibition highlighting the Commercial Travellers’ Association of Victoria, the show draws from the University of Melbourne Archives Collection.
Curators: Brian Allison and Loretta Shepherd, in association with Helen McLaughlin
See: Katherine Smith, 'Knights of the road supplied a nation', The Voice, vol. 10, no. 1, 23 July-6 August 2007.
Received with thanks: New acquisitions 2001–07
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 19 May to 5 August 2007
Recent additions to the University of Melbourne Art Collection. Included works by Fred Cress, Brent Harris, Tim McMonagle, Rose Nolan, Rusty Peters, Margaret Preston, Hugh Ramsay and Gareth Sansom.
Discovering Egypt
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 31 March to 26 August 2007
The Egyptians are one of the most fascinating peoples of the ancient world. This exhibition in the Ian Potter Museum included artefacts drawn from University of Melbourne and Queen's College collections.
Needles and Syringe Cultures Exhibition
Executive Lounge, Level 1, Alan Gilbert Building, The University of Melbourne, Corner of Grattan & Barry Streets, 18 to 28 July 2007
This exhibition, curated by Associate Professor John Fitzgerald, VicHealth Senior Research Fellow in the School of Population Health, provides a broad and fascinating perspective on the syringe, organised thematically around the strongly emotional attitudes which syringes evoke. Each attitude is explored through a series of video stories. The exhibition also includes items from two of the University of Melbourne's Cultural Collections: the Medical History Museum and the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum, both in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.
See: Janine Sim-Jones, 'Needles and syringes – a cultural exhibition', The Voice, vol. 1, no. 9, 9-23 July 2007, p. 6.
Tea: The Global Infusion - A Cultural Collections Exhibition
Baillieu Library, 20 March to 15 June 2007
An exhibition in the Baillieu Library planned to coincide with the 2007 Melbourne Wine and Food Festival, Tea: The Global Infusion draws from the local and wider community. A range of Cultural Collections items are on display, along with art works created especially for the exhibition. A number of aspects of this everyday pleasure are explored, including the history of tea, its social importance, medicinal uses, tea growing, tea trade and tea merchants.
Romance or Pulp Fiction? It’s Your Choice
Baillieu Library, 14 February to 9 March 2007
An exhibition in the ground floor exhibition space, Baillieu Library by Special Collections, curated by Chen Chen.
The academy: Portraits of a Parkville community
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 10 February to 22 April 2007
An exhibition of portraits drawn from the University of Melbourne Art Collection.
Populous: Of a body of people
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 10 February to 22 April 2007
A wide-ranging selection of paintings, sculpture and works on paper not bound by media, date or artist, from the University of Melbourne Art Collection.
The Facsimile and the Manuscript
Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 1 February to 9 March 2007
An exhibition in the Leigh Scott Gallery, First Floor, Baillieu Library by Special Collections, curated by Dr Bronwyn Stocks of Monash University.
Attention please! Posters from the Gerard Herbst Collection
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 25 January to 6 May 2007
This exhibition of striking posters by leading European, English and Australian designers revealed stylistic and conceptual shifts in graphic design over four decades.
Being Patient: Care and Convalescence, 1850-1950
2006
Casting the Ancient World
1st floor, Old Arts Building, 2006 - 2011
This small exhibition celebrated a fascinating group of plaster cast objects from the University's Classics and Archaeology Collection. The casts were reproductions of Near Eastern, Egyptian, Minoan and Greek originals dating from the 4th millennium BCE to the 2nd century CE, largely acquired by the Classical Studies and Middle Eastern Studies departments in the 1920s, 1930s and the 1950s. Many of the Classical casts were obtained by Professor Jessie Webb (a lecturer at the University from 1908 to 1944) for display in the Old Arts Building. The reproductions presented offered an opportunity to study objects from the ancient world which would not generally be seen in Australia. The display discussed the variety of roles that plaster casts can play within museums, concentrating on their use for the study and interpretation of languages, literary sources, cultural and religious practices, government and administrative systems, as well as artistic styles and techniques.
The exhibition was curated by students Liz Cohen and Kerrianne Stone as part of the Student Projects Program (Cultural Collections) in 2006.
Strange spectacle: Christmas cards by Eric Thake and selected companion works from the University of Melbourne Art Collection
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 11 November 2006 to 4 February 2007
The wonderfully wry work of Eric Thake and his perceptive visual and verbal puns in the popular Christmas card series were featured alongside companion works from the collection.
From Canton Club to Melbourne Cricket Club: The Architecture of Arthur Purnell
4 October 2006 to 30 January 2007
A Baillieu Library Cultural Collections Exhibition, Leigh Scott Gallery, First Floor, Baillieu Library, curated by Dr Derham Groves in association with Brian Allison.
Derham Groves, From Canton Club to Melbourne Cricket Club: The architecture of Arthur Purnell (exhibition catalogue, University of Melbourne, 2006).
The Architecture of Arthur Purnell on the Culture Victoria web site.
Creation Tracks and Trade Winds: Groote Eylandt Bark Paintings from the University of Melbourne Art Collection
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 23 September 2006 to 21 January 2007
Download a PDF of the exhibition brochure. Related Collection: The Leonhard Adam Collection of International Indigenous Culture.
Pastoral landscapes by Norman Macgeorge
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 23 September 2006 to 21 January 2007
A selection of paintings from the late ninetenth and early twentieth centuries by artist and benefactor to the University Norman Macgeorge, drawn from the University of Melbourne Art Collection.
Illuminations: Middle Eastern Manuscripts
An exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art of manuscripts from the Special collections of the Baillieu Library from 2 September to 26 March 2007.
Opening speech by Professor Bernard Muir.
Bowerbird to Lyrebird: The Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Collection (August to September 2006)
Richard Excell & Jenny Hill, Bowerbird to Lyrebird: The Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Collection, A Baillieu Library exhibition (exhibition catalogue, Information Division, University of Melbourne, 2006).
See also Richard Excell, 'Bowerbird to Lyrebird: The Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Collection', Arts Events Ideas, Issue 3 2006, p. 7.
Facing Percy Grainger
An exhibition held at the National Library of Australia, Canberra in association with the Grainger Museum (July to October 2006). See also:
Brian Allison, 'Facing Percy Grainger', Art Events Ideas, Issue 2, 2006, pp. 8–9.
Percy Grainger: 'Warts and All'
David Pear, 'Facing Percy Grainger', National Library of Australia News, vol. 16, no. 9, June 2006, pp. 3–6.
David Pear (ed.), Facing Percy Grainger (exhibition catalogue, National Library of Australia, 2006).
Andrew Simpson, 'Facing Percy Grainger', CAUMAC Newsletter, vol. 14, no. 2, 2006, pp. 10-14.
Under the Burning Sun of the Colony: The Eight-hour Day Movement
An exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art commemorating the 150th anniversary of the gain of the eight-hour day in Victoria (June to September 2006)
Grace McQuilten, Under the burning sun of the colony: The eight-hour day movement (exhibition catalogue, Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, in partnership with the University of Melbourne Archives, 2006).
Art Bound: A Selection of Artists' Books (May to July 2006)
Selected works from the collection of Dr Samuel Arthur Ewing
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 11 March to 11 June 2006
Presented to the University of Melbourne Union in 1938, the Ewing Collection comprises fifty-six paintings, prints and drawings by major nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists. By donating the collection to the University, it was Ewing’s intention that these works instruct Australians in a love of their country.
Speak out!: Social change through community activism in the arts: a photographic exhibition by John Ellis
Works from the John Ellis Collection, University of Melbourne Archives (Counihan Gallery, Brunswick, 21 April to 14 May 2006)
The ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome: Selected works from the Classics and Archaeology Collection
Ian Potter Museum of Art, 25 February to 27 August 2006
The University of Melbourne’s Classics and Archaeology Collection began in 1901 and is one of the oldest and most important collections of antiquities in Australia. Many of the 2500 items in the collection come from, or reflect the cultural traditions of, the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome.