Vicarious communist: a reflection on the empathetic archivist

Adapted from a presentation given at the symposium ‘Bernie Taft and 1968: Tanks in Prague, Turmoil in Australian Universities’, Friday 24th August 2018 by Jane Beattie, Assistant Archivist, University of Melbourne.

Black and white flyer of an event called Wednesday Night at the CPA. The flyer features cartoon sketches of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
Wednesday Night at the CPA, flyer, c.1975-1981, Bernie Taft Collection, UMA, 2010.0053.00537

 

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 2016, I wrote a blog post about Lloyd Edmonds. Lloyd’s family donated his letters, written mostly to his father, from the battlegrounds in Spain. Lloyd was studying in London when Franco invaded and felt so strongly in the Republican cause, and that Spain should not fall to fascism, that he joined the International brigade, along with 64 other Australians volunteering in Spain. Soon after this anniversary, the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) ran a tutorial for a Hispanic Cultural Studies class, introducing students to the Archives using Lloyd’s letters and other material held at UMA about the war. Continue reading “Vicarious communist: a reflection on the empathetic archivist” →

“Well, well! What an unenviable job judging must be!” — dissenting reports from the 1947 Travelling Scholarship and Art School Prizes

Mihai Bacaran   

The Judges’ Report in the 1948 issue of DAUB —  consists of two conflicting assessments of the work submitted by students for the Travelling Scholarship and the National Gallery Art School Prizes for 1947.[1] Three of the judges: Douglas Dundas, Eric Thake and the then director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Daryl Lindsay, sign a report that praises the welcomed diversification of techniques, a trend that encourages “a freer expression of thought in all mediums.” The fourth judge, Alice M. E. Bale, the only woman in the judging panel, concludes in a dissenting report that: “the experimentalizing commended by the other judges is premature,” and recommends that the students should first gain “a sound knowledge of natural appearances and the ability to render them.” This dispute is representative of a larger antagonism between the modern and traditional ways of painting, and their respective supporters which extends beyond the doors of the Art School, to the status of modern art in mid-century Melbourne in collecting institutions, the university and the wider public sphere. Such is the controversy, that the results of the competition generate articles in Melbourne newspapers, for example “Modernist” Picture Wins £900  (The Argus, Melbourne, Vic.: Fri 19 Dec 1947, Page 3) and Problem in Art Awards (The Argus, Melbourne, Vic.: Sat 20 Dec 1947, Page 43).

Page 30 from DAUB 1948
Page 30 from DAUB 1948. Lucy Kerley/National Gallery School Collection, 2007.0060.00151

Continue reading ““Well, well! What an unenviable job judging must be!” — dissenting reports from the 1947 Travelling Scholarship and Art School Prizes” →

Priestley’s Penguins

Andrew Fuhrmann

Raymond Priestley's personal bookplate
Raymond Priestley’s personal bookplate. Raymond Priestley collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1973.0079

There’s no doubt that Raymond Priestly (1886-1974) had a fondness for penguins. Open any of the fourteen volumes of his Australian diaries (1935-1938) and there they are on the inside cover. The personal bookplate of the eminent geologist and Antarctic explorer depicts an icy scene in bold black and white with a fur seal surrounded by four rather stout penguins. Continue reading “Priestley’s Penguins” →

‘Daub’ 1947, 1948 and 1949: The Magazine Produced by Students of the National Gallery of Art School

Front page of the Daub 1947 edition
Front page of the Daub 1947 edition. Lucy Kerley collection, 2007.0060.00150

Daub was a magazine written and illustrated by students of the National Gallery of Art School, now the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in the 1940s.[1] Then located in the State Library of Victoria building, painting instruction for the School took place in a long, light bathed studio overlooking Little Lonsdale Street in the city[2]. The 3rd edition of the student magazine published annually from 1947 till 1961, DAUB (1949) is one object in the 44 boxes of the Lucy Kerley collection, which spans 9.42 kilometres. Generously illustrated with artworks, stories and poems by the current students, these documents are a rich source of the juvenilia produced by Melbourne’s artists of the 1940s and they give a glimpse into the life of the Art School and its students in the bustle of post-war Melbourne. Continue reading “‘Daub’ 1947, 1948 and 1949: The Magazine Produced by Students of the National Gallery of Art School” →

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