Exciting Collaboration with the DAAO

Above: Joseph Lycett, Views in Australia, or, New South Wales & Van Diemen’s Land delineated: in fifty views with descriptive letter press, London: J. Souter, 1824-25.

This year the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne, including the Baillieu Library Print Collection and the Special Collections, are collaborating with the DAAO (Design & Art Australia Online) with the support of the University’s Australian Institute of Art History (AIAH). The DAAO is an open-source, freely accessible scholarly eResearch tool leading discovery of biographical data about Australian artists, designers, craftspeople and curators. www.daao.org.au

This University-supported academic database builds upon the comprehensive research directed by Professor Joan Kerr for the Dictionary of Australian Artists, first published in 1984 and followed by an enlarged edition in 1992.

A specific project of collaboration between the Baillieu Library Special Collections and the DAAO has focussed on the Library’s outstanding works of the 18th and 19th centuries that depict the natural history and topography of Australia. Indeed, the Collections’ early Australian plate books provide a significant visual record of Australian colonial history. Recently, a prominent gathering of these works has been listed on the DAAO in the biographical entries of their artistic creators, with links back to the Specials Collections and the Library catalogue. Notable examples include Joseph Lycett’s Views in Australia (1824-25), Conrad Martens’ Sketches in the environs of Sydney (1850), S.T. Gill’s Sketches in Victoria (c.1855) and a collection of works by Louisa Anne Meredith, drawing upon the University’s comprehensive holdings of her work. In effect, this year’s inaugural collaboration between the DAAO and the University of Melbourne is making significant strides in further highlighting the historic treasures to be found in the Baillieu Library collections.

Also of note is another project with the DAAO that draws upon the Special Collections’ large set of artists’ books, in the process expanding recognition for this specialised art form.

Knowledge Through Print

Frontispiece (vol. 1), in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers, 3rd ed., Livourne: de l’Imprimerie des Éditeurs, 1770-1776, 17 volumes. Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne

This and other books can be seen in the Knowledge Through Print: A Melbourne Perspective exhibition, continuing in the Leigh Scott Gallery, 1st floor, Baillieu Library, until 2 September 2012.

Glimpses of the East

A postcard of two Japanese princesses sewing clothing and bedding from old kimonos for donation to the survivors of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. East Asian Rare Books Collection, University of Melbourne

This image is displayed as part of Glimpses of the East: treasures from the East Asian collection, 3rd floor, Baillieu Library, which will open for the University’s Cultural Treasures Festival, 28 and 29 July 2012, and will be on display until August.

A Wealth of Detail

The Rialto, detail of third and fourth stories, c.1890, William Pitt, 1977.0115, University of Melbourne Archives

Exhibition: A Wealth of Details, ground floor, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, 26 July – 12 August, open during library hours. (See http://library.unimelb.edu.au/hours#baillieu_library.)

In partnership with Melbourne Open House and as part of the University of Melbourne’s Cultural Treasures Festival (28-29 July) University of Melbourne Archives has prepared a brochure and exhibition, A Wealth of Details, showing plans, photographs and documents to give further insight into buildings open during the weekend.

Knowledge Through Print: A Melbourne Perspective

Image: Frontispiece (vol. 1), in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers, 3rd ed., Livourne: de l’Imprimerie des Éditeurs, 1770-1776, 17 volumes. Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.

Exhibition – Knowledge Through Print: A Melbourne Perspective, 12 June to 2 September 2012, Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library

This exhibition takes as its starting point – and as a basis for a certain critical distance – the great London event of 1963: Printing and the Mind of Man. Exhibited at the British Museum and Earls Court, Printing and the Mind of Man explored the technical progress of printing as a craft, the finest achievements of printing as an art, and the impact of printing on the development of western thought. A number of titles represented in 1963 are displayed here, but this exhibition also aims, in a much smaller compass, to recognise some of the things that have changed in half a century. Scholarship on print and the history of the book is featured, along with 20th-century works by Australian and New Zealand thinkers and savants.

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