Marles Medal for Professor Robyn Sloggett

Professor Robyn Sloggett was awarded the 2021 Marles Medal in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne in recognition of her extraordinary achievements as a scholar and practitioner of cultural materials conservation whose work has had far-reaching impact both within and beyond the academy.

Robyn is both a pioneer and a revolutionary force: she is the inaugural University Conservator (1989), the inaugural Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation (2004), and the inaugural Cripps Foundation Chair in Cultural Materials Conservation (2017). It is no exaggeration to say that Robyn has created a new space for cultural materials conservation in Australia.

Robyn’s work has vast outreach outside the university. She is an expert criminal witness and a recognised authority for documentaries and other media. What stands out especially for me and others, though, is the profoundly meaningful work that Robyn has done in collaboration with Gija artists and gallery staff in the East Kimberly region of Western Australia. Robyn has created a vanguard master’s subject – Ngarranggari: Gija Arts and Country – which brings students and staff on country to engage with Gija artists and knowledge holders. This outreach has led to further, grant-winning research partnerships, providing a model for the Humanities and Social Science engagement with Indigenous peoples.

Every person, to one extent or other, wants to live a life that leaves an impact on others. Robyn’s impact is outsized: she has created a discipline, a centre for research and study, a vibrant cohort of graduate students, a commercial centre of conservation practice, and an influential scholarly record. It is our privilege to have Robyn as a part of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Faculty of Arts.

– Professor Margaret Cameron, Head of School

In this interview with current Cultural Materials Conservation student Gen Schiesser, Robyn Sloggett looks back on her career to date and reflects on the state of the field today, and on the distinctive challenges and opportunities linked to conservation in the Australian context.

First up, congratulations on the award!

Thank you. It’s good. I’m not going to deny it’s a real pleasure to have it, actually.

So how does it feel to have won the medal?

It’s named after Fay Marles, who was the first female chancellor at the University. So I feel it comes within a tradition of strong female identity at the University. I like that – I like that it’s the Marles Medal.

It’s great that conservation is recognised as a discipline that has real impact. Because so often, impact is measured in terms of how many books someone’s published, or how many patents or inventions if you’re a scientist or an engineer. We don’t have those kinds of measurements in conservation – conservation is a long-term game because it’s basically about making sure that things are right for the future. And it’s nice that that’s acknowledged as something that has real impact in society, which is what the Marles Medal’s about.

So I’m really pleased to have been awarded it because it flags that what we’re doing is really significant within the University of Melbourne. And the University of Melbourne is a really significant institution within Australia and internationally – so on that level, it positions us where I think we should be.

Stemming from that, what attracted you to the field in the first place? What sparked your interest in conservation?

At one level, it was really serendipitous – I was studying art history, and a friend and fellow student said: I’m going to go to Florence and do a six-week restoration course over summer. And I thought: Oh, well, that sounds pretty good!

This decision also came out of my studies in art history and philosophy. I did art history because I liked the object; but the more I did art history, the further away we were getting from the object and the more we were getting into theory. Particularly I really like Malevich and contemporary art, but art history was just taking me away from the methods and the making. It was becoming so conceptual, and the language was becoming so convoluted that it just seemed to me it was at a remove from what I was really interested in.

Conservation was a way of grounding all my interests, I guess – because, as you know from your own studies, it’s got a strong philosophical base. You have to be able to negotiate your way through various ethical dilemmas and moral positions and people’s viewpoints about things like significance – all of that’s philosophy, really.

And then there’s the materiality – you don’t get closer to an artist than when you’re magnifying something they did and trying to work out why the paint’s lifting or whatever the issue might be – so I like that aspect of it. That’s what really brought me to conservation.

And then of course, the Pigott Report had been brought down seven years before in 1975. And that was really significant for Australia, because it was the first report that really said: our cultural heritage on a national level needs a coordinated approach.

And so I started the Canberra course [now at the University of Canberra]. I was going to go overseas, but then I decided it would be better to study in Canberra. So that’s what I did. Ironically, for all my desire to approach the object and find things that were interesting, I ended up in Canberra, which at that point was not the most interesting place in the world to be!

I’d say it’s cool that you situated yourself in Australia as a conservator – I know that certainly the opportunities overseas and the romanticised aura that Greek and Roman history has can be really attractive to many people, and a lot of conservators in Australia will go overseas. So it’s nice to have really competent conservation representatives like yourself in Australia.

It was more than that, too. Because at that point, there really was a cultural cringe in Australia, and people were taking off and the place to go was Europe. And that seemed to me to be such a colonial attitude, that you needed to go overseas to have made it. I was kind of anti-establishment – in a perverse kind of way, and going to Canberra was saying: I don’t need to go to London for things that are cultural. And in fact, Australian cultural identity is as important as anything anywhere else, and more important, actually. It’s more important to learn on the objects that were in Australia than to learn on a panel painting – I probably might touch one other panel painting in my life, who knows? So it was a kind of anti-snobbery, too.

I like that. My sense is that definitely historically conservation has tended to be quite snobbish.

It’s very hierarchical and it was particularly hierarchical then, and particularly in England – it was the Debrett’s peerage who held all the prime positions as heads of labs and so on – seriously, it was very strange.

The other thing that this hierarchy says about Australian culture is that it’s further down the cultural pecking order – but if that’s the case, then where does Indigenous culture sit? I didn’t want to subscribe to that kind of attitude – hence Canberra!

You’re listed as a contributor on the Significance 2.0 document, which is a framework published in 2009 by the Collections Council of Australia and aimed at assisting cultural custodians, institutions and museums in determining the importance of their collections. Could you talk us through the process of what it’s like collaborating with other academics and professionals in making these kinds of policies and frameworks?

Significance came about when the government was looking at how it would implement the Pigott report. There are a couple of processes that were put in place. One was getting the Canberra course going, and then after some time, there was a framework that was developed. Margaret Anderson (currently GM at the Old Treasury Building) did a consultant’s report that looked at what was needed for a national approach. And the Heritage Commission had delivered the significance assessment for places [to support the program for the Register of the National Estate].

In 1996 the government had established the Heritage Collections Council, which had responsibility for two things. One was access – so that was a touring program, and what they called Australian Museums Online, which was a digitisation platform. And the other was the Conservation and Collection Working Party and as President of the AICCM [Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Materials] I was on the Conservation and Collection Working Party.

The Collections Council had money that it was distributing and projects that it was doing. Then the question came up: well, on what basis are we making decisions? And it was decided that the heritage structure of significance was something that could be translated across into the museum world. So Kylie Winkworth and Roslyn Russell were commissioned to develop a draft proposal for what that might look like. And they came up with Significance. And that was how that was put into place.

And it could be put into place because there was already a framework there. And that’s what we’re missing at this moment – we don’t have that framework in place. So we’ve come back to basics a little bit. This is why I’m always talking about the National Conservation Program, because I’ve seen how effective it is when you do things on a national level as a national agenda.

At that point, the University Librarian, Tony Arthur, and I had just done a comprehensive survey of the University’s scholarly collections, and Conservation had completed another one for the Art Collection, Grainger, and Archives. And it seemed that trialing the Significance Assessment process within an institution was a good way to see how it was going to work. So we commissioned Kylie [Winkworth] to come down and she did the first trialing of significance, at an institutional level, at the university. This was really early days – it was before it had been accepted as a proper document at that point. So that was my involvement with that.

And, as you know, I’m sceptical of it in many ways – I think it’s always problematic to talk about significance, because in one way or another, you can make anything significant. And if you’re not articulate then it’s harder to demonstrate significance. If you speak English as a second language, or in dealing with sacred secret knowledge, it’s really difficult to talk about significance. But on the other hand, it’s been a really useful tool for a whole lot of programs.

So it’s a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to policy frameworks in conservation. As an emerging conservator, one thing I’ve learned is that a lot of conservation is that it’s about talking to people and it’s about honesty, and it’s difficult to put those things in a framework because they’re so intuitive.

Yes, it’s intuitive, and it’s also contextualised. And the context is prismatic. So if you look at it from one context, it seems to be really clear what significance might or might not be; but if you look at it from another context, it throws up a whole other view of what might be the significance.

It’s really difficult to hold all of those positions in your head, as one person. So this is the other thing with conservation: there’s always a translation. And what you’ve got to do is make sure you’re as multilingual as possible – philosophically, culturally, and all the rest of it, because otherwise your language choice is so limited that you’re going to create your own context around whatever you’re looking at, and that has the potential to be really problematic – not always, but it can be.

It’s one of the things that I think differentiates conservation in Australia from say, some of the programs that I’ve seen overseas, where the process is simpler: the object comes in, you treat the object, the object goes out.

I really like the students we get coming through – I think our students are great. They’re really inquiring and critical. So I don’t ever see any of our students as being process conservators, just bringing something in and churning it out at the other end. They’ve got a much more nuanced approach.

On this question of the need to be multilingual: your collaboration with the Gija artists on Warmun country, including the formation of the teaching subject, ‘Ngarrangarni: Gija Art and Country‘, which is structured around Two-Way Learning, is a really monumental example for the future of Indigenous arts centres and communities.

Could you tell us about how you went about setting up the subject? What were you hoping to achieve and what kind of challenges did you face?

Sure. So I mean, everyone knows the creation story for that: the floods destroyed the Warmun township in 2011, and then came the request for assistance. Marcelle Scott and Lyndon Ormond-Parker went up to Kununurra to talk with the Old People about what they wanted, and what first aid might look like.

And it was decided that there were so many works and the mould was so critical that they should come down to Melbourne. So we ended up with all these works down in Melbourne – works from the late 1970s onwards and painted by some of Australia’s most significant Aboriginal artists.

And that led to dialogue with the Old People – particularly the first group that came down, which I think was Mrs P. Thomas, who’s passed away, Mabel Juli, Eileen Bray, and Patrick Mung Mung. That was the first group. And then after that initial visit, the others came down.

The idea of doing a joint, two-way teaching program came about because Patrick said to me, I think on his second visit: these objects were made to teach our kids and now you’re using them to teach your kids and we should think about how we can keep working together for education. So that seemed like that was a good starting point. It wasn’t primarily about developing a teaching program – it was about asking: what would that look like, to work together for education?

Then we spent two and a half years going back and talking with the Gija people about what that might be. And one of the things that came through really strongly was that education for them meant being able to teach about Gija culture and identity and language. And they were adamant that it was important that teaching was on Country because you can’t understand Gija knowledge if you don’t understand it through Country.

It seemed the most sensible thing to do was turn it into an On Country subject, so that students had the opportunity to be taught by the Old People on Country. So that’s how it came about. It wasn’t starting with the idea of: let’s do a subject – it was about what makes sense for understanding, together, what Australian knowledge might look like from a Gija perspective. And then as a Conservation Centre, it was about asking: what’s a sensible program for us to have in place that will enable students to learn about this phenomenal knowledge base?

That’s been the structure that’s worked. I mean, it’s changing now, because a lot of the Old People have passed – a lot of that early group are now gone, which is really sad. But then there’s a young group coming up – the group who were in their late 30s to early 40s when we started, and are now in their late 40s to early 50s. They’re the emerging Elders now.

So it’s just organic. And it’s incredible that it’s lasted so long. You know, it’s a decade of learning together! It’s been great. Really good.

I really enjoyed the subject when I did it. It was incredible. Especially the song that Gabe played for us all at the end – that was so beautiful.

Well, as you know, it reduced at least one student to tears.

In terms of challenges involved in making that all work, coordinating the subject with Gija – did you have any difficult moments? Or was it more straightforward?

It’s always been pretty straightforward because we’ve got a clause in the agreement that says: We know we’re going to make mistakes, and when that happens, we’re going to talk about it. So when someone makes a mistake, they’re told that there’s a mistake, and then we’re able to talk about it. And that’s really important.

In a way that frees you up to learn, rather than to behave a certain way – it sounds like they should be the same thing, but they’re actually slightly different, I think. Because when you try to be on your best behaviour … I’ve watched a number of people, when the Gija mob come down, they’re almost scared to speak to them in case they say the wrong thing, and that’s about behaving properly. But learning is about having your antennas up, so if you make a mistake, you might pick this up, and you can ask: Did I do something wrong? And rethink your position into the future.

I really like that approach. I think that’s something quite unique about conservation – the emphasis on being honest and open about your mistakes.

Conservation is, of course, an ever-evolving field of research, but also of practice and this has very obviously transferred into every part of your work. As a professional and academic conservator, you’ve been recognised for your achievements in synergising hands-on skills with academic research and teaching. What defining moments led you to that understanding?

The defining moments always relate back to the people that have influenced you. That’s the way it is for me, anyway. There’s the moment when you realise that you’re in the company of a really good mentor – so Frances Lindsay was a phenomenal mentor for me, she was director at the Potter. And when she started at the University Gallery, it was in the middle of campus, where Murrup Barak is now, and she had this vision for the Potter and activated that and raised the money for it, but she also understood why conservation was important. I think it’s really important to seek out people who share a kind of energy that you want to engage with. And she had a real vision – I think vision is important, and also just constantly overreaching. I’ve always been interested in people who overreach, because if you overreach, you might get there – great! And you might fall over – bad luck. But it’s not really risky, overreaching – it’s more risky to be conservative, in my opinion! When there are good people, good mentors, then they make you feel safe, because you can look at them and learn from them about how they respond to mistakes.

Three professors, Margaret Manion in Fine Arts, Tom O’Donnell in Chemistry, and Tony Klein in Physics have been absolutely critical to my academic career.

David Bomford is another person I would mention as another good mentor – David’s been someone that I could call on from time to time. And he’s been interesting in his career path, going from head restorer at the National Gallery of London across to head of collections at the Getty, and then on to Houston. I think defining moments are about the people more than anything else, probably.

Ian Cook was another – Ian headed up Artlab, and he was active in getting the conservation components of the Heritage Collections Council in place.

And then of course, the Gija people – Patrick Mung Mung. And his late wife Mrs B. Carrington. Mabel Juli is phenomenal. A number of Old People who have passed – like Mr R. Peters. And Gabriel Nodea, who’s a phenomenal teacher and colleague.

Watching people and how they navigate difficulty and power is really interesting. I’d also add to the list Ray Marginson; Andrew Grimwade; Robert Cripps – there are just so many good people around who get it.

I feel the same way. I’ve found conservation a really nice space to be in, where you come into contact with lots of like-minded people. And I especially like that fact that there are so many women in the field.

So if we come back to the topic of the Marles Medal: as you mentioned earlier, Fay Marles was the first female chancellor of the university. She was a trailblazer who fought for equal opportunities as well. And it’s very clear that you’re also a trailblazer. We can see this just from looking at your different roles: the inaugural University conservator, Director of the Center for Cultural Materials Conservation, the inaugural Cripps foundation chair in cultural materials conservation. And Margaret Cameron, the Head of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, has described you as a ‘pioneer’ and a ‘revolutionary force’.

What advice do you have for women who are still at the beginning of building their own career and who hope to make an impact on the community and also within academia?

How do you say something that doesn’t sound trite, like a self-help manual?

Oh, well, you know, my great blessing was that I was early – it’s always easy to be a pioneer when you’re early. I was one of the first conservators out of the Canberra program. So by default, unless you give up, I guess, you’re going to be a pioneer!

I don’t want to give advice on gender; but I think often there are personality traits that tend to be gendered. One of my personality traits was shyness, and that was really not very helpful at all – so I ditched that one. I guess this happened slowly, but it just had to go, because otherwise nothing was going to happen. And the way I did that was just to look at the risk: what was life going to look like, if in the future I was still going to walk into a room and be too nervous to speak to people? What did that look like, in ten years’ time? If you think about the risk of opening your mouth and looking like an idiot today compared to the risk of being stuck in the same place further into the future – then there’s much smaller risk involved in actually looking like an idiot in that moment. Again, it’s all about risk taking and being prepared to be taking the risks and just size it up.

If we’re talking about gender, then traditionally risk taking’s a male thing – men take risks, boys take risks, boys swing high – all of those kinds of pap tropes that we get told about gender. But I think it is about being prepared to take risks. And again, finding good mentors – finding people that you’re comfortable with, that share a vision. So you don’t feel like you’re wacky, or doing something that no one else gets.

Sometimes I’ll be talking about conservation to a roomful of people, and they actually don’t understand what you’re talking about – they keep coming back to this idea of conservation being about someone restoring a painting at the National Gallery. That’s what they think – they don’t get the broader stuff.

So there’s two things there. It’s practising finding the words all the time – being articulate. You have to be articulate – I’m not sure I’m always very articulate, but you have to give it your best shot! That’s really important. And then you have to have the confidence to be able to say whatever needs to be said.

And then if you surround yourself with people who share a similar attitude, then that’s your validation. I talked about risk taking. You’re not always going to get validated with every risk you take – you’re going to fall flat sometimes. So surrounding yourself with people who get you – I think it’s really critical. It’s just basic practical advice.

But it’s good advice. It’s good to hear it in really plain words, because it can be difficult to figure it out on your own. And I think that it’s nice to hear this from you in such an honest and, you know, straightforward and, honestly heartwarming perspective of just being around people who make you feel comfortable and validated and being articulate and striving to have confidence, but knowing that sometimes you’re going to make mistakes, which is totally fine. And that’s a lovely way of putting it, I think.

Yeah. And I think also being open to difference, too, is really important in conservation. Over the eighteen years that we’ve been doing the program, we’ve had a huge range of students come through the door – we get all sorts! I do a subject called ‘Respect’, and I think having respect for differences is really important, because, you know, sometimes students can be quite difficult. But then if they’re coming from a place of pain or insecurity, then you need to understand that. It’s the same for people working with the objects, and it’s the same when you’re working up at Warmun sometimes – you know, people have really complicated lives. And those complications sometimes spill over, and you just have to be aware of it.

Sometimes we get really abrupt students; sometimes we get students who can be aggressive, or you get students who are really ambitious, and then the group dynamics suffer a bit – you know, you get all of that. But sometimes they’re just coming from a position where they’re under a lot of pressure or, it’s just that everyone’s different. So I think trying not to judge is really important in conservation.

And that’s something that you can practise, I suppose, in terms of building it as a skill, pretty much anywhere, anytime.

Yeah. But I think building your own confidence is the most important thing, actually – I mean, being realistically confident.

Yeah, well, I think once you have confidence, you then gain wisdom, as well. And then it becomes, not necessarily easier, but just clearer. And, you know, it’s easier to see the path forward.

And you’re less attenuated to other things – you know, when you lack confidence, you’re always attenuated to where you are in the world, and what the next step will be – you’re always one step ahead of where the actuality is.

What I’ve discovered is, in a place like the University, which is still incredibly hierarchical, and complicated – Byzantine, in many ways – you can do amazing things if you can work through all that. Sometimes you can’t afford not to be completely in the moment and grabbing whatever’s there at that point. So I don’t know how useful that is. But anyway, that’s what I reckon!

Thanks so much for putting the time aside for this and for speaking so genuinely and honestly. I think that was a really nice conversation.

I enjoyed it too.