Celebrating Twenty Years of the Grimwade Centre
The year 2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. In June, to mark this milestone, the Grimwade Centre hosted a special Family and Friends Event. In collaboration with Student Conservators at Melbourne (SC@M), the Centre transformed its multi-purpose lab into an event space. Staff, students, and their nearest and dearest, came together for an evening of celebration, conversation and learning about the Centre’s achievements and history, the current work being done by students, and hopes for the Centre’s future. Current Grimwade student Madeline Davies covered the event for SHAPS Forum.
History of the Grimwade Centre
The origins of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation date back to 1989, when efforts to establish Conservation at the University of Melbourne began. The University was seeking to create capacity to care for its own collections, and with the encouragement and support of professors in fine arts, history, chemistry and physics, the potential for conducting interdisciplinary teaching and research in this area became increasingly apparent.
Over the next decade, what was then called University Conservation Services, later to become the Ian Potter Art Conservation Centre, operated alongside growing research activities supported by the Australian Research Council. By the year 2000, the University was beginning to discuss the possibility of establishing an academic centre for conservation.
This initiative received enthusiastic support from the University of Melbourne Library, the Ian Potter Museum of Art, and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Frank Larkins, who championed the establishment of the centre. Funding provided by the Grimwade family, through the Miegunyah fund, the Ian Potter Foundation, and the Australian Research Council, enabled the potential to grow for the establishment of a major conservation centre.
Preliminary discussions had envisaged a centre engaged in research and commercial activities as well as working across the faculties of arts and science to support University collections. However, after the news of the closure of the conservation course offered in Canberra – the only course of its kind in Australia at the time – the need to build the workforce of conservators and researchers by providing training in-country became a priority. The decision was then taken to incorporate teaching into the centre’s field of activities.
In July 2003, following the University Council’s approval of a proposal to establish a Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, the Grimwade Centre was launched. The next year, the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation (MC-CULMC) saw its first cohort of students commence their studies in the newly founded centre.
Celebrating with Family and Friends
Since its opening, the Grimwade Centre has seen hundreds of enthusiastic and passionate students enter its doors and leave as confident and capable conservators. It has facilitated the creation of a vibrant network of professionals and academics, who have contributed to the development of conservation and heritage practices and knowledge here in Australia and beyond. These achievements were all celebrated at the Centre’s Family and Friends event in June.
Centre co-founder and Director, Professor Robyn Sloggett, explained that the event was designed to celebrate not only the Centre’s twentieth anniversary, but also the strong community that supports the students in their achievements.
When students graduate, quite often families and parents come up and say thank you, but we don’t get to see them at the beginning of the program, and yet they’re the ones who are supporting the students all the way through. It seemed to me that it was really important that we embrace the community that the students come from.
We also have a lot of students from overseas. They’re in colleges with friends, but they may not have family here, so this event was also about them being able to integrate their friendship group into what they do every day, and to show their friends why they’re here. The Family and Friends event was a good way for everyone to feel part of the centre.
Student presenters at the event represented the diverse backgrounds and interests of the current cohort, and showcased the varied skills and training that the course provides in a range of conservation treatments.
Ffion Olearczyk, a second-year MC-CULMC student, kicked off the student presentations with an overview of her treatment of the untitled painting, Man in a Plumed Hat. Ffion addressed the aesthetic damage caused by overpaint and paint separation by reversing the infill with water and repeating the infill and inpainting treatment.
Ffion has a background in history and forensic anthropology and also engages with fine arts as a hobby. Through her studies at the Grimwade Centre, Ffion says, she has “developed a love of conservation as it allows me to combine my background in science and art history”.
Another student presenter, Jenna Harburg, second-year international student and past intern of the Seattle Art Museum, specialises in paintings on canvas. Jenna discussed her treatment of a painting owned by a member of the public. The artwork had suffered extensive damage after an accident.
Attendees also interacted with students at a series of show-and-tell stations at the event. Supansa Thongsuk‘s treatment of a piece from the collection at St Columb’s Church in Hawthorn from 1887 was among those on display. Supansa described the techniques she had used for her treatment of the surface of the painting itself and elements of its structure, such as frame repairing, thread-by-thread tear mending, strip lining and paint layer consolidation. Supansa brings to her studies over a decade of experience in the contemporary art industry as both an artist assistant and visual artist here in Australia and in her home country of Thailand.
Second-year student Wing yi Cheung also worked on a piece from the St Columb’s Church collection. She spoke about her treatment approaches which included tear repair, consolidation, and de-dusting with a view to lengthening the painting’s life-span. Wing has a background in chemistry and has experience as a conservation assistant in Hong Kong.
Another showstopper on display was the incredible Northern Lion Head from the Golden Dragon Museum. MC-CULMC student and Museum Researcher at the National Museum of the Philippines, Camille Calanno, spoke to guests abut the piece and her conservation work on it. The aim of the treatment was to ‘bring back its integrity and appearance and preserve all its components by stabilising flaking paint’, she said.
Camille also spoke to the rarity of the piece, and emphasised its “social, cultural, and spiritual significance for the Chinese-Australian community in Bendigo”. She highlighted the value that the Grimwade Centre places in its sustained relationships with the community in Bendigo.
The gathering was also an opportunity for students to get to know their peers from other cohorts. Professor Sloggett has a strong commitment to encouraging this sense of community:
Conservation is such a small industry, and jobs will be created by people feeling part of the community, whereas when people feel like they’re competing, they close down, and opportunities aren’t built. We need to encourage an expansiveness of spirit to come into the profession.
Looking towards the Future
This was the first in a series of celebrations planned for the next eighteen months. In February 2024 a special event will be held to mark the twentieth anniversary of the commencement of the first student cohort. In the meantime, the Centre staff continue to make new plans for the future.
A key goal for the future will be building the Centre’s capacity for research and cementing its profile as a major research institute. Professor Sloggett observes that
I really think that there’s not a big gap between a nation’s cultural health and its physical health — but that gap hasn’t been properly researched, understood, or articulated, and the need to do so hasn’t been advocated for.
By further expanding its research activities, the Grimwade Centre will strengthen its ability to create real impact by leading this discourse, contributing to societal shifts, and influencing policy aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of Australians through the country’s relationship with culture.
Madeline Davies is currently completing a Master of Cultural Materials Conversation at the Grimwade Centre. A communications professional, she is also a member of the SHAPS Forum team of postgraduate writers.
Learn more about the Grimwade Centre via its website, and keep up-to-date with events and activities on Instagram: @GrimwadeConservation.
Find Student Conservators at Melbourne (SC@M) on Instagram at @StudentConservators for even more events held at the Centre.
Feature image: MC-CULMC students at the Grimwade Family and Friends event