Cultural collections
[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 19
18 October - 1 November 2004 ] By Belinda Nemec
A rich legacy of art and artefacts at the University of Melbourne plays an essential role in vocational education.
The University of Melbournes cultural collections provide unique opportunities for students in a range of disciplines to gain vocational experience as part of their coursework or research programs.
Both undergraduate and postgraduate students have gained valuable skills through hands-on work experience with one or more of the Universitys collections, under the supervision of expert curators, archivists, librarians, collection managers and conservators.
Subjects such as History in the Field offer students an introduction to conservation, curatorial and public heritage practices for historical collections by including a placement in a public or private sector work environment. Three Bachelor of Arts students currently enrolled in History in the Field are working in the University of Melbourne Herbarium, under the supervision of Nicole Middleton, Collections Manager. They are collaborating on one of the oldest collections in the Herbarium, the Rupp Collection. Through this project the students are learning the skills of specimen care and conservation, as well as the importance and practicalities of cataloguing, databasing and digitising collections.
Mei Nah Tay is also enrolled in History in the Field. Her internship at the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, has involved research on a set of historic wax moulages illustrating a range of skin diseases. Such models were used in the past for conference exhibitions and teaching. Although still completing her project, Mei Nah has discovered that the models date back to the early 1900s and were probably made by Herman Lawrence, a prominent dermatologist employed at Melbournes St Vincents Hospital.
Many students enrolled in the Master of Art Curatorship degree through the School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology have benefited from working with the Universitys collections. Helen Arnoldi, Volunteer Manager at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, has arranged training and placements for 25 students from this and other courses over the past four years. They have undertaken a wide range of museum work including cataloguing, humidifying and flattening of European posters from the Gerard Herbst Poster Collection, custom building archival boxes and supports for the Potters decorative arts collection and researching many aspects of the Potters Collections. Students have also written extended text panels for artworks, such as those created by student Amy Spencer for a series of photographs of Antarctica by Jutta Hösel which will be displayed in several of the Universitys science faculties in 200405. Many former students undertaking placements with the Potter have moved on to exciting professional roles in the museums sector, at leading institutions such as the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Indonesia, the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and also at the Potter itself.
Master of Art Curatorship students have also worked with other collections across campus. Lois Teo recently catalogued the collection of historic surveying and computational instruments in the Surveying and Geomatic Engineering Collection. Through this assignment, supervised jointly by staff of the Department of Geomatics and the Universitys Cultural Collections Officer, Lois gained first-hand experience not only in database design and data entry, but more importantly in museum cataloguing methods, including museum-standard techniques of classification, description and condition assessment of historic artefacts.
Susan Gillberg, another Master of Art Curatorship student, is currently curating an exhibition for the launch later this year of Law Archives Online, a joint project of the Legal Resource Centre (the library of the Melbourne Law School) and the University of Melbourne Archives. Law Archives Online will provide an internet gateway to legal archival holdings across Australia. Supervised by Special Projects Officer Dr Caitlin Stone, Susans project involves the selection of historic documents, photographs and books for the exhibition; research and writing of labels, interpretive text and exhibition catalogue; condition assessment and creation of object supports; and the design and installation of the exhibition.
Curatorship student Nicole Neville (right) has been creating an inventory of the paintings held in the Baillieu Library Special Collections. In undertaking this project Nicole has been supervised by Julianne Simpson, Assistant Curator of Special Collections. Her work has involved research on the provenance of the paintings, preparing a description and condition report on each, and reconciling this information with old inventories, catalogues and archival records, to provide a detailed and accurate inventory.
The cultural collections of the University also provide an invaluable research and teaching resource for students enrolled in the new Masters program in Cultural Materials Conservation. Marika Koksis, for example, a first-year student in the Masters program, is undertaking a conservation assessment and treatment of an eighteenth-century hand-drawn map from the Bright Family collection at the University of Melbourne Archives.
With the beginning of second semester, Archives staff were also involved with several teaching programs within the Department of History. Visiting the Dawson Street repository for briefings and tours were classes undertaking history subjects, The Secret Life of Things, through the Cultural Materials Unit and Writing History for Publication. The Victoria Law Foundation is sponsoring the latter, so the archivists prepared assignments requiring students to work on the Universitys collections of law firms archives.
A team of six students enrolled in the Bachelor of Information Systems degree Wendy Yatsin, James Lee, Peggy Lu, Zee-On Hwang, Kathleen Lo and Andrew Ung are working with the cultural collections for their Industrial Project. This component of their education gives the students a chance to apply their IT knowledge and skills by working with a client to solve a real and practical problem, in this case creating websites for three of the cultural collections: the Architecture and Planning Library Rare Material Collection, Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, and Dental Museum. Through this project the students are also gaining experience in client consultation and liaison, project design, implementation and monitoring, sitemap creation, use of the Universitys new web templates, digital imaging and trouble-shooting. The three new sites will be launched later this month.
Making available the Universitys many cultural collections to students in a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs provides a unique benefit to Melbourne graduates. This opportunity will greatly enhance their career options in Australia and internationally, whether in the museums, conservation and heritage professions, or other fields such as history, fine arts, science or information technology.
Information on the Universitys Cultural Collections is available at the following websites:
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/community/museums.html(museums and galleries)
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/community/libraries.html(libraries)
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/community/collections.html(archives and other collections).
To discuss student placements with any of the Cultural Collections for 2005, contact Belinda Nemec, Cultural Collections Officer in the Universitys Information Division, tel 8344 0269, email bnemec@unimelb.edu.au
Belinda Nemec is Cultural Collections Officer, Information Resources Access, Information Division, at the University of Melbourne.
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