Scholarship takes student to the British Museum
[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 23
11 - 25 December 2006 ]
University of Melbourne student Kathleen Kiernan has been awarded the prestigious Harold Wright Scholarship to study the Collection of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in London.
Ms Kiernan is currently undertaking the Master of Art Curatorship degree in the School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology, supervised by Herald Chair of Fine Arts Professor Jaynie Anderson.
Her thesis is on ‘Journeys and places: the etchings of Jan van de Velde II in the John Orde Poynton Collection, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne’.
Dr Orde Poynton (1906–2001) was one of the most generous benefactors to the University’s cultural collections. From the 1950s he donated to the Baillieu Library some 3700 Old Master prints by artists including Rembrandt van Rijn, Albrecht Dürer, the van de Velde family and Jacques Callot, as well some 15 000 rare books focussing on the subject of the history of printing.
As an internship requirement of her Masters degree, Ms Kiernan has also undertaken a Cultural Collections student project with the Baillieu’s Print Collection, assisting the acting curator Helen Arnoldi with collection management tasks funded by the Miegunyah Fund.
Ms Kiernan’s interest in prints and their history has been further stimulated by completing the ‘Virtual Print Room’ subject taught by Professor Anderson, which enables students to draw upon the riches of the Baillieu Print Collection online.
The Harold Wright Scholarship commemorates Harold James Lean Wright (1885–1961) a philanthropist, print dealer, collector, educator and scholar based in London, who advised many of the major art institutions and private collectors in Australia and New Zealand on their acquisitions of fine art prints.
The scholarship, established by Harold Wright’s widow Isobel Holmes, enables graduates of Australian and New Zealand universities to study first-hand the great print collections of the British Museum. The scholarship is administered by the University of Melbourne.
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