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25.01.2022 "The notion of the "neutral" museum is just about the most dishonest I have ever encountered. That generations of museum people managed to convince the rest of the world that they hold no views about anything, and stand for nothing except neutrality, is quite extraordinary. The world is full of bias and opinion, and museums are part of this, just as are novels, history books, and the media." - David Fleming

15.01.2022 Skin Deep: Reading Emotion on Early Modern Bodies Prof Evelyn Welch This lecture will explore the ways emotion was understood on the body’s surface and how this was represented both materially and visually in early modern Europe. Based on traditional medical theories, early modern skin was often described as a ‘fishing net’, something that held the body in place and offered a decorative surface but had no function of its own. At the same time, the body’s surface also told y...ou about its interior wellbeing. Learning to read the body meant both examining the exterior and sampling the interior’s waste products ranging from urine to hair and tears. This approach was as true of animals as it was of people. Manuals described how to read faces and skin, and argued for and against blushing. You could also predict astrological futures by reading the lines on foreheads as well as on hands (a topic known as chiromancy) and even predict fate according to the number and site of spots and moles. Even more importantly, however, was the ability to combine all these forms of inspections with the ability to diagnose understanding humoural disorders ranging from love-sickness, a form of melancholy, to an excess of blood leading to anger. See more

14.01.2022 STATEMENT OF SUPPORT Today Soda Jerk's major new work, TERROR NULLIUS premieres at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Naarm (Melbourne), Austr...alia. We express our support for the artists in the face of the attempted censorship of their work by the The Ian Potter Foundation. With only days before the third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission was due to launch, the Foundation announced that it was withdrawing its support for the work, claiming that it was un-Australian and too controversial. We define this as is a form of censorship because, while they have not removed the work from the public, the Ian Potter Foundation’s decision erases the work from the commission's legacy. Their withdrawal attempts to suppress the artists’ cultural expression for which they had previously pledged support. They are also, whether explicitly or implicitly, forcing other funders to make decisions about whether they will support the work, and putting pressure on artists and institutions to reconsider their approach in light of what may or may not be funded in the future. In this disturbing act, it appears that money permits the commissioner to (attempt to) wield power over the content of a work that has been in the making for two yearsto overwrite the artists’ authorship and undermine their autonomy as creative, professional people. Like everyone else, we haven’t yet seen the work, but the principle is clear: Soda_Jerk was selected for the commission based on the collective’s vision, and their reputation for creating acerbic, thoughtful, and often provocative work. For this reason, the Ian Potter Foundation should stand by the artists until the completion of the commission, regardless of the board members’ personal judgements on the creative content of the work. We are concerned that this move sets a precedent for prospective commissions to be selected (or not) based on the political views they express, and that diverse voices may become silenced in the process. Furthermore it adds to the compounding financial uncertainty that artists face, being afraid to have commissions pulled out from under their feet at the eleventh hour. What does it mean to be un-Australian today? Is it an appraisal reserved for those who explicitly critique the heady mix of whiteness, class anxiety and toxic masculinity still prevalent in popular Australian culture? Was it the promised rogue remapping of national mythology that has so upset the Board of Governors? It should be noted that the Ian Potter Foundation Board whose decision it was to withdraw support consists of eleven men and three womenall white and all over fifty years old. Their decision affects the work and careers of a duo of female artists. While not surprising, this erasure deepens the well-worn grooves of patriarchal arts patronage. We are inspired by the strength and resilience the artists have shown in the face of this attempted erasure. They have refused to self-censor to comply with the tastes and beliefs of their commissioners - much to the enrichment of our collective creativity. Let’s imagine for a brief and nullifying moment that Soda_Jerk remake their work to appease the conservative voice of the Ian Potter. What does that work look like? Our speculation: no kissing, no nudity, and certainly no reference to the uncomfortable and bloody history that colonial Australia continues to write. It is in moments like these we must ask ourselves: can we cope when art holds up the mirror and truly challenges us, or is it only allowed to inspire and entertain us? We applaud ACMI’s determination to support and celebrate the artists by continuing to screen the work. We sincerely hope that this will not fuel negative repercussions for their relationship with the Ian Potter Foundation in the future. And we acknowledge the incredible work that has emerged as a result of this generous commission since its inauguration in 2012. We hope that it continues to award artists whose work is challenging, furious, outrageous and diverse. In solidarity with Soda_Jerk, The Artists’ Committee #censorship #TERRORNULLIUS #artsagenda https://www.acmi.net.au/events/terror-nullius/

13.01.2022 Hosted by the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW) the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects (TDPA) is the only international tapestry award for architects. The TDPA invites architects from around the world to design a tapestry for a hypothetical site. Boullée’s mooted building that inspired the Pharos Wing, MONA, has been announced as the TDPA 2018 hypothetical site on Tuesday 20 March 2018. MONA was designed by Fender Katsalidis Architects to house David Walsh’s extraordinar...y collection of old and new art. ‘MONA is both visionary and breath-taking; David Walsh’s brief for the TDPA 2018 will challenge architects creatively and their understanding of the intersection between tapestry and space’, says Antonia Syme, Director, Australian Tapestry Workshop. Entries are now open and close Friday 15 June. Finalists will be announced in July with the winners announced Thursday 16 August 2018, with an exhibition See more

09.01.2022 Call for Papers and Performances The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World: An Interdisciplinary Conference | Canberra, September 2018 From its development in the colonial period, to its echoes in today’s multimedia spaces, the magic lantern, along with its thousands of photographic and hand-painted slides, has had a pervasive and lasting impact on visual culture. Historians are just discovering its powerful presence in entertainment, education, science, religion, politics and advertising. Galleries, libraries and archives are uncovering untouched caches of slides in their collections. And artists and performers are rekindling the ‘magic’ of the technology.

08.01.2022 Faculty of Arts Dean’s Lecture: ‘Things Fall Apart’ Putting the world back together one document at a time - Roby Sloggett Wednesday 28th March The world as we know it swirls around us as objects, ideas and aspirations. How we make sense of it is dependent on what we have access to, what we can imagine and how we are enabled to think, learn and do. The loss, degradation, or inauthenticity of cultural material threatens the security of our knowledge and the construction of identity, and community that is unable to access its cultural, historic and scientific records is impeded in its ability to..

07.01.2022 Job | Marti Friedlander Lectureship in Photographic Practices and History | University of Auckland

06.01.2022 Concerning news from two art history departments in New Zealand about threats to jobs and resources. Threats to jobs at VUW and threates to the fine arts library at Auckland. Submissions are encouraged on both issues

06.01.2022 Art critics and historians have a difficult time dealing with beauty. We are trained from early on that the analysis of a work of art relies on proof, those things that we can point to as evidence. The problem with beauty is that it’s almost impossible to describe. To describe the beauty of an object is like trying to explain why something’s funny when it’s put into words, the moment is lost. Works of art need not be beautiful for us to consider them important. We need only think of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade urinal that he flipped on its side, signed with a false name, and submitted to the exhibition of the newly founded Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917. We’d have a hard time considering this object beautiful, but it is widely accepted to be one of most important works of Western art from the last century.

06.01.2022 Using new exploratory technologies, some borrowed from medicine, Mauritshuis is conducting a two-week study of Vermeer’s most famous artwork.

02.01.2022 Applications for the 2019 Humanities Research Centre Visiting Fellowship Program on the theme of ‘Crisis!’ are now open. 2019 Theme Crisis! Mobilised as a defining characteristic of the contemporary condition, ‘crisis’ often functions as a way to mark out a critical ‘moment of truth’ or rupture. Alternatively, it is offered as a tool with which to understand the category of ‘history’, or to differentiate the past from a conflicted present. For some, crisis has become a ...state of ordinary ambivalence, a constant and unresolvable feature of the status quo. Forming a background to these debates is the escalating chorus of ‘crisis’ texts in popular and academic contexts alike. In this growth industry richly illustrated by images of violent protest and reform, by news of corruption, incompetence, and injustice, and by consecutive environmental disasters the urgency of crisis is conveyed through its implication in the networks and structures that influence our individual and collective lives. And yet, despite the growing ‘crisis industry’, humanity has grappled for centuries with an intellectual history of crisis, with practices of critique and dissent, as well as with a past that often sees itself as on the cusp of an irredeemable crisis often considered, in retrospect, part of a ‘generative’ process. See more