Symposium, "Nineteenth-Century Worlds of Vision, 1820s-1870s" to be co-hosted by the ANU and NPG, 16 - 18 July 2023

This symposium brings together artists, curators and scholars of nineteenth-century visual culture, who work across and beyond traditional art historical methods. The nineteenth century was a period of increased mechanisation and innovation for the visual arts. In the Global South, and the Australian colonies particularly, it was also a period of frontier violence and dispossession where sophisticated Indigenous practices of visualising Country and Kin were devastatingly upset.

The papers in this symposium consider visual worlds in flux and tumult during the middle decades of the nineteenth-century. With panels on expanded portraiture; colonial science and the visual imaginary; photography and archival absence; art's ability to 'capture' otherwise sprawling lives, and practice-led approaches to nineteenth-century research, presenters will unravel and illuminate the increasingly networked but also discordant colonial visual landscape.

Keynote presentations will be given by:
Professor Geoffrey Batchen (University of Oxford) on ‘A New Power: The Dissemination of Photography 1800-1850’ Sunday 16 July, 3:30-4:30pm at the Liagnis Theatre National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. https://www.portrait.gov.au/calendar/a-new-power-photography

Dr Julie Gough (Trawlwoolway artist and TMAG curator) on ‘Through a Glass Darkly: the dearticulation of Aboriginal Tasmania’ Monday 17 July 4:00-5:00pm at the Liagnis Theatre National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.  https://www.portrait.gov.au/calendar/through-a-glass-darkly

*** Both keynotes require registration through the NPG pages linked above ***

The day-time panels, hosted at ANU, include presentations by: A/Prof Emily Eastgate Brink / Alisa Bunbury / Dr Julia Lum / Dr Kathleen Davidson / Dr Rebecca Rice / Dr Elisa deCourcy / Prof Helen Ennis / Yvette Hamilton / A/Prof Martyn Jolly / Jane Brown / Dr Helen Hughes / Dr Molly Duggins / A/Prof David Hansen.  

Register here through Eventbrite Registration is open to gallery, library and museum professionals, as well as academics and higher degree research students.


This event is co-hosted by the ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory and the ANU Humanities Research Centre, in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Funding is through Australian Research Council project DE200101322.