Join Dr Craig Barker as he and a guest discuss one item in detail from our collections of art, archaeology, natural history, science and culture.
In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by historian and author Dr Kiera Lindsey. Together they discuss her new book on colonial Sydney artist Adelaide Ironside titled Wild Love. Together they examine speculative history, writing biographies and art in colonial New South Wales, and explore Adelaide's complex relationship with University of Sydney founders William Charles Wentworth and Sir Charles Nicholson.
Dr Craig Barker is joined by Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou, an archaeologist and curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the 2023 Sir Charles Nicholson Lecturer. Together they discuss the Being An Islander project and associated Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as Anastasia's archaeological interests in material culture in island environments.
Dr Craig Barker is joined by Egyptian archaeologist Dr Heba Abd el-Gawad. Together they discuss the unique role ancient Egypt plays in museums globally, the missing modern Egyptian voice in ancient Egyptian exhibitions, decolonising collections and her work as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: views from Egypt’.
For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Dr Natali Pearson of the University of Sydney's Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC). Natali is a critical heritage scholar, so together they discuss her work on the maritime heritage of Southeast Asia, including her own work and her recent publication on the Belitung shipwreck in Indonesian waters, and the importance of Australians knowing our nearest neighbours better.
In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Classics PhD candidate and 2023 Fellow of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens Alyce Cannon. They discuss two ancient vases from Athens relevant to Alyce's current doctoral research on dogs in ancient Greece.
In this special episode of Object Matters, hear a live recording of a public event held in March 2023, when visual artist Mikala Dwyer is interviewed by curator Toni Ross about the Chau Chak Wing Museum's fourth contemporary art project titled Mikala Dwyer: Penelope and the Seahorse.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by university administrator, historian and former museum administrator Dr Toner Stevenson. Using a coin of the Roman emperor Nerva, they discuss how his funeral coincided with a solar eclipse and how humans have interacted with eclipses for millennia.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by art historian and current University of Sydney Museum and Heritage Studies Program postgraduate student Dr Ksenia Radchenko. They discuss the value of museum internships, electrotype coins, the earliest known portrait of a ruler on a coin, and if we can learn about the past from copies.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Classicist and Greek cultural historian Professor Alastair Blanshard, from the University of Queensland. They discuss two of Alastair's favourite vases in the Museum's collection: two fish plates from ancient Magna Grecia (South Italy).
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Egyptologists Dr Melanie Pitkin and Pauline Stanton to discuss stelae and what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian society. The pair discuss the function, manufacture and meaning of stelae for ancient Egyptians, focusing on a stele donated by collection founder Sir Charles Nicholson.
In this special episode of Object Matters, hear a live recording of a public event held in March 2023, when visual artist Mikala Dwyer is interviewed by curator Toni Ross about the Chau Chak Wing Museum's fourth contemporary art project titled Mikala Dwyer: Penelope and the Seahorse.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by university administrator, historian and former museum administrator Dr Toner Stevenson. Using a coin of the Roman emperor Nerva, they discuss how his funeral coincided with a solar eclipse and how humans have interacted with eclipses for millennia.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by art historian and current University of Sydney Museum and Heritage Studies Program postgraduate student Dr Ksenia Radchenko. They discuss the value of museum internships, electrotype coins, the earliest known portrait of a ruler on a coin, and if we can learn about the past from copies.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Classicist and Greek cultural historian Professor Alastair Blanshard, from the University of Queensland. They discuss two of Alastair's favourite vases in the Museum's collection: two fish plates from ancient Magna Grecia (South Italy).
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Egyptologists Dr Melanie Pitkin and Pauline Stanton to discuss stelae and what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian society. The pair discuss the function, manufacture and meaning of stelae for ancient Egyptians, focusing on a stele donated by collection founder Sir Charles Nicholson.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by cultural historian Dr Cindy McCreery. In this episode, the pair discuss a commercially produced children's lantern slide in the first decade of the 20th century featuring King Edward VII, Queen Alexandria and the Prince of Wales, later to be George V, and his wife Mary.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Italian renaissance historian Dr Kathleen Olive to discuss II Spinario or the 'Boy with Thorn'.
One of the most famous works of bronze to survive from the Hellenistic-Roman world, the Chau Chak Wing Museum is home to a bronze copy of the Roman statue produced by the Fondere Artistiche Riunite in the early 20th century.
To mark National Archaeology Week, host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Madeline Robinson, Support Officer for the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney.
Madeline discusses the role of photogrammetry in archaeology and museum contexts, and the role of digital archaeology more generally.
Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Classical Archaeologist Dr Alina Kozlovski to discuss the tradition of plaster casts of Greek and Roman antiquities popular during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They explore whether casts, copies and replicas can be used to understand the ancient past.
Museums Collection Officer Matthew Huan explores several Australian Jezebel butterflies from the Chau Chak Wing Museum's Macleay Collections. Learn all about coloration, toxicity, how new species evolve, and the unique role mistletoe plays as the Jezebels' only food source.
Join co-curator of the Museum's exhibition Pacific Views and archivist with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) on a personal journey to his homeland of New Britain.
Artist Dr Sarah Goffman joins host Dr Craig Barker in this episode to discuss her current exhibition at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Applied Arts. Goffman explores her creative processes, and her relationship with collecting and the use of plastics in her work.
Ngāpuhi leader and warrior, Hongi Hika (c. 1772 – 1828) was an important figure in Māori history. In this episode of Object Matters, Māori-Australian scholar and filmmaker Brent Kerehona explores his and Hongi's journeys through culture, family and tāonga (artefacts).
Middle Eastern archaeologist from the University of Sydney Dr Joseph ‘Seppi’ Lehner speaks about a number of bronze and copper alloy objects in the Museum collection, recovered in the British Museum and University of Pennsylvania excavations at Ur in Iraq, directed by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and 1930s.
In this special episode of Object Matters, Dr Craig Barker is joined by Toni Hurley, teacher, educator, historian, one-time president of the History Teachers Association and known to generations of school students as a co-author of the Antiquity series of textbooks. Toni is also the grand-daughter of renowned Australian photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962).
In this episode of Object Matters Dr Craig Barker is joined by the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s former Conservator Alayne Alvis to discuss the function of conservation and the role of a conservator in the process of collection management and exhibitions. The object the pair discuss is a Neo Assyrian carved ivory plaque of a female figure that Alayne has worked very closely with.
In this episode, Dr Craig Barker is joined by Dr Jude Philp, anthropologist and Senior Curator of the Macleay Collections. Together they discuss a jar of partially dissected bird and small mammal brains, each individually wrapped in muslin or gauze.
Senior Curator of the University Art Collection, Dr Ann Stephen introduces us to Dr John Joseph Wardell Power (1881-1943), painter, author, medical doctor and philanthropist. In this episode, Ann introduces his life and work by focusing on a single painting, Femme à L’ombrelle (c. 1926), in the Chau Chak Wing Museum collection.
In this episode, art historian Dr Ann Elias joins Craig Barker to discuss the image of a scallop opening its valves. The gaze of the scallop captured the attentions of artists, philosophers and marine biologists. Science, philosophy, art and dreams are all on the table in this deep dive into an underwater lantern slide.
Phone: +61 2 93512812
Email: ccwm.info@sydney.edu.au
Chau Chak Wing Museum
University Place
Camperdown NSW 2050
Monday to Friday: 10 am to 5 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 12 pm to 4 pm
