Object Matters

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 (https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Kiera-Lindsey-Wild-Love-9781760296759/) . Together they examine speculative history, writing biographies and art in  colonial New South Wales, and expl...

In this episode of Object Matters host 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 (https://islander.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/) project and associated Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean (https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/pl...

In this special episode of Object Matters host 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’, partnerin...

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 (https://www.sydney.edu.au/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 s...

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by zoologist and 2023 Macleay Miklouho-Maclay Fellow (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/our-research/fellowships-and-prizes/macleay-miklouho-maclay-fellowship.html) Dr Angel Luis Viloria Petit, who has recently completed his research in Sydney, examining historic collections of butterflies. The Chau Chak Wing Museum houses the nat...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chau Chak Wing Museum intern Isabella Trope. Isabella is a student at Macquarie University and has been researching a collection of ceramic sherds in the museum's education collection donated by Judy Birmingham in preparation of them being used in school education Object-Based Learning programs. In this conversation they discu...

As the Chau Chak Wing Museum gets set to host the UMAC2023 conference (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/umac-2023.html) , for this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by UMAC President and Chau Chak Wing Museum Research Fellow Dr Andrew Simpson. UMAC University Museums and Collections (http://umac.icom.museum/) , an International Committee of ICOM (https://icom.mu...

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chau Chak Wing Museum colleague Jan Brazier, the Curator of History Collections. Together they discuss a carte-de-visite featuring a photograph of a bird taken by Sydney studio photographer Thomas Skelton Glaister (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museums/collections_search/?record=eparties.421) in 1863. Not any bird, this is the fir...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chau Chak Wing Museum colleague Julian Woods, the museum's Public Engagement Co-ordinator. Julian discusses a photograph in the collection, acquired from the University of Sydney Union art collection in 2019, which Julian had previously featured in an exhibition he co-curated. The photography by Michael Riley (http://www.micha...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chau Chak Wing Museum colleague Kelsey McMorrow, who is curatorial assistant, science collections (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/discover-our-collections/macleay-collections/scientific-instruments-and-apparatus-collection.html) . Kelsey discusses two x-ray tubes made in the early twentieth century. Together they discuss the ...

Marking National Archaeology Week (https://archaeologyweek.org/) 2023, in this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Associate Professor Lesley Beaumont, a classical archaeologist in the School of Humanities, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. Together they discuss one of the most iconic objects in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, the Nichols...

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 (https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/centres-institutes-and-groups/australian-archaeological-institute-at-athens.html) Alyce Cannon. They discuss two ancient vases from Athens relevant to Alyce's current doctoral research on dogs...

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 Toni Ross about the Chau Chak Wing Museum's fourth contemporary art project titled Mikala Dwyer: Penelope and the Seahorse (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/exhibitions/penelope-and-the-seahorse.html) . The exhibition at the Chau Chak...

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by university administrator, historian and former museum administrator Dr Toner Stevenson. Toner is the co-author with Dr Nick Lomb, of the new book Eclipse Chasers (https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/8098/) (2023). Using a coin of the Roman emperor Nerva, minted in 96 AD when he came to power, they discuss how his funeral two ye...

On this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by art historian and current University of Sydney Museum and Heritage Studies Program postgraduate student Dr Ksenia Radchenko. Ksenia is also a museum educator (https://www.sbs.com.au/language/russian/en/podcast-episode/arty-lets-go-to-sydney-to-study-antiquities-and-interact-with-dinosaurs/hwkmo7gx4) . Ksenia gained her PhD in R...

For this episode of Object Matters 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 Chau Chak Wing Museum collection: two fish plates from ancient Magna Grecia (South Italy), NM46.55 and NM80.48. Together they cover the symbolism of the depiction of sea...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Egyptologists and archaeologists Dr Melanie Pitkin and Pauline Stanton to discuss stelae and what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian society. Focusing on a stele (NMR.53) donated by collection founder Sir Charles Nicholson, they discuss the function, manufacture and meaning of stelae for ancient Egyptians. This stele feat...

In this episode of Object Matters, the Brickman, Ryan McNaught joins host Dr Craig Barker to discuss his recent build currently displayed in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Lego Tutankhamun (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/talks-and-events/lego--tutankhamun.html) . Together they discuss his career as a professional Lego builder, why he has worked with museums, how Lego is enjoyable for fan...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by museum archaeologist Associate Professor Alice Stevenson to discuss museum archaeology and a number of projects Alice is directing which is examining Egypt's dispersed heritage and how museums narrate collections of Egyptology. In a wide ranging conversation they talk about decolonising Egyptian collections, contemporary art i...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by cultural historian Dr Cindy McCreery. 2022 is a particularly important year for the British royal family with the Platinum Jubilee. It is also a period of transition for the institution. Together for this episode Cindy and Craig discuss a commercially produced children's lantern slide of the first decade of the twentieth centu...

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Curator of Natural History Collections at the Chau Chak Wing Museum Dr Anthony Gill. In the lead up to National Science Week (https://www.scienceweek.net.au/) and the new exhibition Australian Seashores (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/exhibitions/australian-seashores.html) opening at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Aug...

This episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Italian renaissance historian Dr Kathleen Olive to discuss Il Spinario, or the ‘Boy with Thorn’.  Il Spinario is one of the most famous works of bronze to survive from the Hellenistic-Roman world, a depiction of a young boy contemplating a thorn as he removes it from the sole of his foot. The ‘original’ ancient bronze is now in t...

This episode of Object Matters marks National Archaeology week (https://archaeologyweek.org/) . Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Madeline Robinson, Support Officer for the Department of Archaeology (https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/schools/school-of-philosophical-and-historical-inquiry/department-of-archaeology.html) at the University of Sydney. In recent years Madeline has overseen a project of...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by art historian and author Nicholas Croggon. They speak on the Power Institute (https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/centres-institutes-and-groups/power-institute.html) , the Power Collection and the Light and Darkness (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/exhibitions/light-and-darkness.html) exhibition. Nick discuss...

In this episode of Object Matters Lauren Poole, a writer and disabled postgraduate student of museum studies at the University of Sydney joins host Dr Craig Barker. Together they speak about the more than 100 rubber fragments of the "Cotton aerodynamic anti-G (CAAG) flying suit" in the collection. Designed during World War Two at the University of Sydney by the Professor of Physiology between ...

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 in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using the Nicholson collection's century old cast of the Boston Throne as a starting point they discuss the popularity of casting for educational and aesthetic reasons, the influence of casts on modern...

For Lunar New Year 2022, Object Matters host Craig Barker is joined by art historian and art writer Dr Alex Burchmore. They discuss this 19th century Chinese Willow Pattern dish and explore how it represents a complex series of cultural interchanges and cross-pollinaion between China and England, the principal motif elements in Willow Pattern ceramics and how they a 19th century audience respon...

In this episode of Object Matters Matthew Huan joins host Dr Craig Barker to discuss several Australian Jezebel butterflies (genus Delias) from the museum’s Macleay Collection. Matthew is a Museums Collections Officer and entomologist at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, and has a long fascination with butterflies. With over 250 known species the Jezebels, they are found from South East Asia to New Gu...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Damien Stone. Damien is an archaeologist and works in the Collection Management team of the Chau Chak Wing Museum. He is author of Pomegranate: A Global History and is currently working on a second project exploring the Hittite civilization of Ancient Turkey. Damien has selected from the collection a cylinder seal from Late Bro...

Steven Gagau (https://www.sydney.edu.au/music/about/our-people/academic-staff/steven-gagau.html) is an archivist and researcher with PARADISEC (https://www.paradisec.org.au/) (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) - a digital archive of languages from the Pacific. Steven is also a co-curator of the Chau Chak Wing Museum's exhibition Pacific Views (https://...

Cultural producer and artist Dr Sarah Goffman (http://www.sarahgoffman.com/) joins host Dr Craig Barker in this episode of Object Matters to discuss her current exhibition at the Chau Chak Wing Museum titled Applied arts (https://www.sydney.edu.au/museum/whats-on/exhibitions/sarah-goffman.html) . In this episode they discuss Sarah’s creative processes, her relationship with collecting and the u...

In this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Mediterranean archaeologist and Project Officer of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (https://aaia.sydney.edu.au/) Dr Yvonne Inall to discuss her research into ancient spears and the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s red figure bell-krater from south Italy attributed to the Nicholson Painter. The vase features a scene of ...

Ngāpuhi leader and warrior, Hongi Hika (https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h32/hongi-hika ) (c. 1772 – 1828) was an important figure in Māori history. Hongi Hika successfully negotiated trade and missionary activities in the early part of the 19th century, living in Sydney from 1814 to 1819. In 1820 he visited England where he was feted by society and introduced to King George IV. His main a...

Michelle Whitford is a doctoral researcher in Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University who has been conducting research on thousands of ancient Egyptian objects made from faience, including many from the Nicholson Collection at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, using new and innovative scientific techniques. In this episode of Object Matters she joins host Dr Craig Barker in a disc...

Matthew Gibbs wears many hats. For eleven years he served as President for the Friends of the Nicholson Collection, but he is also the General Manager, Media and Communications at the ASX, a collector, and a lover of Shakespeare. He joins Dr Craig Barker to discuss one of his favourite collection items; the mounted specimen of a Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger. In a wide-ranging discussion they ta...

18 May 2021 was International Museums Day (https://icom.museum/en/our-actions/events/international-museum-day/) , an annual celebration created by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), designed to raise awareness about museums and their role in enriching culture and sharing knowledge. The theme for 2021 was The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine.    Four panellists from the Museu...

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) is an important and somewhat controversial figure in the history of archaeology. The grandson of Matthew Flinders, Petrie rose from a surveyor to becoming the Professor of Egyptology at the University College London, where the Petrie Museum was named in his honour. He excavated more than 60 sites in Egypt during his career and a number of others i...

Behind the scenes it takes a mighty team to care for the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s vast collections. In this episode, Craig Barker invites nine CCWM Collection Management staff members to discuss how they document, digitise, register, monitor and care for the objects that matter so much to us all.   We explore their roles at the museum, the philosophy and practicalities of collection care and t...

Middle Eastern archaeologist from the University of Sydney Dr Joseph ‘Seppi’ Lehner speaks to  Dr Craig Barker 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 particular they discuss a copper alloy axe head found in ...

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 podcast Toni and Craig di...

In this episode of Object Matters Dr Craig Barker is joined by Chris Jones the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s Collection Manager, Documentation.   An oil painting by Walter Armiger Bowring (1887-1971) in the museum’s art collection titled Cellist of c. 1927 has long intrigued Chris. A musician in an artists studio looks not a musical score but rather an abstract painting. Chris ponders if Bowring is...

Dr Shuxia Chen, Curator of the China Gallery at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, joins Dr Craig Barker to welcome the Year of the Ox with two artworks from the collection. Photocopy works by Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee and Beijing artist Wang Youshen from the late 1980s and early 1990s are discussed in reference to Shuxia’s own art historical research and together we examine how artists were ...

Conservation is one of the most important and often most misunderstood roles within a museum. 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 dates to c. 730-720 BC an...

Museums often amass much ephemeral material as well as collection objects; these ‘minor’ pieces can enhance our understanding of the broader pattern of collecting. In this episode, Dr Craig Barker is joined by Candace Richards, Assistant Curator of the Nicholson Collection. Together they discuss a ‘Promesse de mandat territorial'; a French bank note issued in 1796, two years before the Napoleo...

Director David Ellis joins Dr Craig Barker to discuss his love of mineralogy and the remarkable history of a mineral from deep in the earth’s past, and its journey from Broken Hill to the Chau Chak Wing Museum. Cerussite is a mineral consisting of lead carbonate and as such is an important ore of lead. Indeed the name is based on the Latin word cerussa or white lead. Cerussite mineral specimen...

What can a jar of tiny brains tell us about human history and the role of museums in contextualising colonisation?   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. These specimens were collected...

Deep time is a geological concept - the idea of unimaginable lengths of time. Our guest this episode is Matt Poll, Curator of Indigenous Heritage at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, who selects a stone axe to illustrate the deep time history of Sydney.  The hand axe was found on the lands of the Deerubbin peoples of western Sydney, at Castlereigh, Penrith Lakes. Located by Father Eugene Stockton, it...

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. JW Power, as he preferred to be known, is renowned in Australian ar...

Art historian Dr Ann Elias came across the haunting image of a scallop in an aquarium while researching ocean histories and early 20th century underwater photography. Captured by the camera while opening its valves, the scallop almost appears to be grinning at us. Dr Elias was immediately reminded of the work of artist Odilon Redon, who created hybrid human and non-human creatures in his painti...

When Dr Paul Donnelly first saw the grieving figures depicted on this trio of white ground lekythoi, he felt an instant human connection. Created in the 5th century BC, these Greek ceramic vessels were intended as a graveside gift for a departed loved one, filled with oil for use in their afterlife. Paul speaks to Dr Craig Barker about these finely crafted vessels and their journey from ancient...