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 . 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...

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 project and associated Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as Anastasia's archaeological...

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’, partnering w...

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 Australi...

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by zoologist and 2023 Macleay Miklouho-Maclay Fellow 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 natural history collection of Alexander Macleay (1767-1848) largely amassed prior to his arrival in the colony of NS...

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 discuss t...

As the Chau Chak Wing Museum gets set to host the UMAC2023 conference , 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 , an International Committee of ICOM (International Council of Museums) was founded in 2001 to advocate for university museums and teaching and...

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 in 1863. Not any bird, this is the first ever photograph of the endangered Didunculus strigirostris or tooth-billed p...

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 (1960-2004) is a port...

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 . Kelsey discusses two x-ray tubes made in the early twentieth century. Together they discuss the importance of science collections and presenting science history in museums. The cover the discovery and the development of x-rays in th...

Marking National Archaeology Week 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 Nicholson Hermes. This Roman marble statu...

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. Using two choes (ancient small, squat wine vessels) in the University of Sydney's collection they discuss how...

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 .  The exhibition at the Chau Chak Wing Museum is an aquatic-themed installation bristling with allusions to hippocampus, th...

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 (2023). Using a coin of the Roman emperor Nerva, minted in 96 AD when he came to power, they discuss how his funeral two years later coincided with a solar eclipse and h...

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 . Ksenia gained her PhD in Russian art history from the University of Southern California. However on Object Matters we are not discussing 20th century Soviet art. Instead we...

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 seafoo...

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 features...

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 . Together they discuss his career as a professional Lego builder, why he has worked with museums, how Lego is enjoyable for fans of all ages, and whether fun models like this have a role within a museum context. Th...

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 in mu...

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 century f...

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 and the new exhibition Australian Seashores opening at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in August 2022, they discuss a photograph in the collection taken in the late 1940s in preparation for the book Australian Se...

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 the P...

This episode of Object Matters marks National Archaeology week . Host Dr Craig Barker is joined by Madeline Robinson, Support Officer for the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney. In recent years Madeline has overseen a project of recording a number of Chau Chak Wing Museum objects in 3D to be used in digital teaching of undergraduate courses.  Photogrammetry is a technique that c...

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 , the Power Collection and the Light and Darkness exhibition. Nick discusses a work in the Power Collection by American artist Alan Sonfist . Sonfist is a US based artist most often associated with the birth of the Land or Earth Art movement. Crystalline...

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 1942...