Object Matters

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 pe...

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 responded...

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 Guin...

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 Bronze...

Steven Gagau is an archivist and researcher with PARADISEC (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 . In this episode of Object Matters he joins host Dr Craig Barker on a personal journey to his homeland of New Britain as record...

Cultural producer and artist Dr Sarah Goffman 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 . In this episode they discuss Sarah’s creative processes, her relationship with collecting and the use of plastics in her work and in particular discuss the role the AGNSW’s Chinese scholar’s table has taken t...

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 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 a warrior holding a spear alongsi...

Ngāpuhi leader and warrior, 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 aim however was acquire muskets; the weapons would be used i...

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 discussi...

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 talk...

18 May 2021 was International Museums 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 Museum and Heritage Studies program at the University of Sydney joined Dr Craig...

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 in t...

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 the pr...

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 one o...

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 discus...

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 gent...

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 loo...

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 and i...

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 Napoleonic...

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 specimens ca...

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 by...

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 was...

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 art f...

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 paintings...

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 At...