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A program supporting new ideas and research within the University of Sydney's discipline of art history.
The entrance to the RC Mills building at the University of Sydney, home to the Power Institute and the discipline of art history.
In 1965, the University of Sydney used a bequest from the artist J.W. Power to establish not only the Power Institute, but a new Department of Art History. Over the years, the discipline has been at the forefront of teaching and research in art history and visual culture.
Today, the Power Institute's ties to the discipline remain strong: we share resources (such as the Schaeffer Library), expertise (such as in the Sydney Asian Art Series), and premises at the University of Sydney's Camperdown campus. The Power Institute's Director is also the discipline's Power Professor of Art History.
This program both supports and highlights the incredible work being done by researchers within the discipline, principally through the "Art History Seminar Series" and the "Power Institute Reading Group".
Art History Seminar Series
The Art History Research Seminars is a forum for the sharing of new ideas and research in art and visual culture. It is held at the University of Sydney.
The seminars generally take place on Thursdays, 3:00 - 4:30pm (during semester times). Seminars are free and open to all. Registration is not required.
Power Institute Reading Group
A monthly reading group to discuss new books in art and visual culture. Open to all!
Events
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Distance and Metaphor: Reimagining the Ka‘ba in Deccan India
A presentation about the replication and circulation of the Ka'ba between the Islamic centre and peripheries.
People
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Peyvand Firouzeh
Dr Peyvand Firouzeh is Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Sydney, and a DECRA ARC Fellow (2023-2026). She is a trained architect and art historian specializing in medieval and early modern art and architecture from the Islamic world, with research interests in arts of Sufism, the interaction of image, space, and text, the mobility of artistic and intellectual networks within and beyond Persianate societies, and material histories of the Indian Ocean world.
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Wellness Business–healing or stalking? Pilvi Takala’s The Stroker, 2018
A seminar on Finnish performance artist Pilvi Takala, and the current cultural and corporate obsession with wellness.
People
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Toni Ross
Dr. Toni Ross taught art history and theory at UNSW, Sydney, School of Art & Design from 2001-2020 and is currently Honorary Senior lecturer at that institution. Her studies of contemporary art, aesthetics and politics have been published by Duke University Press, Routledge, Acumen Publishing, Intellect Books, Pennsylvania State University Press, among others. She has been Sydney reviewer for Artforum magazine since 2014. Her current research focusses on contemporary art engaged with wellness culture and ecological themes.
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The Early Earle
A seminar about the little known early work of English artist August Earle (1793-1838)
People
Jane Garling
Jane Garling is currently undertaking research into the life and work of Augustus Earle as part of a Doctor of Philosophy under the supervision of Dr Anita Callaway. She was drawn to this artist during her research into the life and work of Frederick Garling, a student of Earle in Sydney in the 1820s.
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Lionel Lindsay's Maghreb: the anti-modernist as Orientalist
A seminar on the unfamiliar work of Australian artist Sir Lionel Lindsay.
People
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Roger Benjamin
Roger Benjamin (Professor of Art History, U of Sydney) has written and lectured on Matisse throughout his career, beginning with his Bryn Mawr PhD (Matisse’s ‘Notes of a Painter’: Criticism, Theory and Context, Ann Arbor 1987). He co-curated QAG’s touring retrospective Matisse of 1995 before turning to questions of European Orientalism. His most recent publication on the Frenchman was “Matisse at the Senya el Hashti” in The Art Bulletin for 2019.
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Reading Group: Visions
The Power Institute's regular reading group, focusing on new ideas and research in art history and visual culture.
The Power Institute's regular reading group, focusing on new ideas and research in art history and visual culture.
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Modernist Photobooks, Propaganda & the Everyday
A presentation by Donna West Brett on art, politics and modernist aesthetics
People
![A profile photograph of Donna West Brett.](/sites/default/files/2024-07/Donna%20Brett.jpeg)
Donna West Brett
Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at The University of Sydney. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (Routledge, 2016); co-editor with Natalya Lusty, Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (Routledge, 2019), and with Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Modernist Aesthetics in Transition: Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2024). She is Research Leader for Photographic Cultures at Sydney, Editorial Member for the Visual Culture and German Contexts Series, Bloomsbury, and Sloan Fellow in Photography at the Bodleian Libraries, 2024.
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Thresholds of Art in Renaissance Italy
Renaissance scholar Robert Brennan discusses the circulation of the ideas about "art" between Italy, Africa and the Middle East.
People
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Robert Brennan
Robert Brennan received a PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 2016, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut) and the University of Sydney. Since 2022 he has taught as Lecturer in Art History at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy (Harvey Miller, 2019), as well as articles in Art Bulletin, Oxford Art Journal, and Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics.
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Missionary Position / Looking Forward to the Past
Two presentations of new research on Yuki Kihara's stunning 2020 work Paradise Camp, and the little known collection of art at Australia's Parliament House.
People
India Urwin
India Urwin (she/her) is a decolonial art historian, curator and arts writer living and working on Gadigal land. India holds a BA with First Class Honours in Art History and Film Studies and a Master of Art Curating from the University of Sydney. India was the Assistant Curator of the Head On Photo Festival, and Assistant Editor of Interactional Magazine, an online photography magazine. Currently, India is undertaking a PhD under the supervision of Associate Professor Donna Brett. Her thesis, Unsettling: Contemporary post-colonial art and the promise of decolonisation, seeks to refocus the conversation of institutional decolonisation on art itself.
Robert Miller
Robert Miller only came to the study of art history after careers as an electrical engineer and a patent attorney. As an art enthusiast and modest collector, upon retiring Robert enrolled in the Diploma of Arts course to give life to that interest. This diverse, rigorous coursework, and especially the fieldwork in Paris, led to him undertaking a research master’s project jointly supervised by Prof Roger Benjamin and Dr Stephen Gilchrist. His subsequent doctorate, supervised by Prof Mark Ledbury, was conferred earlier this year.
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Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: The Private and Public Lives of the John Jenner Albums
A presentation on the albums of photojournalist John Jenner, and their documentation of queer life in Warrane (Sydney).
People
![A profile photograph of Aiden Magro](/sites/default/files/2024-07/Aiden%20Magro.jpeg)
Aiden Magro
Aiden Magro is a researcher, writer and casual academic living and working on unceded, stolen Gadigal land. He received his Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in 2020 and was awarded the University Medal for his honours thesis “Exposing the State: Loo Zihan’s queer performance.” His current research interests include photography, queer art, and archives. Aiden is currently a PhD Candidate in the Art History department at University of Sydney.
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Transoceanic Currents and Pelagic Materiality during Japan’s Nanban Period
A presentation on a group of 17th and 18th century objects produced and shaped by the waters between the Philippines, Taiwan, Ryūkyū, and Japan.
People
Drisana Misra
Drisana Misra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. She studies the material and intellectual exchanges between the Japanese archipelago, the Americas, and the Iberian Peninsula during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She received her PhD from Yale University in 2023, where her thesis won the Marston Anderson Prize in East Asian Studies. She is currently working on her first monograph, based on the dissertation, entitled Japanese New Worlds: Japanese New Worlds: Intersecting Imaginaries of the Nanban Period (c. 1543–1641).
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Trumping Animation: Donald Trump and the Hyperanimation of Hyperreality
A lecture on the delirious hyperreality of our present Age of Endarkenment, and the hyperanimation of Donald Trump.
People
Alan Cholodenko
Dr Alan Cholodenko is former Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in Film and Animation Studies in the Discipline of Art History at The University of Sydney, where he is now Honorary Associate. He has pioneered in the articulation of film theory, animation theory and ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘postmodernist’ French thought. He organised THE ILLUSION OF LIFE—the world’s first international conference on animation—in Sydney (1988), edited the anthology of that event—The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation—the world’s first collection of scholarly essays theorising animation (1991), as well as did a sequel conference (1995) and anthology (2007).
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Haunting History: The art and (life-) writings of Mia Bustam and Katharine Sim
A presentation on the feminist model of life writing in the writings of painters Mia Bustam and Katharine Sim, and the art histories of Indonesia and Malaya.
People
![A profile picture of Yvonne Low.](/sites/default/files/2024-07/Headshot%20LOW.jpg)
Yvonne Low
Yvonne Low is an art historian in Asian Art. She is a lecturer at the University of Sydney, teaching Art History and Curating in the Undergraduate and Postgraduate programs. She researches on modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, with an interest in Chinese diasporic cultures, women’s history, and digital methods. As editorial committee to Southeast of Now Journal (NUS Press), Yvonne is committed to advancing scholarship in the region. She is currently an advisory committee member for The Flow of History (AWARE/Asia Art Archive), The Womanifesto Way Digital Anthology (Power Institute, DFAT, 4A) and co-developer of digital tool, Artists Trajectories Map.