[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
While the book’s title might suggest a catalogue of significant ancient Mediterranean artefacts in Australasian museums,[1] its subtitle better encompasses the volume’s multi-layered perspectives on the post-colonial era problems of curation and the societal relevance of antipodean Mediterranean antiquities. The broader context is the current international discourse on ethical and legal issues in cultural heritage management, initiated by the 1970 UNESCO Convention. As emerges in the book’s chapters, these widely recognised concerns are made more complex, and thereby more pressing, by the additional lamination of the colonial historical background in Australasia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, wherein for students of Mediterranean antiquity the temporal remoteness was compounded by the geographical distance from both the Mediterranean archaeological sites and the major museums of the northern hemisphere.
In a perceptive and sensitively phrased introductory first chapter, editors Candace Richards and Elizabeth Minchin set out the parameters of the volume and summarise the four main sections. They prefigure their contributors’ measured, at times courageous approach to the difficult questions posed by the unfortunate practices of the past (notably not contrary to the norm in their own time). Chapters 2–7 have an historical focus, each describing how a given collection of ancient Mediterranean artefacts was first instituted and grew, before discussing how past circumstances have shaped the issues faced in the present. In chapters 8–12, the focus is on the transformational initiatives in pedagogy and display currently being undertaken in certain collections to mitigate and work around the kind of problems raised in the first section; some ingenious applications of technology are described. A third section (Chapters 14–16) addresses how to improve the relevance of antiquities collections within the wider community, while the final chapters (17–19), engage with two highly sensitive and also imperative aspects of ethical collection-management: the restitution of illegally exported artefacts, and the ethical care of mummified human remains. It is regrettably impossible in a constrained-length review to discuss every chapter, although all make a significant contribution.
In the first section, the patterns of collection establishment and augmentation are somewhat similar, motivated by a distinctive colonial ideology: from the 19th century, first settlers and then educators in the young nations of Australia and New Zealand sought to establish cultural resources inspired by those “back home” in Europe, to support education in the Classics and promote public interest in what was seen as the colonial heritage. Despite these similarities, each collection has its own unique story, studded with accounts of both colourful and scholarly figures who contributed variously to the collections’ development; there is recurrent acknowledgment of the influence of notable scholars such as Arthur Dale Trendall and James Rivers Barrington Stewart. Often, a strong pedagogical motivation has led to the establishing of significant antiquities collections within universities (especially so for coins: Chapter 3). Supported by philanthropic donations of funding and of artefacts large and small, many curators also engaged in exchanges of objects with other museums and partage arrangements with excavators, as well as purchasing from private collectors and the international antiquities markets. All the chapters describe similar deficiencies regarding documentation of provenience and post-1970 provenance, which are now motivating archival research and educational initiatives to encourage critical thinking about the ethics of curating Mediterranean material in museums.
Highlights of this section include Kenneth Sheedy’s Chapter 3, which traces an intriguing story from private coin collectors in earlier times to the founding in 2000 of the Australian Centre for Ancient Numismatic Studies at Macquarie University, now already esteemed for its considerable holdings of ancient coins and its research engagement.
In Chapter 4, Christopher Davey and Lisa Mawdsley recount Walter Beasley’s founding of the Australian Institute of Archaeology in 1946 in Melbourne, specifically to facilitate the study of biblical antiquity. Its specialist library and collection of Near Eastern artefacts was relocated in 2006 to the La Trobe University campus. Because the objects have been gathered primarily for evidence rather than as art, invasive sampling is regarded as an essential scientific procedure, with residues then curated alongside the objects as part of their biographies. Additionally an online museum is in preparation, to increase access through new technologies.
Alina Kozlovski (Chapter 7) gives an account of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, founded not as a cultural repository but rather to exemplify technological developments and the progress of human endeavour throughout history; consequently, ancient artefacts are unconventionally categorised in terms of their function and how they were manufactured, which can lead to serendipitous associations across different eras and contexts.
The second section (Chapters 8–12) looks at how current collection management strategies have been shaped by the practices and policies of the past; at a time when technology is increasingly used to enhance art exhibitions (even to the extent of becoming in itself a creative art item), here there is a refreshing emphasis on how technological advances can present innovative potential for teaching and research: these are widely applicable in other museum contexts. A recurrent theme is Object-Based Learning (OBL), which, while not a new concept for small-group tertiary teaching, can now through various technological applications enable hands-on learning for today’s larger class-sizes. In Chapter 8, Andrew Jamieson describes the purpose-built OBL laboratory at the University of Melbourne, with floorplans and detailed accounts of how OBL is integrated into specific courses on Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures at different levels of study. As Georgia Pike-Rowney explains in Chapter 9, OBL features also in the Classics Museum of the Australian National University in Canberra, where a particular advantage is the Graeme Clarke Teaching Collection of well-documented, legally exported small objects from Jebel Khalid in Syria; in a bespoke room, students can gain hands-on understanding of the objects and track their exact provenience on maps recording find-spots. The eponymous “marble toe” of the chapter-title provides a case-study for the range of diverse pedagogical outcomes achievable through this form of analysis.
In Chapter 10, Daniel Osland and colleagues tell how technology is applied to the extensive and mostly unpublished coin collection of the Otago Museum; student interns are learning to digitize coins under supervision for an interactive digital display (allowing obverse and reverse to be viewed together), and to work on IT projects that will contribute to exhibitions in the museum.
The University of New England, Armidale offers distance learning. Bronwyn Hopwood explains in Chapter 11 how formerly problematic access to objects in the University collection has been transformed by digitization and the creation of 3D prints, which can be mailed out to students for hands-on analysis. Additionally, OBL can be conducted online with manipulable 3D scans. A similar application of technology has enabled inspirational new forms of study at Victoria University of Wellington, as Diana Burton details in Chapter 12: students’ unconstrained handling of 3D prints leads to a real-life game of kottabos (amid observations of social context). Other students are invited to take on the role of vase-painter and draw a Greek myth scene on a virtual vase template, to see how the figures worked on the distorting curved vase-surface. In a third example, a scan of a pyxis is digitally smashed into fragments that can be 3D-printed and glued back together – an experience of practical conservation that prompts discussion about appropriate restoration of missing sections.
In transition to the third section, Chapter 13, by Candace Richards and colleagues, covers outreach in the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, which opened in 2020 and incorporates the Nicholson Collection. Four case-studies demonstrate how differing modes of engagement and learning, including OBL, broaden access and participation in the community. A signal initiative is the “pop-up museum,” which seems rather like busking: it takes objects into the community without advance notice, the better to make them accessible beyond the traditionally targeted cohorts.
Thereafter, the third section presents some interesting ways of expanding the relevance of museums, and particularly of Mediterranean antiquities, to the general community. When hosting travelling exhibitions, the National Museum of Australia (Chapter 15, by Lily Withycombe,) has set up interactive digital displays, notably to engage viewers creatively with current research on the colouring originally applied to ancient sculpture. Shifting from learning about the objects to self-discovery, in Chapter 14 Sarah Craig and Tobias Fulton discuss how objects in the Hellenic Museum, Melbourne can be used under three self-exploration headings as focuses for participants’ subjective responses in therapeutic sessions; more detail on how the objects actually functioned in this process would have been instructive.
Opening the final section (which might have been headed “Doing the Right Thing”), Chapter 17 by Georgia Pike-Rowney and Maggie Otto concerns the most serious problem that can arise from unprovenanced artefacts, as encountered by the Australian National University’s Classics Museum. The most moving account is of an Attic black-figure amphora purchased in good faith in 1984 to mark the retirement of a highly esteemed professor; it was identified as an illegal export in 2022 by the Italian Carabinieri, with irrefutable evidence. The narration of its complex process of repatriation (along with a separately acquired Apulian fish-plate), although poignant, is instructive, and, particularly in light of the considerate approach of the Italian Government, should serve to encourage other, similarly compromised collections. A third case is still in process: the museum staff noticed that a Roman marble portrait-head purchased in 1968 seemed identical with one catalogued in the Vatican’s Lateran Museum, and indeed it appears also to have been illegally exported from Italy.
Chapters 18 and 19 separately engage with another difficult situation: the ethical management of Egyptian (and other) human remains that had been collected in a time when they were regarded simply as archaeological objects. In Chapter 18, Melanie Pitkin and colleagues from the Chau Chak Wing Museum found deficient the vague guidelines for appropriate management offered by, for instance, the 1986 Code of Ethics of the International Council of Museums, and so set about a process of consultation with the Australian public, including the Egyptian-Australian community as well as indigenous groups. This led to devising a more specific set of guidelines, which are of general applicability, as well as the recognition that there is need for museums to make the public more aware of the ethical issues involved. In Chapter 19, Caleb Hamilton discusses the same issue from the perspective of New Zealand Māori beliefs and customs in regard to the tapu nature of human remains, whether indigenous or not. Readers will learn a range of Māori terminology without precise English equivalents (although most are glossed). It might have been interesting to report additionally on attitudes in the Egyptian-New Zealand community about the specifically Egyptian mummified remains (by no means all human), especially in response to an anonymous museum’s comment that “in Egyptian culture such remains are held and displayed by museums throughout the country” (quoted p. 322).
Chapter 20 consists of a most useful checklist of all the collections, large, small, public or private, in Australasia, each with an indication of collection size and the nature of holdings. Addresses might have been added, but these are discoverable by other means. Those who contributed the brief descriptions are named in the notes, and this potential contact-information is complemented by the list of chapter-contributors at the front of the volume.
There is an index, good on the whole (but this reviewer found omissions in one or two entries). An advantage is the inclusion of bibliographies and other references at the end of each chapter, although many readers would prefer footnotes over the endnotes for ease of reference. Each chapter is accompanied by a selection of black-and-white photographs, some more usefully illustrative than others, and not all of good quality (the Google preview includes colour versions).
On the whole, this is a very well-designed and well-presented volume (this reviewer spotted only two typos). It is thought-provoking and stimulating, and will both inform and inspire educationalists and curators, particularly with its creative ways of tackling the problems posed by past practices: there is something of value here for all.
Authors and titles
- Perspectives from Afar, Candace Richards and Elizabeth Minchin
- From Antefix to Oenochoe: The Provenance History of the Mediterranean Collection at Auckland War Memorial Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Emma Ash and Deirdre Harrison
- Ancient Coins in Australian Collections, Kenneth A. Sheedy
- The Origin of the Australian Institute of Archaeology Collection and its Purpose Past, Present, and Future, Christopher J. Davey and Lisa Mawdsley
- The Egyptian Collection at the Australian Museum, Stan Florek, Irene Guidotti, David Chan, and Ourania Mihas
- ‘A Few Scraps of Pottery and Papyrus’: From Antiquities Collection to Museum at The University of Queensland, circa 1950–1975, James Donaldson and Amelia R. Brown
- Time and Technology: The Ancient Mediterranean at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Alina Kozlovski
- Objects from a University’s Antiquities Collection Enhance Ancient World Studies in a Purpose-Built Environment: The Case of Arts West at the University of Melbourne, Andrew Jamieson
- To See the World in a Marble Toe: The Graeme Clarke Teaching Collection at the Australian National University’s Classics Museum, Georgia Pike-Rowney
- Numismatics and the Currency of Online Access, Daniel Osland, Gwynaeth McIntyre, Robert Morris, and Anne Harlow
- Mind the Gap! The Tyranny of Distance for Museum Engagement: UNEMA’s Significance 2.0, Bronwyn Hopwood
- Bridging the Distance between Herakles and Pokémon, Diana Burton
- An Evolving University Museum Paradigm: Broadening Participation with the Mediterranean Collections at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney, Candace Richards, Melanie Pitkin, Jane Thogersen, Eve Guerry, and Paul Donnelly
- Subjective Objects: Using Museum Collections as Catalysts for Social Well-Being and Identity Exploration, Sarah Craig and Tobias Fulton
- Reimagining Greco-Roman Art in Colour: A Screen-Based Exhibition Interactive at the National Museum of Australia, Lily Withycombe
- Contemporary Antiquities: Exploring Engagements, Brit Asmussen and James Donaldson
- Italian Restitution and the Australian National University’s Classics Museum: Realities and Opportunities, Georgia Pike-Rowney and Maggie Otto
- Innovative Approaches to Caring for Ancient Egyptian Mummified Human Remains at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney, Melanie Pitkin, Jacinta Carruthers, Alexandra Doubleday, Rafie Cecilia, and Ronika K. Power
- The Use of Tikanga in Caring for Egyptian Mummified Remains in Aotearoa New Zealand, Caleb R. Hamilton
- Distribution Guide to the Mediterranean Collections of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, Candace Richards
Notes
[1] Australasia refers collectively to Australia and New Zealand.