QVMAG Projects 2007
POWDER HORNS COLLECTION
The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery's scrimshaw collection comprises a highly significant and decorative collection of 6 powder horns. Animal horns have been employed as receptacles for centuries. Because they are hollow and relatively easy to obtain they provide storage for gunpowder and were often decorated with regimental and symbolic emblems. Little is known about the provenance and markings adorning the powder horns in this collection. One in particular provides tantalising details of a soldier in the 80th Staffordshire regiment. The successful candidate will employ a range of material held by the QVMAG, State Library of Tasmania and the State Library of New South Wales to write a thesis that places these items within a wider context.
THE MARVELLOUS CORRICKS
Based around a highly talented and creative Tasmanian family of musicians and entertainers working both in Australia and overseas in the early twentieth century, this project will utilize the archival papers (scrapbooks, programs, correspondence, photographs, music and ephemera) of the Corrick family held at the QVMAG, and film held at Screensound Australia in Canberra, to interpret the role that the family played within the wider field of the history of the entertainment industry in Australia.
REGIONAL MUSEUM EXHIBITION TRENDS IN AUSTRALIA
An analysis of exhibition presentations across all disciplines at the QVMAG from its inception in 1891. Starting with the 1891-2 International Exhibition held in Launceston at the Albert Hall and its influence on the newly opened exhibition galleries at the QVMAG, the project would analyse and reflect exhibition trends in art, history and natural history disciplines over a century, through the example of the QVMAG.
Using correspondence files from the QVMAG Administrative Archive the outcome of the project would be an illustrated QVMAG Collection Guide listing all exhibitions presented and featuring associated documentation of the changing styles in both the permanent and changing exhibitions of the QVMAG.
MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF ABORIGINES IN COLONIAL TASMANIA
In addition to other resources and using the Plomley archive and library held by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, this project involves an in-depth look at the reporting in the Tasmanian newspapers regarding the interactions between colonial settlers and the Tasmanian Aborigines. The project will also examine the array of reported viewpoints as to a solution to the “Aboriginal problem”. The reporting at times almost reflects what might be described as a “fever-pitch” tone and this appears to have begun in the early 1820s and reached a crescendo with the declaration of martial law in Tasmania. The reportage is directly linked to the increasing imposition of setters on Aboriginal lands and the Aborigines’ struggle to retain those lands. Once the process of the exile of Aboriginal Tasmanians to the Bass Strait Islands is undertaken, this reporting changes considerably in tone and in coverage.
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