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My employment in the Paintings Section of the Conservation Department of the Australian National Gallery began in June 1983, however my internship did not begin until March 1984 under the supervision of Allan Byrne. At that time, the paintings section was divided, rather arbitrarily, into: paintings pre-1940, headed by Ilse King and; paintings post-1940, headed by Allan Byrne. Because of the departure of the then senior curator of conservation Dr Nathan Stolow, Allan Byrne became acting senior curator. When Allan Byrne took up the position of lecturer in paintings conservation at C.C.A.E., Ilse King then became acting senior curator and my supervisor; the division within the painting section was then disbanded. Jac Macnaughtan departed temporarily from the department to undertake study and to work at the Tate Gallery and at the Courtauld Institute in London leaving me with the paintings section. I was fortunate enough to have at first one assistant Simon Hartas, then two assistants, Mark Henderson and Les Cormack to help with the task of backing, framing and restretching paintings. There was no formal training programme for an intern - work was undertaken as it came into the department and as it was allotted. For the sake of simplicity and ease of handling the dissertation is divided into 3 parts: Part 1 includes the Functions and Facilities of the conservation department. Part 2 includes an outline of painting conservation practice within the gallery and details of conservation work undertaken. Part 3 comprises a project on some of the properties of hardboard. As the gallery has in its collection a considerable number of paintings on hardboard, to augment my knowledge and perhaps give some insight into the nature of hardboard, this project was undertaken in conjunction with the internship.

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The contents of this dissertation are a compendium of the conservation work carried out during a six-month internship period, divided between the Textile Conservation Section of the Australian National Gallery and the Conservation Division of the National Library of Australia. During a six-week period at the ANG, served under the Textile Conservator, Miss Josephine Carter, opportunity was provided to work with items from several of the Gallery's major textile collections, including: 1) Precataloguing surveys of articles of costume involving a) removal from temporary storage, sorting, documentation of holdings and repacking of over 500 items of costume from the Dialghev Ballets in the Theatre Arts Collection b) descriptive documentation and repacking of costume and accessories dated between 1900 and 1950 from the Julian Robinson Collection. 2) Assistance with the photography of 10 items of Dialghev Ballet costume and 90 lengths of Indonesian fabric for the Gallery's acquisition records. 3) Preparation for mounting, and hanging of a large Arthur Boyd tapestry in the foyer of Government House. 4) Full conservation of four small articles of costume from the Julian Robinson Collection, and preparation of treatment proposals for future conservation of three additional items. During a 41/2-month period at the National Library of Australia, served under the direction of the Principal Conservator, Mr. Ian Cook opportunity was provided to work with a wide variety of items on paper while participating in virtually all the varied aspects of the Division's work, including: 1) Conservation responsibility for a one-day exhibition held in the Library in conjunction with the ANU conference, "Australian and European Imagination", involving a) conservation and/or condition documentation of 23 bound and unbound prints, watercolours and drawings b) supervision of mounting the exhibition and return of the items to storage. 2) Conservation of four charts by William Bligh from the Maps Division for future display in the Library. 3) Treatment of 18 miscellaneous items on paper requiring conservation for their continued use in the Library, including prints and watercolours from the Pictorial Collection, playbills and bound serials from Australian Reference, and a series of Philippines maps. 4) Testing of laminating tissue and photographic negative envelopes for their suitability for conservation use. 5) Condition surveys of the Ferguson Collection of Rare Maps and of master negative microfilm reels from the Australian Joint Copying Project.

This study provides the first comprehensive account of the institutional history of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) from the earliest calls for its foundation at the start of the twentieth century to the recent series of exhibitions marking its fiftieth anniversary in 2010. The SNGMA is both a unique case‐study and a useful illustrative example of the specific category of modern art museum: the account of its history sets the institution within its wider cultural context and explores the inevitable complexities facing a public gallery devoted to modern art. The study examines how the institution has balanced the need to represent a full historical survey of modern art with the desire to engage with the contemporary, and how it has addressed the question of collecting and displaying the work of Scottish artists alongside international art. By providing a close documentary analysis of the evolution of the institution, drawn from within the Gallery’s own archives, combined with extended reflections on the central dilemmas it has had to face, the study constitutes an original contribution to museum scholarship. Various methodologies are employed to assess the diverse factors that have affected the institution’s development. The narrative confirms the close correlation between the architectural frame and the public perception of the institution. It traces the evolution of the acquisitions policy and notes how this shaped the permanent collection, allowing a shift from an aspiration to universal coverage of the international trends of 20th century art to a more targeted specialisation in certain areas, primarily Dada and Surrealism. It charts the attitudes towards temporary exhibitions and the display of the permanent collection, and examines these in the light of current exhibition theory and practice. The analysis concludes that the SNGMA has been largely successful at achieving the aims and ambitions it originally defined for itself, although its role is constantly evolving in response to changes in the broader context of art museums.

The presented diploma thesis deals with artworks filed under Bassano's name in National Gallery in Prague. Opening chapters enlarge on those artworks, not to say artworks of Bassano family in area of today's Czech Republic. The life and artistic work of Bassano family is briefly introduced, with focus on Jacopo Bassano as the main personality. Short universal discourses concerning specific issues are taken individually, in relation to particular paintings. The crucial part of the thesis is a catalogue presenting entire collection of Bassano's artworks in National Gallery. The catalogue compounds of several parts: authentic pieces, works from workshop, later copies of artworks, and paintings which don't match Bassanos'author craft. The artworks in catalogue are comprehensively described and put to context with other works.

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Learning in 'communities of practice' is a new way of describing and investigating how people learn and has not been applied extensively in research in early childhood or in art galleries. This thesis is a critical case study undertaken with preschool children as they prepared for, participated in and followed up a series of excursions to the National Gallery of Australia. The study explores and analyses children's induction into the practices of the art gallery and their negotiation of the meanings around these practices in the gallery and in their preschool. Children's engagement in practices is analysed using a sociocultural framework for learning called 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998) in combination with a multilevel analysis of the artefacts of practice derived from the philosophical writings of Wartofsky (1979). Multiple data sources included photographs of children, their drawings, tape recordings of their incidental talk and group discussions, and results of play activities as children participated in the practices of the art gallery and the preschool. Data was also collected through semi-structured interviews with gallery and preschool staff. In a study involving such young children, the use and juxtaposition of these multiple sources of data was important because it allowed for the inclusion and privileging of the material and non-verbal resources as well as verbal resources that children used as they engaged in practices. Outcomes of this research have been used to illuminate and problematise early childhood as a site for the intersection of multiple communities of practice. Learning to make sense of experience is portrayed as more than language-based 'scaffolding' and the representation of experience through child-centred play activity. The study provides a detailed descriptive account of children's learning and sees it as a fundamentally unpredictable and emergent process. It shows that relations of power are always a part of learning and can be seen through an analysis of the resources available to children, those they took up and were constrained by in the local situation and those they brought from other communities of practice. In this process, the children, as well as their teachers, were active negotiators. They participated in complying with community-constituted views of knowledge as well as shaping, resisting and contesting what counted as knowledge. This study makes a contribution to understanding children's learning in early childhood as fundamentally social, unpredictable, productive and transformative rather than individually constructed, stable, predetermined and representational of experience.

Thesis (M.A. (Fine Art)) - Rhodes University, 2009.

This thesis examines the media coverage and image of the National Gallery in Prague from 2010 till 2013. During this period, in 2011 Milan Knížák was removed from the post of Director of the National Gallery where he was since 1999. He was replaced by Vladimír Rösel, who was dismissed in 2013, Vít Vlnas was designated the director of the gallery in his stead. Jiří Fajt was selected as the Chief Director in July 2013, but he wasn't appointed until July 2014. The main source for research will be relevant articles published in the selected press (Lidové noviny, Právo, Mladá fronta DNES, Hospodářské noviny). The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyze the way the media reported about events related to the management of the National Gallery in Prague. It will try to answer the question why this institution is given such weight and importance as to whether it is related to the concept of "national" in the name of the gallery. This can evoke the connection with other institutions that have this word in the name. There are some expectations connected to this "national" title, but there are also certain responsibilities associated with that. The work will also look at the media space given to the gallery's leadership and how the media express themselves considering this subject. This can fundamentally...