Blog

AAANZ President’s Report │December 2025

December 22, 2025News

2025 was my first year taking on the role as President for AAANZ, although I have been on the executive for many years there was still a lot to learn! My thanks to outgoing president Wendy Garden, and our ongoing Business Manager Rebecca Renshaw who both helped enormously with the transition. Our major project for 2025 was working through our registration as a charitable organisation so we could have Deductible Gift Recipient status. Wendy Garden had formally started this process in 2024, and there was a lot of work happening behind the scenes during 2025. Thanks to all members who […]

Vale | Dr Maudie Palmer AO

December 15, 2025News, Obituary

AAANZ was saddened to hear of the passing of Dr Maudie Palmer AO, a significant figure in the Australian art world. She was a founding director of both Heide Museum of Modern Art and the TarraWarra Museum of Art, and leaves an important legacy. You can read more about her contributions in tributes posted by Monash University and the TarraWarra Museum of Art.

Slade Lectures 2026 | Terry Smith – Frames of Vision

December 8, 2025Events

Terry Smith has been appointed Slade Professor of Fine Arts, University of Cambridge, 2025-2026. During Lent Term, January 27 to March 17, 2026, he will present a public lecture series entitled FRAMES OF VISION: THE INTELLIGENCE OF ARTISTS Flyer attached here The Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge was founded in 1869 as the result of a bequest from the art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868). At the same time, similar chairs were founded in the Universities of Oxford and London. Holders of the Chair usually deliver eight public lectures and four classes for students in the department of the […]

ARI REMIX NEWS ~ Summer Joy ~ ISSUE 1

December 8, 2025News

ARI REMIX NEWS OUT NOW Enjoy SUMMER JOY ISSUE 13 access here

‘Unruly Objects’ AAANZ Conference program available

December 1, 2025AAANZ Conference

AAANZ 2025 Conference ‘Unruly Objects’, December 3-5th We are looking forward to welcoming everyone to this year’s conference is hosted by The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, The Berndt Museum, and the UWA School of Design, and supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies.The theme unruly objects looks at the uncontrollable, excessive, surplus and unruly qualities of objects that we attempt to study, curate, discipline and subject to discourse. Thinking beyond simply the agency of objects, we turn specifically to their rowdy, disruptive, and ungovernable aspects – whether they be leaking out of unwieldy collections, unexhibitable or unthinkable, fugitive or lost, […]

AAANZ 2025 Conference: Unruly Objects | REGISTRATIONS CLOSE Wednesday 26 November

November 24, 2025AAANZ Conference

2025 AAANZ CONFERENCE: UNRULY OBJECT | REGISTRATION Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 December 2025, University of Western Australia, Perth Hosted by The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, The Berndt Museum, and the UWA School of Design, and supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies. The 2025 conference looks at the uncontrollable, excessive, surplus and unruly qualities of objects that we attempt to study, curate, discipline and subject to discourse. Thinking beyond simply the agency of objects, we turn specifically to their rowdy, disruptive, and ungovernable aspects – whether they be leaking out of unwieldy collections, unexhibitable or unthinkable, fugitive or lost, or […]

Call for Papers | Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 26.2: Open Issue | Deadline 31 December

November 24, 2025ANZJA, Call for Papers

Submissions of essays DUE: December 31, 2025. Editor in Chief: Dr Verónica Tello Managing Editor: Dr Anastasia Murney Editorial Committee: Dr Diana Baker Smith, Professor Jennifer Biddle, Dr Bianca Hester, Dr Astrid Lorange, Dr Jaye Early, Dr Shuxia Chen, and Dr Kasia Jezowska. The editors of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (ANZJA) are calling for submissions for the Journal’s next open issue, to be published in December 2026. We seek original essays, dialogues, visual essays, and other texts that engage with artists, visual culture, exhibitions, critical debates, frameworks, and methodologies across art history, theory, curating, and practice in and […]

Congratulations to new Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

November 20, 2025News

Congratulations to AAANZ members and colleagues in art history and art who have recently been appointed as new Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. You can see the full list here: https://humanities.org.au/power-of-the-humanities/30-new-fellows-elected-to-humanities-academy/ Professor Jennifer Biddle FAHA, UNSW A visual anthropologist of Aboriginal art, language, emotion and culture. Professor Mark Ledbury FAHA, the University of Sydney, A distinguished scholars of art and theatre studies who has deepened our understanding of 18th and 19th-century European painting and theatre. Associate Professor Christopher Roy Marshall FAHA, the University of Melbourne, A prolific researcher of Italian Baroque Art and contemporary museology who specialises in socio-economic questions of […]

Book launch | Unseen by Penelope Jackson

November 17, 2025Book

Unseen: Art and Crime in Australia Penelope Jackson A riveting look at art thefts, fakes, forgeries, vandalism, ‘disappeared works’ and more The Australian art world is often host to crime, including theft, fraud and forgeries. Unseen offers a unique insight into art crime in Australia from colonisation to today, focusing on those stories that have often escaped mainstream attention. From the many offences committed against William Dobell’s work (including a painting listed on the FBI’s National Stolen Art File since 1949) to the mysterious re-emergence of Rupert Bunny’s Girl in Sunlight twenty-three years after it disappeared, from fraudulently sold Aboriginal art to climate activists […]

Book launch | From Berlin to the Bush to Brighton: Leonhard Adam’s Journey

November 10, 2025Publication

About Of the 2,500 men aboard the Dunera when it sailed in 1940, Leonhard Adam was probably the best known. He was a man of rare brilliance, a polymath who spoke numerous languages and had expertise in several fields. At the time he was deported on the Dunera, Penguin had recently published his book Primitive Art to considerable acclaim. Later, in his role at the University of Melbourne, Adam helped to pioneer interest in Australian Aboriginal art, and became the first person to teach Mandarin Chinese at an Australian university. His achievements and interests were diverse and many. In this special LJLA event, Mary-Clare Adam, […]