Source: Melbourne Museum.

People, Images and Things Conference, Friday 30 and Saturday 31 October 2015, Museum Victoria

A two-day conference, People, Images and Things – Connecting Indigenous Australian Cultural Collections and Indigenous People is being hosted by Museum Victoria in association with the Australian National University.

Speakers at the conference will discuss the importance of researching Australian Indigenous cultural heritage in museums, galleries, libraries and archives in collaboration with Indigenous people with the intention of challenging popular perceptions of Indigenous cultural heritage as problematic and hollow remnants of the colonial and post-colonial experience.

Leading scholars, artists, curators and post-graduate students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, will explore the materiality of objects, images, archives and other records in public cultural institutions and give their insights into what Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart describe as the ‘complex and fluid relationships’ that emerge between ‘people, images and things’ (in Photographs Object Histories: On the Materiality of Images. Routledge, London, 2004).

Speakers will consider the methodological and theoretical challenges faced in researching these collections and highlight how cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research has given voice to Indigenous people in relation to interpretations of their cultural patrimony and interpretations of the past. They will draw on recent research to reveal the potential of using a range of methodologies from various disciplines and the value in linking dispersed elements of collections and information.

The conference will further highlight the potential of working and collaborating with Indigenous communities to further fill out and give new context and relevance to the record. Themes to be addressed include Indigenous engagement with collections and research partnerships; the regeneration and recovery of the cultural record and knowledge; the curation of collections and exhibitions; the value of analysis of the structure and formation collections; the comparative analysis and linking and reassembly of the record across institutions; the potential of and issues relating to use of new technologies to give access to collections; and the revision of values ascribed to these collections.

Cost: 
Full Registration $250
Student Registration $175
Single Day Registration $150
Conference Dinner $50

Book conference tickets online.

Further details, program and registration available here.