Cultural collecting

Volume 7 Number 5 May 9 - June 5 2011

Emily Wubben on exchange at the University of Birmingham
Emily Wubben on exchange at the University of Birmingham

Art History student Emily Wubben recently returned from a month-long work placement at the University of a Cultural Collections exchange pilot program. She talked to Zoe Nikakis.

A pilot program supported by the University Library and the U21 network and facilitated by Cultural Collections staff from the universities of Melbourne and Birmingham is giving students a unique opportunity to explore cultural collections overseas.

Honours student Emily Wubben recently returned from the University of Birmingham, where she was on exchange as part of the International Student Projects with Collections exchange program, which facilitated a month-long professional placement for one student from each university at the partner institution.

The students gained collection management skills through working with the museums and collections on campus, as well as invaluable professional links with overseas colleagues and broader professional experience.

The first participant from the University of Birmingham, Katy Wade, worked with the University of Melbourne’s Cultural Collections team in August last year.

Helen Arnoldi, from Melbourne’s Cultural Collections Unit, said the universities were collaborating to run the program because it was important for students to gain professional experience and broaden their skills by exploring different collections.

“It is our hope that every student who takes part in the program discovers passions and ideas they haven’t previously encountered, that the experience opens their eyes,” Ms Arnoldi says.

Ms Wubben said she applied to go to Birmingham because she thought the program would be a valuable opportunity to gain international experience in collections management.

“I had previously worked with the University of Melbourne’s Cultural Collections team, so I was really excited to work with another university collection and note the similarities and differences between the ways in which the collections were managed,” Ms Wubben says.

“I discovered although the collections differ, the ways in which they are managed are similar. Staff have the same concerns about the best ways to track and catalogue items, and how to preserve and display their accompanying information.

“It was great to learn that, regardless of collection or location, once you’ve gained the knowledge and skills, they can be applied to most collections around the world.”

But Ms Wubben said she had some idea of what to expect after seeing Ms Wade’s experience of the program when she was at the University of Melbourne last year, but still experienced some culture shock on arrival when faced with sub-zero temperatures.

But, she said, everyone in Birmingham was so welcoming and the staff were eager to help her develop her skills, her time overseas was a great experience, personally and professionally.

Ms Wubben also used the time in Birmingham to begin her research for her Honours thesis.

Her thesis will focus on a recent acquisition by the National Gallery of Victoria, Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones’ Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes.

Burne-Jones lived and worked in Birmingham, so, the opportunity to look at his works in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and to explore their print room and view his drawings was invaluable, Ms Wubben says.

“I was interested in the Pre-Raphaelites, but I didn’t have my thesis planned prior to completing the placement, but I quickly realised how I could take advantage of the opportunity to do some research for my thesis while I was there,” she says.

Ms Wubben’s thesis will explore how the Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes sits in Burne-Jones’ oeuvre, his contact with France, and how the painting was received by his contemporaries and later audiences.

“The portrait has lots of rich symbolism, so I am going to decode what it means and analyse his late female portraits, which haven’t received a lot of attention, because they were criticised by his contemporaries as being monochromatic, introspective and therefore difficult to look at,” she explains.

http://www.unimelb.edu.au/culturalcollections/