Journal articles on the topic 'Prints, german – 20th century – exhibitions'

"Transylvanian German women artists from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The paper is aiming at analyzing the life and art of a group of six German women artists from Transylvania, the first ones who studied abroad, real forerunners for the next generation of female plastic artists. Emancipated ladies, determined to become artists and earn their own money, the gifted women studied in Budapest, Vienna, Munich or Paris. Only Molly Marlin did not come back home, while the others had a prodigious artistic and pedagogical activity, being present at the annual exhibitions, together with well-known male colleagues. Keywords: art academies, women artists, painters, graphic artists, art teachers, exhibitions, Sibiu, Betty Schuller, Hermine Hufnagel, Molly Marlin Horn, Anna Dörschlag, Lotte Goldschmidt, Mathilde Berner Roth "

The paper will present the most important accomplishments on the field of documentation and registering of literature from Cieszyn Silesia, firstly bibliographical lists, which were prepared in 19th century to 20th century. Next I would like to describe collective (teamwork) bibliographies, Polish, Czech and German, which register literature from Cieszyn Silesia. Registration of publishing production from Cieszyn Silesia will be showed within the context of complicated and various political, economical an cultural conditions. Critical review of literature revevals the need of registering prints from Cieszyn Silesia. Polish and Czech activities in this field are will be discussed, as well as planned ones concerning a complete database of Cieszyn Silesia publishing production.

Abstract In the 20th century, the two world wars reshaped the map of Central Europe as well as the status of Central Europe’s diverse societies. In my article, I focus on the Hungarian and German minorities in Slovakia and the representation of their problematic historical past in contemporary Slovak museums. More specifically, I zoom in on the exhibition Exchanged Homes displayed in Bratislava, which aims to commemorate the fate of Hungarians, Germans, and Slovaks, all of whom were affected by the population transfers after World War II. Based on the concept of memorial museums theorized by Paul Williams, I aim to show how the different exhibitions engage with the traumatic past of forceful resettlement. By offering multifaceted memories of a troubled past, these exhibitions avoid categorizing “victims” and “perpetrators” along national or ethnic lines. My paper thus analyzes the concepts and components of the exhibitions—the context of the postwar events, oral history interviews, and objects of everyday use that should bring the visitor closer to the experience of the people who were forced to leave. I argue that exhibitions of this sort have the ability to challenge the dominant historical narrative focusing on a national “Slovak” history and help the process of reconciliation between the Slovak majority society, and the Hungarian and German minorities.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus school, a team of researchers from “Bulgarian Modernist Architecture” examined archives of German technical universities where Bulgarian architects studied in the first half of the 20th century. The archives in Munich, Berlin and Dresden have preserved the names and records of hundreds of Bulgarian architects from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Their education, university professors, the environment in which they were formed (exhibitions, artistic trends and events) including Bauhaus connections, and how all of these informed the architecture in our country between the two world wars were among the questions explored by the researchers Vassil Makarinov and Theodore Karakolev. After the research in Germany, the team also plans to delve in the industrial architecture from the interwar period - a topic that is poorly known in our country.

The article uses the example of Kazan to reveal the process of organizing and holding exhibitions of artworks from private collections in the Russian pre-revolutionary province. Addressing this topic, which has not been sufficiently studied in the history of Russian art, is relevant because it expands the understanding of the phenomenon of exhibition activity, which is one of the most important aspects of artistic life in Russia. The source base of the present study is the catalogues of four exhibitions of paintings from private collections held from 1873 to 1916, as well as publications in the Kazan press of this period. The peculiarities of the organizational process, selection and exposition of works, and the owners of the works are revealed. It is established that the exhibitions were of charitable nature: their proceeds were directed either in favour of the starving or poor, or in favour of Russian soldiers. The main collectors of art works in Kazan in the second half of the 19th century were predominantly landed gentry and university professors (who came from the families of personal nobles and officials). By the early 20th century, representatives of individual merchant families also had significant art collections. The exhibited works represented the whole variety of genres, but they were dominated by landscapes and portraits, primarily family portraits, suitable for decorating mansions. Catalogues allow us to conclude that local collectors of the second half of the 19th century were primarily interested in foreign art (masters of the Italian, Flemish, Dutch, Belgian, German and French schools, mainly of the 17—18 centuries), as well as (to a lesser extent) Russian academic painting (from V.L. Borovikovsky and D.G. Levitsky to D. Zakharov) and itinerant painters (I.I. Shishkin, N.A. Yaroshenko). By the end of the 19th century, the vector of collectors’ preferences shifted towards contemporary Russian art (works by Makovskys, I.E. Repin, etc. were collected), and collecting works by local artists (K.V. Bardou, L.D. Kryukov, R.A. Stupin, N.I. Zeblov, etc.) began to develop as a special direction.

he concept of „Deaf/Forest Germans” developed on the basis of cultural processes taking place in the Carpathian Foothills in the period from the 14th to the 19th/20th century. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the biography of this concept and to conduct its etymological analysis based on its oldest known records, mainly from Old Polish manuscripts and old prints. Above all, the authors focus on the source by the 18th-century encyclopedist Benedykt Chmielowski who formulated four definitions of this term. Based on it and other records, and some analogies from the territory of Poland and Slovakia as well, the authors try to answer the question about the nature of the settlement processes taking place in the Carpathian Foothills. Finally, they look at the concept through the prism of its German substitutes (Taubdeutsche and Walddeutsche).

The paper discloses the unusual treatment of duplicates and defective copies, characteristic of European libraries at the time when Haebler’s works were created and published (beginning of 20th century) and stresses the necessity of correct bibliographic treatment of the valuable printed materials in modern libraries. The paper also presents the famous album of West-European incunabula (Der westeuropäische Wiegendruck in Original-Typenbeispielen), compiled by Konrad Haebler in 1928, two copies of which are held in Moscow at the Russian State Library and the State Public Historical Library of Russia.This fundamental work in the history of typography by the prominent German expert on incunabula, one of the inventors of the Proctor-Haebler method in bibliography and founder of the world incunabula catalogue Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, is analyzed in the aspect of the specific early 20th-century bibliographic principles underlying the composition of the album and the way the original old prints are presented in it. The album consists of a collection of 15th-century original fragments enclosed in a 20th-century overall structure (text booklet, case and set of labeled passe-partouts).This unusual composition can present classification problems in some modern public libraries, when the album is recorded as a whole, whereas the separate incunabula fragments are not catalogued. Moreover, a comparative study of several copies of the album available for analysis on- and offline, carried out in the study, proved that their sample collections were composed of different authentic incunabula leaves, thus making each album unique.

The author explores the specific interaction of Russian and German art, their differences, forces of attraction and direct contact. Only conscious and meaningful differences could have reveal the strength and true value of each culture and, most importantly, become a pretext for new and creative quest for ones own way in art. Two-sided interest of Russian and German cultures implies a two-way process mutually contributed and enriched on both parts. The fact that Russian and German art at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries was developing under different conditions does not mean that the exchange of spiritual values was proceeding in only one direction. The facts indicate to intensive relationships and mutual enrichment between the two cultures. Despite restrained relation towards Russian fine art until the mid-1890s, the preconditions for closer attention to it were gradually evolving in Germany. A very important role was played in this province by Russian literature, which since the mid-80s had started to agitate the minds both in Germany and Europe in general. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky became well-known in Germany in 1880s, when the first translations of their works appeared. The next two decades showed an uninterrupted flow of reprints. But the point is not merely in the fact, that the achievements of Russian literature suggested the existence of fine arts of the same quality. Rather, as many critics state, Russian literature became a special key to the 19th century arts. The exhibitions of the Russian artists, including solo exhibitions of Ivan K. Aivazovsky and Vasily Vereshchagin, used to be arranged more and more often in German cities. Relations between Russian and German culture in the late 19th - early 20th were fairly stable and fruitful, enriching and inspiring art in both countries. By late 1910s the European public had accepted Russian art as an equal and very significant phenomenon in world culture, with much spiritual and creative potential deserving an elaborate study.

The article focuses on the museum journal Mittheilungen des Mährischen Gewerbe-Museums in Brünn, one of the important source materials for research on the arts and crafts of the last third of the 19th century and the early 20th century not only in Moravia but also in the cultural areas of the Austrian monarchy. The journal was published in the Moravian Industrial Museum in Brno in 1883–1918, when the museum was headed by two important directors – August Prokop (1883–1893) and Julius Leisching (1893–1922). Under the influence of the latter, the museum became the press authority of the Association of Austrian Museums of Applied Arts, the Association of Austro-Moravian Local Museums and the German-Moravian Association of Heritage Preservation. The journal contained articles on art history and information on current exhibitions, museum collections and activities as well as on the museum library.

Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations and text passages in Norwegian, English, and German, which signals that the book addresses a national and international audience. Simultaneously, the book is published in an era characterized by an increasing interest in indigenous tourism, demonstrated through the popularity of world exhibitions and «human zoos». In this article, I explore Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook in the light of “human zoos” and “living exhibitions” at the beginning of the 1900s and how her book alludes to the depiction of the Sámi for entertainment and information purposes. My close reading shows how the book reflects the categorization and systematization of the world and of exotic ethnic groups at the time. Furthermore, the reading confirms the book’s very distinctive position in Norwegian children’s literature history, and how it may have acquired a particular role in the promotion of Norwegian tourism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Towarzystwo Polska Sztuka Stosowana (TPSS) organised two exhibitions at the Zachęta Gallery. Their aim was to shape the national culture of living and to propagate ornamental design inspired by indigenous motifs. The 1902 exposition was arranged in accordance with the traditional perception of arts and crafts, which disregarded their function and construction in favour of the external form. New critical categories, borrowed from the language of functionalism and from ideas regarding living space as developed by the German Kunstgewerbe circles, induced the members of the TPSS to arrange their 1908 exhibition differently – as fully designed interiors rather than groups of independent items. Similar changes were then observed in the of shop-window design and in commercial expositions. The fact that they were explicated in terms of ethics reveals a combination of consumerism, aesthetics and morality characteristic of the early 20th century.

Printmaking has a long and rich history that dates back thousands of years. The earliest forms of printmaking were developed in ancient china, where the artist would create prints using wood blocks as early as the 7th century. However, in the 15th century in Europe, printmaking began to develop into a proper art form. Johannesburg was a German goldsmith printer and inventor widely credited with movable type printing in the mid-15th century. In 1455 Bible was the first important Book in history. In the 16th century, Goa was the first place in India where printing technology started during the British period. Initially, it was used for religious printing and some commercial printing, like religious posters, pamphlets etc. later 20th century, this printing process transformed into fine art printmaking techniques. It became an educational part of developing printing technology and technician. This printing technology became a curriculum for the Art & Craft College, like Madras art college, Kolkata Govt. Art and Craft College, J.J art college, Lahore art college (now in Pakistan), and another essential college is Kala Bhavana under the Visva Bharati University. From post-colonial to contemporary times, printing to printmaking evolved in many ways. Most places academically followed the colonial curriculum, but commercial printing technology rapidly changed. Academically Visva Bharati University Santiniketan develops new technology for the students.

The paper is concerned with the history of the resettlement of Germans to the Turkestan Governorate-General in the last third of the 19th — beginning of the 20th c. This territory was actively developing after the ac-cession to the Russian Empire. This process was joined also by German settlers from the Ekaterinoslav, Taurida, Samara, and Saratov governorates. Some of them sought to acquire land, as they suffered from the land scarcity or even its total lack in the ‘mother colonies’. Others wanted to obtain easement in the military service for religious reasons. The aim of the research is the analysis of the economic activity of the Germans and their adaptation to the new natural-climatic and agricultural conditions. The paper is based on various sources: publications of the 19th — early 20th century, reports of the officials, and archival materials. Methodologically, the authors draw upon the theory of modernisation and consider the resettlement process through the prism of the Central Asian model of frontier modernisation at the turn of the 19th — 20th century. This enabled us to reconsider the topic, which is partially covered in Russian and foreign historiography. It has been found that there were two waves of resettle-ment to the Central Asian region. The first one is related to the acquisition by the German colonists of the status of resettlers-proprietors in 1871 and to the military reform conducted in 1874. The second reason is related to the famine that affected the European part of the country. The Germans could get land plots in this region in several ways: from the authorities, or by buying or taking them on lease from the local population. The Germans managed the land reserves at their own discretion, distributing them for domestic purposes amongst the members of the settlements or keeping them for the community. First years were difficult for the Germans because of the lack of funding and knowledge of farming conditions. However, following the financial assistance from the authorities and familiarisation with the area, they managed to decide on the management model. Cereal crops and potatoes were grown on the land suitable for agriculture. In other areas, they started breeding improved livestock of cows and horses. Agricultural products and animals were in high demand at the local markets. Moreover, the local popula-tion adopted many agricultural improvements from the Germans. The economic and natural-geographical surveys of this region conducted by the authorities demonstrated that the German settlers by the beginning of the 20th cen-tury managed to set up prosperous farming units. Their products won numerous awards at agricultural exhibitions.

The Humboldt Forum was opened in Berlin in the fall of 2021. The collections of the Ethnological Museum, containing mainly exhibits from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, as well as the collections of the Museum of Asian Art, were moved from Dahlem to the newly reconstructed building of the former royal palace. Many objects on display were obtained in more or less transparent ways during the period of colonialism, in which the then German Empire also actively participated. According to the management of the museum, the curators of permanent and short-term exhibitions tried to balance the legacy of the colonial era and reflect contemporary discourse about the problematic past of the European museums. However, the authors of the text question whether the effort to come to terms with the past and to open an intercultural dialogue can be considered successful in this case, or whether the Humboldt Forum is following in the footsteps of the ethnological museums of the 19th and a large part of the 20th century, where Europeans used to go to look at “exotic” objects and where, among other things, the construction of the European colonial imagination took place.

The article is dedicated to the famous Ukrainian bibliographer of the 20th century Volodymyr Doroshenko, who was a valid member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv, manager of the Bibliographical Bureau (1910–1914), chairman of the Bibliographical (later Bibliological) Commission (1913–1939). In Lviv, he received professional training as a librarian, overcoming the path from a temporary employee to the director of a library. His participation in the functioning and development of the Shevchenko Scientific Socie­ty in Lviv book collection, to which he gave more than 30 years of sacrificial work, is reflected. The role in substantiating its importance as a national library, which has a unique collection of Ukrainian and Ukrainian studies publications, as well as a scientific book collection and archive of Ukrainian print, is revealed. The bibliographic activity of V. Doroshenko, who carried out his main bibliographic projects under the auspices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv, was highlighted: he carried out current registration of Ukrainian prints in 1911–1913; published thorough reviews of Ukrainian studies literature; was a co-compiler of personal bibliographic indexes of M. Hrushevsky, O. Kobylyanska, and M. Gogol. In 1913–1939, he headed the Bibliographic Commission of the National Academy of Sciences. In the Commission’s “Materials for Ukrainian Biblio­graphy” series, he published “List of Ivan Franko’s works with an appendix of articles about him and reviews of his writings” in two issues (fourth volume of the series) and “Goethe in Ukrainian translations, recitations and imitations” (sixth volume of the series). I. Franko’s bibliography, designed to cover as much as possible the multi-vector creativity of the writer and the literature about him, although unfinished, has the characteristics of a scientific publication, the principles of its arrangement are close to modern bibliographic fi­gures. A small, but original in terms of compilation method, the index of trans­lations by J. V. Goethe has not lost its relevance for researchers of creativity and translators of the works of the German writer. The final bibliographic project of V. Doroshenko of the Lviv period and the pinnacle of his bibliographic skill was the personal bibliographic index of T. Shevchenko, which was highly rated by experts and added to the golden fund of Ukrainian bibliography of the 20th century.

An important stage in the study and attribution of the Russian binding of the 18th — early 20th century is the description of the flyleaf and other elements of decorative paper. First of all, this applies to paper with marble drawings (marble paper), found in the Russian book since the 18th century. Modern researchers of Russian binding of the 18th — early 20th centuries face a number of problems related to the lack of literature on the topic, including methodological and reference, the lack of specialized collections and exhibitions of decorative paper in Russia and the lack of development in the domestic book science of the terminology for describing the binding materials. This article substantiates the need to create the nomenclature of drawings and link them to a certain chronological period. The author analyses three main groups of problems: terminological, systematization of marble drawings and their chronological correlation, problems of describing paper as a material. The first group includes different interpretations of term and unclear definition of many terms; phenomena of synonymy and polysemy when using particular names of drawings (patterns). Not only historians of the book, but also librarians, restorers, masters of individual binding, second-hand booksellers and bibliophiles have their own independently formed professional dictionary, which gives place to decorative papers. This inconsistency is reinforced by borrowing French, German and English terms, which, in turn, can also be duplicated. The author notes that systematization of decorative papers with marble drawings can be based on the methods of its colouring, but such a technological approach is not sufficient to describe a specific sample of marble paper. The article shows that various patterns periodically gained and lost popularity, then returned to bookbinding practice, but with a number of characteristic changes and additions. Correct description of the paper in binding is impossible without determining its origin (Russian/foreign), the method of production and colouring (manual/machine) and the specific properties of the material itself. At the same time, there are no methods and schemes for describing decorative paper grades. The article highlights that the development of such method will help to significantly narrow the chronological framework when attributing the binding.

An important stage in the study and attribution of the Russian binding of the 18th — early 20th century is the description of the flyleaf and other elements of decorative paper. First of all, this applies to paper with marble drawings (marble paper), found in the Russian book since the 18th century. Modern researchers of Russian binding of the 18th — early 20th centuries face a number of problems related to the lack of literature on the topic, including methodological and reference, the lack of specialized collections and exhibitions of decorative paper in Russia and the lack of development in the domestic book science of the terminology for describing the binding materials. This article substantiates the need to create the nomenclature of drawings and link them to a certain chronological period. The author analyses three main groups of problems: terminological, systematization of marble drawings and their chronological correlation, problems of describing paper as a material. The first group includes different interpretations of term and unclear definition of many terms; phenomena of synonymy and polysemy when using particular names of drawings (patterns). Not only historians of the book, but also librarians, restorers, masters of individual binding, second-hand booksellers and bibliophiles have their own independently formed professional dictionary, which gives place to decorative papers. This inconsistency is reinforced by borrowing French, German and English terms, which, in turn, can also be duplicated. The author notes that systematization of decorative papers with marble drawings can be based on the methods of its colouring, but such a technological approach is not sufficient to describe a specific sample of marble paper. The article shows that various patterns periodically gained and lost popularity, then returned to bookbinding practice, but with a number of characteristic changes and additions. Correct description of the paper in binding is impossible without determining its origin (Russian/foreign), the method of production and colouring (manual/machine) and the specific properties of the material itself. At the same time, there are no methods and schemes for describing decorative paper grades. The article highlights that the development of such method will help to significantly narrow the chronological framework when attributing the binding.

Elizabeth Edwards, a British researcher into the relations among photography, history, and anthropology, used the term of non-collections to define numerous photographs of unidentified status which can be found in contemporary museums. They are not collector’s items, such as e.g., artistic photography or unique specimens of the first photography techniques. What she rather means are various items: prints, slides, photo-mechanic reproductions, postcards, namely objects once produced on a mass scale, with copies present in many institutions worldwide, thus being neither unique nor extraordinary. They present works from a museum collection, historic pieces of local art, or universally known works of world art. They exist in a hierarchical relation with other classes of museum objects, yet they are often pushed to the margin of curator’s practice and kept as ‘archives’, namely outside the system of the museum collection. They can sometimes be found in museum archival sections, in other instances in libraries, yet it is on more rare occasions that we come across them in photo departments. However, owing to the research into archival photographs conducted in the last decade (the studies of afore-mentioned Elizabeth Edwards and also Constanza Caraffa as well as the teams cooperating with the latter), such collections are experiencing a certain revival. Forming part of this research, the paper focuses on the collections of reproductions produced at the turn of the 20th century in museums in Toruń, Poznań, and Szczecin, which were German at the time; the reproductions later found their way to and continue being kept in Polish institutions.

The renowned panoramic plan of Vilnius, Vilna Litvaniae metropolis, was for the first time printed in Cologne in 1581. It appeared in the third volume of Civitates orbis terrarum, an atlas of the world’s most important cities, the publication of which was initiated in 1572 by Georg Braun (1541–1622), Cologne church dean, geographer and publisher, and Franz Hogenberg (1535–1590), Flemish cartographer and engraver. The six-volume atlas was first released in Latin (1572–1617/1618), then in German (1574–1618), and finally in French (1579–1618). City images featured in this very popular atlas also were published as separate prints. The copper plates for these images were sold by Hogenberg’s heirs to the Amsterdam atlas publisher Johannes Janssonius (1588–1664), who published his own atlas in 1657. Later purchased by other cartographic publishers of Amsterdam, the plates kept being republished until completely worn out in the mid-18th century. The panoramic plan from this atlas is the earliest image of Vilnius that has reached us today. It features mid-16th-century Vilnius shown as if from a bird’s eye view – such was the tradition of depicting cities at that time. Researchers agree that this Vilnius image is not historically accurate and contains numerous errors. The creators of the plan are believed to have based their city image on an earlier work, probably by Italian cartographers, adding to it various travellers’ depictions of the then capital of the Grand Duchy. The Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds three copies of Vilna Litvaniae metropolis. They were all printed in the times of Braun and Hodenberg using the same copper plates. The earliest of them is the copy with the second part of the text in German. According to the bibliography Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, it may have been printed in 1582. Previously, this copy was in possession of Petras Klimas (1891–1969), Lithuanian statesman and bibliophile. It was received by the library currently known as the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences together with Petras Klimas’ archive (F 191) from the former Kaunas State University in 1950. The other two copies have no provenance marks. They presumably used to belong to the Wroblewski State Library, which was active in Vilnius in the interwar period. The second copy was published between 1588 and 1593; the third, between 1616 and 1623, both have Latin text. The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds several later derivatives of this panoramic plan of Vilnius. A several-times-reduced (16×24) panoramic plan was engraved by Georg Christoph Kilian (1709–1781) circa 1740 and published by the Bodenehrs, Augsburg engravers and publishers. A lithographic image of Vilnius in an even smaller format (17.5×13.5) was included in the history of Vilnius published by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887) in 1840. It was created in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Józef Ozębłowski (Oziębłowski, 1805–1878), which existed in 1833–1863. Three other plans of Vilnius deriving from the Vilnius image in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. One of them was redrawn at a smallish lithographic company belonging to the Vilnius City Board and active from 1877 to approximately 1915. Unlike the other derivatives, it contains not only objects copied from earlier Vilnius city images, but also new ones: the Rasos Cemetery, the Green Bridge, the Franciscan monastery, etc. – its creators attempted to bring it closer to their time. The two other Vilnius images are identical to the plan in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas. One of them was printed in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Notel Matz, which existed from 1873 to 1938, the other, at A.Transhel’s printing house in St. Petersburg, which was active in the second half of the 19th century – the early 20th century. These plans were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. They have so far been little studied and still await attention from researchers. Keywords: Braun-Hogenberg atlas; panoramic plan; Vilnius; copper engravings; lithography; Georg Bodenehr; Vilnius City Board lithography; Notel Matz; A.Transhel’s printing company.

The Old Belgrade Fairground complex is the large area in the center of Belgrade that is completely isolated from other parts of Belgrade: it is one of the most devastated city areas, populated by poor inhabitants, often by those from the marginal groups, burdened with tragic history and it represents one of hardest problems for planners to solve. It is situated on the left bank of the Sava River between two bridges and downtown New Belgrade. Opposite to it, the Sava Amphitheatre slopes down the Belgrade Ridge towards the river. The complex was built in the thirties of the 20th century across the River Sava in the area that was an unpopulated swamp - Belgrade was situated on the right Sava bank. It was meant to be modern extension of oriental city, which could represent the western tendencies of the young state (Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and its capital. Modern and monumental complex of exhibition and commercial pavilions was built, and started its life with national and international fairs and exhibitions. World War 2 changed its destiny: German occupation forces transformed the complex into the concentration camp, where thousands of people were tortured and killed. After the war, new republican government, both communist and antifascist, had double frustration regarding this space: it?s tragic (during the War) and "capitalist" (before the War) past, so complex that was absolutely ignored in the period of the postwar renewal, and the result is described at the beginning of this text. This paper discusses the possibility to conciliate historical roles of the complex, and to realize it?s potentials in the modern world. Facts of the complex?s history are presented in the first part of the paper. Further on, these facts are analyzed in the context of contemporary city development of Belgrade in particular but globally, too.. Finally, some guidelines for crossing the gap between this area and the rest of the city are presented in the third part of the paper.

Abstrakt: W artykule omówiona została graficzna twórczość młodopolskiego malarza Jana Skotnickiego, przypadająca na lata 1909–1914. W 1908 r. artysta wraz z żoną Teodorą z Trenklerów wyjechali z Krakowa do Zakopanego. Pobyt artysty zbiegł się w czasie z intensywnym rozwojem kulturalnym kurortu. W miejscowe inicjatywy Skotnicki angażował się osobiście, przy finansowym wsparciu swego teścia, łódzkiego przemysłowca i kolekcjonera, Henryka Grohmana. Jednocześnie tutejszy krajobraz i popularna w owym czasie góralska sztuka ludowa, zupełnie artysty nie inspirowały, przez co niemal zarzucił malarstwo, a zainteresował się grafiką i kilimiarstwem. Polem nowych zainteresowań stała się otwarta staraniem Grohmana eksperymentalna pracownia wyposażona m.in. w prasy drukarskie. W kolejnych latach Skotnicki prezentował swoje ryciny na licznych wystawach, także tych towarzyszących organizowanym konkursom graficznym (1911, 1914), a po wyjeździe do Warszawy (1912) przyłączył się do Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Sztuk Graficznych. Skotnicki uprawiał techniki metalowe, bardzo szybko osiągając w nich wysoki poziom zauważony przez krytyków. Łączył akwafortę, akwatintę, suchą igłę i ruletkę, eksperymentował z drukiem barwnym i kolorował odbitki, mocno indywidualizował prace podczas ich odbijania, stosując tintę. Jego dorobek graficzny oszacowany zastał na ponad 50 kompozycji, przy czym w kolekcjach publicznych znajduje się ich obecnie przynajmniej 36. Są to pejzaże, widoki miasteczek i architektury, akty, studia postaci i zwierząt, w wielu przypadkach wzorowane na własnych szkicach i obrazach. Tematycznie i kompozycyjnie wykazują one wiele podobieństw do prac twórców młodopolskich, zarówno z grona profesorów (J. Stanisławski), jak i rówieśników podejmujących próby graficzne (W. Skoczylas). W sposobie budowania kompozycji, kadrowania, asymetrii i fragmentaryczności przedstawień widoczne są wpływy sztuki japońskiej, stanowiącej ważne źródło inspiracji za sprawą kolekcji i działalności Feliksa „Mangghi” Jasieńskiego. Znacząca była również kolekcja Grohmana, za pośrednictwem której Skotnicki mógł poznać twórczość XIX-wiecznych odnowicieli sztuk graficznych, jak i artystów kolejnych pokoleń (J.M. Whistler, F. Rops, E. Carrière), co znalazło odbicie w jego rycinach. Nieco zapomniana działalność Skotnickiego wpisuje się w ogólniejszą tendencję: zainteresowania młodopolskich artystów sztukami graficznymi i zaangażowania na rzecz ich popularyzacji na przełomie XIX i XX w. Jest przykładem poszukiwania własnego języka wypowiedzi w nowym medium, samodzielnie podejmowanego eksperymentu. Choć Skotnicki nie był pionierem sztuk graficznych na ziemiach polskich, to z pewnością stał się ich propagatorem. Summary: The article discusses the graphic output of Jan Skotnicki, a painter of Young Poland, which he created in the years 1909–1914. In 1908, the artist and his wife, Teodora née Trenkler, left Cracow for Zakopane. The artist’s stay there coincided with the intensive cultural development of the resort. Skotnicki was personally involved in local initiatives, with the financial support of his father-in-law, an industrialist and art collector from Łódź, Henryk Grohman. However, the local landscape and the highland folk art popular at that time did not suit him at all. As a result, he nearly gave up painting and became interested in prints and kilims. An experimental studio, opened thanks to Grohman’s efforts, became Skotnicki’s new field of interests. It was equipped with, among other things, printing presses. In the following years, Skotnicki presented his prints at numerous exhibitions, including those accompanying print competitions (in 1911 and 1914), and after moving to Warsaw (in 1912), he joined the Society of Friends of Graphic Arts. Skotnicki used metal techniques and quickly achieved a master level, which was noticed by critics. He combined etching, aquatints, drypoints and roulette, experimented with colour printing and coloured prints. He strongly individualised his works while creating prints by using tint. His graphic output was estimated at more than 50 compositions, with at least 36 currently in public collections. They include landscapes, views of towns and architecture, nudes, studies of figures and animals, which in many cases were modelled on his own sketches and paintings. In terms of themes and composition, they show many similarities to the works of Young Poland artists from the group of professors (J. Stanisławski) as well as peers undertaking graphic attempts (W. Skoczylas). The way of building the composition, framing, asymmetry and fragmentation of the representations reveal the influence of Japanese art, which was an important source of inspiration thanks to the collection and activity of Feliks "Manggha" Jasieński. Grohman’s collection was also significant, as Skotnicki could learn from it about the works of 19th-century restorers of graphic arts, as well as about the artists of subsequent generations (J. M. Whistler, F. Rops, E. Carrière), which was reflected in his prints. The somewhat forgotten activity of Skotnicki was part of a more general trend: the interest of Young Poland artists in graphic arts and their involvement in their popularisation at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His output is an example of searching for one’s own language of expression in a new medium, and an experiment he performed independently. Although Skotnicki was not a pioneer of graphic arts in Poland, he certainly became their promoter.

"Harmony of Positive and Negative Spaciousness in Ingo Glass sculpture. The aim of this article is to discuss issues regarding the ways spaciousness and harmony of positive and negative surfaces in Inglo Glass sculpture are valorized. The artist was born in 1941 in Timișoara, he studied at the Traditional School of Arts from Lugoj and then he attended the university in Cluj. Between 1967-71 he worked as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Arts from Galați and he established connections with visual artists from all over the country. Later on, between 1972-73 he worked as teaching assistant at the Architecture University from Bucharest and then he became cultural consultant at the German Culture House Friedrich Schiller. During this period, Ingo Glass created a Constructivist Art with metal structures developed vertically following the spatial pattern specific to the great Gothic cathedrals– the most famous work Septenarius was built in 1976 on the Danube boardwalk from Galați. Being forced by the political circumstances from the Socialist Republic of Romania, he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1979, he moved to München where he worked for the Municipal Art Gallery and where he was integrated in the group of Concrete-Constuctivist Art artists. After 1989 he came back to Romania with different exhibitions and he created public monuments in Galați, Timișoara, Moinești and Lugoj. Then, in 1992 he presented his PhD thesis about the influence of Constantin Brâncuși Art over the 20th century sculpture. Between 1989-1998 the artist crystallized an original visual concept based on the usage of the basic geometric shapes in conjunction with the primary colours. Ingo Glass upgraded Bauhaus theory and he associated the square with blue, the triangle with yellow and the circle with red. By using shapes and primary colours the artists creates Concrete Art, a new symbolic universe, purely geometrical, the harmony of his entire work being given by the proportion and link between full and empty spaces. Expanded spaciousness specific to the Constructivst Art phase experiments the architecture-sculpture link and the monumentality of the metallic structures encourages the entrance to the central core of works. The open, non-material dimension forms the main volume of the sculpture, the empty space dominates the full shape and it outlines the effects of an unrated and irrational spaciousness. Balanced spaciousness specific to the Concrete Art phase experiments geometrical combinations, based on the basic shapes in positive and negative intersections, by the spaciousness and non-spaciousness link, the pace between full and empty spaces. The usage of the three basic geometrical shapes also influenced the combining vocabulary of these elements, and it even ensured the ordering and deduction of the empty space. The utopia of basic forms expresses tendencies towards positive irreductible forms of energy or negative forms through non-materiality, where the concepts of mass, weight, space and time are added. In each of his works, the artist used a proportion between the elements of the composition through a rational interpretation stimulated by the achievement of a geometrical order as the essential basis of tasks. The relation between positive and negative spaciousness appears constantly in the sculpture of the last century and the rhytm and sequence of its spatial effects are determined by a sense of proportion that involves an aesthetic of proportion. Thus, we can definitely say that the work of the artist Ingo Glass originally captures all these aspects of Contemporary Art. Keywords: sculpture, spaciousness, Ingo Glass, constructivism, Concrete Art. "

EXTENDED ABSTRACTSpecial collections of the National and University Library (NUK) hide a lot of items of precious value. The Slovenian cultural heritage is stored on paper or on other media as a part of the library’s Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare Books Collection, Old Prints Collection, Maps and Pictorial Collection, Music Collection, Ephemera Collection, Serials Collection, and Slovenian Diaspora Publications Collection. Only a small part of the treasures is temporary revealed to the public on special exhibitions. The idea of virtual exhibitions of library treasures was born in 2005. The library aimed to exhibit precious items of special collections of high historical or artistic value. In 2008 the first two virtual exhibitions were created in-house offering access to the rich collections of old postcards of Ljubljana at the beginning of 20th century kept in the Maps and Pictorial Collection of NUK. They were soon followed by other virtual exhibitions. At the beginning they were organised in the same way as physical exhibitions, afterwards different programs were used for creation of special effects (for ex. 3D wall). About two years ago it was decided that the creation of virtual exhibitions will be simplified. Files of digitised and borndigital library materials in jpg format are imported to MS PowerPoint 2010. Each jpg file is now formatted by adding a frame, a description … to the slides which are saved as jpg files. The last step is the import of jpg files into Cooliris application used for NUK web exhibitions. In the paper the virtual exhibition design and creation, the technical point of view and criteria for the selection of exhibition content are explained following the example of the virtual exhibitions the Old Postcards of Ljubljana, Photo Ateliers in Slovenia, a collection of photographs Four Seasons by Fran Krašovec and photos of Post-Earthquake Ljubljana in 1895.

The development of the furniture craft in Vilnius in the second half of the 19th – beginningof the 20th centuries, as well as the status of the furniture craftsmen belonging to the guilds,acquisition of professional skills, training and participation in Vilnius exhibitions are presented.The mass-produced products spread in the Western European market in the second half of the 19thcentury gained ill-feeling to the industrial production articles and raised nostalgia. The Arts andCrafts Movement in Great Britain became the resistance expression of the mass industrial produc-tion. This movement inspired by artists, when the wares of craftsmen were driven out by industrialproducts, stimulated the revival of the old crafts, returning to the hand-made wares and admirationfor the medieval craftsmen guilds. Indeed, the situation in Lithuania was different. The develop-ment of the advanced and modern craftsmanship was impeded by the medieval relict – the guildsystem, which existed until the end of the 19th century. Craftsmen of the guilds defending theirmonopoly production rights fought against non-guild craftsmen, craftsmen from other cities andtraders and opposed the establishment of the capitalist industry companies. In the second halfof the 19th century, the furniture production was based on the craftsmen works predominatedin Lithuania continuing the traditions of the guilds craftsmanship. The collision between craftsand industrial production manifested not as the hostile disposition against the mass-producedfurniture, but as an attempt on the guild’s production monopoly.Until the 19th century, the old crafts learning system in the guilds existed in Vilnius. The acqui-sition of occupational skills was hierarchized. Learner–apprentice–master was the traditionalscheme of the craft secrets mastering and the development of the professional career. Only atthe end of the 19th century – beginning of the last century, new processes originated along withthe repercussions of the craft movement. The special courses and schools of crafts, which raisedthe professional level of craftsmen, mitigated backwardness and represented modern craft ideas.At the turn of the 19–20th centuries, the ideas of a new modern style reached Vilnius. The exhi-bitions of art and crafts were invoked for the dissemination and introduction of these ideas tocraftsmen and society. After application of new artistic ideas, they reflected the turn of the formerworkshop craftsman towards the modern applied art creator. However, derivations of differenthistoric styles (Baroque Revival, Renaissance Revival, etc.) were the most demanded types amongVilnius society and furniture manufacturers until the turn of the 19–20th centuries. At first,the takeover of new modern artistic tendencies (English, German) was reflected in the furnituredesign in the exhibition in 1909. The influence of European design tendencies was also reflectedin the popularization of production and increased demand for weaved and bamboo furniture atthe beginning of the last century.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT:Are you interested in the night view of Ljubljana or in the view on the Ljubljana skyscraper in the 30- ies of the 20th century? What did Cerknica look like in that time? What did a typical alpine house look like? What beds were used fifty years ago? Are you a sports fan interested in the training of Yugoslav athletic team in 1953? Is it true that Anton Codelli and his colleague Leo Poljanec set up the first wireless telegraph station for the company Telefunken in the West African German colony of Togo? What is a Palm Sunday bundle? Is a duel between a woman of Carinthia and Carniola really painted on a wooden bee hive panel? What on earth is an object called »roš«? What chimneys were built on the roofs of the Artiže village? The answers to these unusual questions can be found on the SEM (Slovene Ethnographic Museum) website. The SEM documentation comprises numerous collections of photographs which are of interest to ethnologists as well as to the general public. To facilitate the access to them SEM bought the first scanner and started to scan individual photos in 1997. In 2007 SEM continued with systematic digitisation of the most frequently used collections of photos. In 2009 the activities were continued (partly in cooperation with external partners) and we joined the Athena EU project. In order to be promoted the entire collections were published on the SEM website and made accessible to a broad audience. The MINOK software enabling the creation of html catalogues was used. As static catalogues were unsuitable for inclusion on the website, a new application using dynamic html was designed to create the gallery view of museum objects and photos, photo slide show, keyword filter, geolocation filter, display of geolocation on a map, and to offer the possibility of advanced searching. The Galerist software was designed by an external partner. It enables html catalogue import, sorting and editing XML files; it is possible to add geolocation and to create specific collections etc. The Galerist web application was integrated to the SEM website which is built on the Drupal open source content management system (CMS). As the two search engines were not linked together, users had to make two separate searches which proved to be inconvenient. Many website visitors used the Drupal search engine instead of the Galerist. As the Drupal search engine is not convenient for simple searching, we decided to import the entire collection to the Drupal to facilitate the searching and to enable users to search the Galerist and the Drupal simultaneously. SEM collections were published on the website in 2010. They are divided into Collections of objects (e.g. photos of Palm Sunday bundles, the Kos collection, Folk instruments, Ploughs, Painted beehive panels, Headwear, Plastic carnival masks, Tally sticks, Blue-printing models, Superstition, Ploughing implements, the Milan Kovač collection and Horsehair sieves. They can be accessed at http://www.etno-muzej.si/sl/zbirke-predmetov) and Collections of photos (photos of 32 terrains shot by the teams under the guidance of dr. Boris Orel and other individual albums: Vekoslav Kramarič, Rado Kregar, Matija Murko, Slavko Smolej, Veno Pilon, Jernej Šušteršič, Press Office, Togo Album, Fran Vesel, Collection of old photos and Collection of Marko Račič' sports photos. They can be accessed at: http://www.etno-muzej.si/sl/zbirke-fotografij). The web collection comprises 55 collections with more than 23,000 entries. On the basis of Web statistics and users’ feedback we can assume that our collections are of interest to the general public. The primary goal to promote our cultural heritage was attained as people are generally acquainted with our permanent exhibitions but less familiar with our collections. Digitisation was funded by the EU Athena project - our collections are accessible via the Europeana website. SEM web collections project has not been concluded yet and is being constantly upgraded.

IntroductionIn March 2015, I visited the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (established 1967) in the “cherry capital of Australia”, the town of Young, New South Wales, in preparation for a student excursion. Like other Australian folk museums, this museum focuses on the ordinary and the everyday of rural life, and is heavily reliant on local history, local historians, volunteers, and donated objects for the collection. It may not sound as though the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (LFFM) holds much potential for a fashion curator, as fashion exhibitions have become high points of innovation in exhibition design. It is quite a jolt to return to old style folk museums, when travelling shows such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 – V&A Museum 2015) or The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (V&A Museum 2011­ – NGV 2014) are popping up around the globe. The contrast stimulated this author to think on the role and the power of curators. This paper will show that the potential for fashion as a vehicle for demonstrating ideas other than through rubrics of design or history has been growing. We all wear dress. We express identity, politics, status, age, gender, social values, and mental state through the way we dress each and every day. These key issues are also explored in many museum exhibitions.Small museums often have an abundance of clothing. For them, it is a case of not only managing and caring for growing collections but also curating objects in a way that communicates regional and often national identity, as well as narrating stories in meaningful ways to audiences. This paper argues that the way in which dress is curated can greatly enhance temporary and permanent exhibitions. Fashion curation is on the rise (Riegels Melchior). This paper looks at why this is so, the potential for this specialisation in curation, the research required, and the sensitivity needed in communicating ideas in exhibitions. It also suggests how fashion curation skills may facilitate an increasing demand.Caring for the AudienceThe paper draws on a case study of how Chinese people at the LFFM are portrayed. The Chinese came to the Young district during the 1860s gold rush. While many people often think the Chinese were sojourners (Rolls), that is, they found gold and returned to China, many actually settled in regional Australia (McGowan; Couchman; Frost). At Young there were riots against the Chinese miners, and this narrative is illustrated at the museum.In examining the LFFM, this paper points to the importance of caring for the audience as well as objects, knowing and acknowledging the current and potential audiences. Caring for how the objects are received and perceived is vital to the work of curators. At this museum, the stereotypic portrayal of Chinese people, through a “coolie” hat, a fan, and two dolls dressed in costume, reminds us of the increased professionalisation of the museum sector in the last 20 years. It also reminds us of the need for good communication through both the objects and texts. Audiences have become more sophisticated, and their expectations have increased. Displays and accompanying texts that do not reflect in depth research, knowledge, and sensitivities can result in viewers losing interest quickly. Not long into my visit I began thinking of the potential reaction by the Chinese graduate students. In a tripartite model called the “museum experience”, Falk and Dierking argue that the social context, personal context, and physical context affect the visitor’s experience (5). The social context of who we visit with influences enjoyment. Placing myself in the students’ shoes sharpened reactions to some of the displays. Curators need to be mindful of a wide range of audiences. The excursion was to be not so much a history learning activity, but a way for students to develop a personal interest in museology and to learn the role museums can play in society in general, as well as in small communities. In this case the personal context was also a professional context. What message would they get?Communication in MuseumsStudies by Falk et al. indicate that museum visitors only view an exhibition for 30 minutes before “museum fatigue” sets in (249–257). The physicality of being in a museum can affect the museum experience. Hence, many institutions responded to these studies by placing the key information and objects in the introductory areas of an exhibition, before the visitor gets bored. As Stephen Bitgood argues, this can become self-fulfilling, as the reaction by the exhibition designers can then be to place all the most interesting material early in the path of the audience, leaving the remainder as mundane displays (196). Bitgood argues there is no museum fatigue. He suggests that there are other things at play which curators need to heed, such as giving visitors choice and opportunities for interaction, and avoiding overloading the audience with information and designing poorly laid-out exhibitions that have no breaks or resting points. All these factors contribute to viewers becoming both mentally and physically tired. Rather than placing the onus on the visitor, he contends there are controllable factors the museum can attend to. One of his recommendations is to be provocative in communication. Stimulating exhibitions are more likely to engage the visitor, minimising boredom and tiredness (197). Xerxes Mazda recommends treating an exhibition like a good story, with a beginning, a dark moment, a climax, and an ending. The LFFM certainly has those elements, but they are not translated into curation that gives a compelling narration that holds the visitors’ attention. Object labels give only rudimentary information, such as: “Wooden Horse collar/very rare/donated by Mr Allan Gordon.” Without accompanying context and engaging language, many visitors could find it difficult to relate to, and actively reflect on, the social narrative that the museum’s objects could reflect.Text plays an important role in museums, particularly this museum. Communication skills of the label writers are vital to enhancing the museum visit. Louise Ravelli, in writing on museum texts, states that “communication needs to be more explicit and more reflexive—to bring implicit assumptions to the surface” (3). This is particularly so for the LFFM. Posing questions and using an active voice can provoke the viewer. The power of text can be seen in one particular museum object. In the first gallery is a banner that contains blatant racist text. Bringing racism to the surface through reflexive labelling can be powerful. So for this museum communication needs to be sensitive and informative, as well as pragmatic. It is not just a case of being reminded that Australia has a long history of racism towards non-Anglo Saxon migrants. A sensitive approach in label-writing could ask visitors to reflect on Australia’s long and continued history of racism and relate it to the contemporary migration debate, thereby connecting the present day to dark historical events. A question such as, “How does Australia deal with racism towards migrants today?” brings issues to the surface. Or, more provocatively, “How would I deal with such racism?” takes the issue to a personal level, rather than using language to distance the issue of racism to a national issue. Museums are more than repositories of objects. Even a small underfunded museum can have great impact on the viewer through the language they use to make meaning of their display. The Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner at the LFFMThe “destination” object of the museum in Young is the Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner. Those with a keen interest in Australian history and politics come to view this large sheet of canvas that elicits part of the narrative of the Lambing Flat Riots, which are claimed to be germane to the White Australia Policy (one of the very first pieces of legislation after the Federation of Australia was The Immigration Restriction Act 1901).On 30 June 1861 a violent anti-Chinese riot occurred on the goldfields of Lambing Flat (now known as Young). It was the culmination of eight months of growing conflict between European and Chinese miners. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Europeans lived and worked in these goldfields, with little government authority overseeing the mining regulations. Earlier, in November 1860, a group of disgruntled European miners marched behind a German brass band, chasing off 500 Chinese from the field and destroying their tents. Tensions rose and fell until the following June, when the large banner was painted and paraded to gather up supporters: “…two of their leaders carrying in advance a magnificent flag, on which was written in gold letters – NO CHINESE! ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ...” (qtd. in Coates 40). Terrified, over 1,270 Chinese took refuge 20 kilometres away on James Roberts’s property, “Currawong”. The National Museum of Australia commissioned an animation of the event, The Harvest of Endurance. It may seem obvious, but the animators indicated the difference between the Chinese and the Europeans through dress, regardless that the Chinese wore western dress on the goldfields once the clothing they brought with them wore out (McGregor and McGregor 32). Nonetheless, Chinese expressions of masculinity differed. Their pigtails, their shoes, and their hats were used as shorthand in cartoons of the day to express the anxiety felt by many European settlers. A more active demonstration was reported in The Argus: “ … one man … returned with eight pigtails attached to a flag, glorifying in the work that had been done” (6). We can only imagine this trophy and the de-masculinisation it caused.The 1,200 x 1,200 mm banner now lays flat in a purpose-built display unit. Viewers can see that it was not a hastily constructed work. The careful drafting of original pencil marks can be seen around the circus styled font: red and blue, with the now yellow shadowing. The banner was tied with red and green ribbon of which small remnants remain attached.The McCarthy family had held the banner for 100 years, from the riots until it was loaned to the Royal Australian Historical Society in November 1961. It was given to the LFFM when it opened six years later. The banner is given key positioning in the museum, indicating its importance to the community and its place in the region’s memory. Just whose memory is narrated becomes apparent in the displays. The voice of the Chinese is missing.Memory and Museums Museums are interested in memory. When visitors come to museums, the work they do is to claim, discover, and sometimes rekindle memory (Smith; Crane; Williams)—-and even to reshape memory (Davidson). Fashion constantly plays with memory: styles, themes, textiles, and colours are repeated and recycled. “Cutting and pasting” presents a new context from one season to the next. What better avenue to arouse memory in museums than fashion curation? This paper argues that fashion exhibitions fit within the museum as a “theatre of memory”, where social memory, commemoration, heritage, myth, fantasy, and desire are played out (Samuels). In the past, institutions and fashion curators often had to construct academic frameworks of “history” or “design” in order to legitimise fashion exhibitions as a serious pursuit. Exhibitions such as Fashion and Politics (New York 2009), Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism (Oslo 2014) and Fashion as Social Energy (Milan 2015) show that fashion can explore deeper social concerns and political issues.The Rise of Fashion CuratorsThe fashion curator is a relative newcomer. What would become the modern fashion curator made inroads into museums through ethnographic and anthropological collections early in the 20th century. Fashion as “history” soon followed into history and social museums. Until the 1990s, the fashion curator in a museum was seen as, and closely associated with, the fashion historian or craft curator. It could be said that James Laver (1899–1975) or Stella Mary Newton (1901–2001) were the earliest modern fashion curators in museums. They were also fashion historians. However, the role of fashion curator as we now know it came into its own right in the 1970s. Nadia Buick asserts that the first fashion exhibition, Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curated by the famous fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. He was not a museum employee, a trained curator, or even a historian (15). The museum did not even collect contemporary fashion—it was a new idea put forward by Beaton. He amassed hundreds of pieces of fashion items from his friends of elite society to complement his work.Radical changes in museums since the 1970s have been driven by social change, new expectations and new technologies. Political and economic pressures have forced museum professionals to shift their attention from their collections towards their visitors. There has been not only a growing number of diverse museums but also a wider range of exhibitions, fashion exhibitions included. However, as museums and the exhibitions they mount have become more socially inclusive, this has been somewhat slow to filter through to the fashion exhibitions. I assert that the shift in fashion exhibitions came as an outcome of new writing on fashion as a social and political entity through Jennifer Craik’s The Face of Fashion. This book has had an influence, beyond academic fashion theorists, on the way in which fashion exhibitions are curated. Since 1997, Judith Clark has curated landmark exhibitions, such as Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back (Antwerp 2004), which examine the idea of what fashion is rather than documenting fashion’s historical evolution. Dress is recognised as a vehicle for complex issues. It is even used to communicate a city’s cultural capital and its metropolitan modernity as “fashion capitals” (Breward and Gilbert). Hence the reluctant but growing willingness for dress to be used in museums to critically interrogate, beyond the celebratory designer retrospectives. Fashion CurationFashion curators need to be “brilliant scavengers” (Peoples). Curators such as Clark pick over what others consider as remains—the neglected, the dissonant—bringing to the fore what is forgotten, where items retrieved from all kinds of spheres are used to fashion exhibitions that reflect the complex mix of the tangible and intangible that is present in fashion. Allowing the brilliant scavengers to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life can make for exciting exhibitions. Clothing of the everyday can be used to narrate complex stories. We only need think of the black layette worn by Baby Azaria Chamberlain—or the shoe left on the tarmac at Darwin Airport, having fallen off the foot of Mrs Petrov, wife of the Russian diplomat, as she was forced onto a plane. The ordinary remnants of the Chinese miners do not appear to have been kept. Often, objects can be transformed by subsequent significant events.Museums can be sites of transformation for its audiences. Since the late 1980s, through the concept of the New Museum (Vergo), fashion as an exhibition theme has been used to draw in wider museum audiences and to increase visitor numbers. The clothing of Vivienne Westwood, (34 Years in Fashion 2005, NGA) Kylie Minogue (Kylie: An Exhibition 2004­–2005, Powerhouse Museum), or Princess Grace (Princess Grace: Style Icon 2012, Bendigo Art Gallery) drew in the crowds, quantifying the relevance of museums to funding bodies. As Marie Riegels Melchior notes, fashion is fashionable in museums. What is interesting is that the New Museum’s refrain of social inclusion (Sandell) has yet to be wholly embraced by art museums. There is tension between the fashion and museum worlds: a “collision of the fashion and art worlds” (Batersby). Exhibitions of elite designer clothing worn by celebrities have been seen as very commercial operations, tainting the intellectual and academic reputations of cultural institutions. What does fashion curation have to do with the banner mentioned previously? It would be miraculous for authentic clothing worn by Chinese miners to surface now. In revising the history of Lambing Flat, fashion curators need to employ methodologies of absence. As Clynk and Peoples have shown, by examining archives, newspaper advertisements, merchants’ account books, and other material that incidentally describes the business of clothing, absence can become present. While the later technology of photography often shows “Sunday best” fashions, it also illustrates the ordinary and everyday dress of Chinese men carrying out business transactions (MacGowan; Couchman). The images of these men bring to mind the question: were these the children of men, or indeed the men themselves, who had their pigtails violently cut off years earlier? The banner was also used to show that there are quite detailed accounts of events from local and national newspapers of the day. These are accessible online. Accounts of the Chinese experience may have been written up in Chinese newspapers of the day. Access to these would be limited, if they still exist. Historian Karen Schamberger reminds us of the truism: “history is written by the victors” in her observations of a re-enactment of the riots at the Lambing Flat Festival in 2014. The Chinese actors did not have speaking parts. She notes: The brutal actions of the European miners were not explained which made it easier for audience members to distance themselves from [the Chinese] and be comforted by the actions of a ‘white hero’ James Roberts who… sheltered the Chinese miners at the end of the re-enactment. (9)Elsewhere, just out of town at the Chinese Tribute Garden (created in 1996), there is evidence of presence. Plaques indicating donors to the garden carry names such as Judy Chan, Mrs King Chou, and Mr and Mrs King Lam. The musically illustrious five siblings of the Wong family, who live near Young, were photographed in the Discover Central NSW tourist newspaper in 2015 as a drawcard for the Lambing Flat Festival. There is “endurance”, as the title of NMA animation scroll highlights. Conclusion Absence can be turned around to indicate presence. The “presence of absence” (Meyer and Woodthorpe) can be a powerful tool. Seeing is the pre-eminent sense used in museums, and objects are given priority; there are ways of representing evidence and narratives, and describing relationships, other than fashion presence. This is why I argue that dress has an important role to play in museums. Dress is so specific to time and location. It marks specific occasions, particularly at times of social transitions: christening gowns, bar mitzvah shawls, graduation gowns, wedding dresses, funerary shrouds. Dress can also demonstrate the physicality of a specific body: in the extreme, jeans show the physicality of presence when the body is removed. The fashion displays in the museum tell part of the region’s history, but the distraction of the poor display of the dressed mannequins in the LFFM gets in the way of a “good story”.While rioting against the Chinese miners may cause shame and embarrassment, in Australia we need to accept that this was not an isolated event. More formal, less violent, and regulated mechanisms of entry to Australia were put in place, and continue to this day. It may be that a fashion curator, a brilliant scavenger, may unpick the prey for viewers, placing and spacing objects and the visitor, designing in a way to enchant or horrify the audience, and keeping interest alive throughout the exhibition, allowing spaces for thinking and memories. Drawing in those who have not been the audience, working on the absence through participatory modes of activities, can be powerful for a community. Fashion curators—working with the body, stimulating ethical and conscious behaviours, and constructing dialogues—can undoubtedly act as a vehicle for dynamism, for both the museum and its audiences. As the number of museums grow, so should the number of fashion curators.ReferencesArgus. 10 July 1861. 20 June 2015 ‹http://trove.nla.gov.au/›.Batersby, Selena. “Icons of Fashion.” 2014. 6 June 2015 ‹http://adelaidereview.com.au/features/icons-of-fashion/›.Bitgood, Stephen. “When Is 'Museum Fatigue' Not Fatigue?” Curator: The Museum Journal 2009. 12 Apr. 2015 ‹http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2009.tb00344.x/abstract›. Breward, Christopher, and David Gilbert, eds. Fashion’s World Cities. Oxford: Berg Publications, 2006.Buick, Nadia. “Up Close and Personal: Art and Fashion in the Museum.” Art Monthly Australia Aug. (2011): 242.Clynk, J., and S. Peoples. “All Out in the Wash.” Developing Dress History: New Directions in Method and Practice. Eds. Annabella Pollen and Charlotte Nicklas C. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming Sep. 2015. Couchman, Sophia. “Making the ‘Last Chinaman’: Photography and Chinese as a ‘Vanishing’ People in Australia’s Rural Local Histories.” Australian Historical Studies 42.1 (2011): 78–91.Coates, Ian. “The Lambing Flat Riots.” Gold and Civilisation. Canberra: The National Museum of Australia, 2011.Clark, Judith. Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. London: V&A Publications, 2006.Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion. Oxon: Routledge, 1994.Crane, Susan. “The Distortion of Memory.” History and Theory 36.4 (1997): 44–63.Davidson, Patricia. “Museums and the Shaping of Memory.” Heritage Museum and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. Ed. Gerard Corsane. Oxon: Routledge, 2005.Discover Central NSW. Milthorpe: BMCW, Mar. 2015.Dethridge, Anna. Fashion as Social Energy Milan: Connecting Cultures, 2005.Falk, John, and Lyn Dierking. The Museum Experience. Washington: Whaleback Books, 1992.———, John Koran, Lyn Dierking, and Lewis Dreblow. “Predicting Visitor Behaviour.” Curator: The Museum Journal 28.4 (1985): 249–57.Fashion and Politics. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.fitnyc.edu/5103.asp›.Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.tereza-kuldova.com/#!Fashion-India-Spectacular-Capitalism-Exhibition/cd23/85BBF50C-6CB9-4EE5-94BC-DAFDE56ADA96›.Frost, Warwick. “Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Gold Rushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 11.3 (2005): 235-250.Mansel, Philip. Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costumes from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.Mazda, Xerxes. “Exhibitions and the Power of Narrative.” Museums Australia National Conference. Sydney, Australia. 23 May 2015. Opening speech.McGowan, Barry. Tracking the Dragon: A History of the Chinese in the Riverina. Wagga Wagga: Museum of the Riverina, 2010.Meyer, Morgan, and Kate Woodthorpe. “The Material Presence of Absence: A Dialogue between Museums and Cemeteries.” Sociological Research Online (2008). 6 July 2015 ‹http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/5/1.html›.National Museum of Australia. “Harvest of Endurance.” 20 July 2015 ‹http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/collection_interactives/endurance_scroll/harvest_of_endurance_html_version/home›. Peoples, Sharon. “Cinderella and the Brilliant Scavengers.” Paper presented at the Fashion Tales 2015 Conference, Milan, June 2015. Ravelli, Louise. Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Riegels Melchior, Marie. “Fashion Museology: Identifying and Contesting Fashion in Museums.” Paper presented at Exploring Critical Issues, Mansfield College, Oxford, 22–25 Sep. 2011. Rolls, Eric. Sojourners: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1992.Samuels, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 2012.Sandell, Richard. “Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectorial Change.” Museum and Society 1.1 (2003): 45–62.Schamberger, Karen. “An Inconvenient Myth—the Lambing Flat Riots and Birth of a Nation.” Paper presented at Foundational Histories Australian Historical Conference, University of Sydney, 6–10 July 2015. Smith, Laurajane. The Users of Heritage. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Vergo, Peter. New Museology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007.

IntroductionThe role, function, and future of the Western public intellectual have been highly contested over the last three decades. The dominant discourse, which predicts the decline of the public intellectual, asserts the institutionalisation of their labour has eroded their authority to speak publicly to power on behalf of others; and that the commodification of intellectual performance has transformed them from sages, philosophers, and men of letters into trivial media entertainers, pundits, and ideologues. Overwhelmingly the crisis debates link the demise of the public intellectual to shifts in public culture, which was initially conceptualised as a literary and artistic space designed to liberate the awareness of citizens through critique and to reflect upon “the chronic and persistent issues of life, meaning and representation” (McGuigan 430). This early imagining of public culture as an exclusively civilising space, however, did not last and Jurgen Habermas documented its decline in response to the commodification and politicisation of culture in the 20th century. Yet, as social activism continued to flourish in the public sphere, Habermas re-theorised public culture as a more pluralistic site which simultaneously accommodates “uncritical populism, radical subversion and critical intervention” (436) and operates as both a marketplace and a “site of communicative rationality, mutual respect and understanding (McGuigan 434). The rise of creative industries expanded popular engagement with public culture but destabilised the authority of the public intellectual. The accompanying shifts also affected the function of the curator, who, like the intellectual, had a role in legislating and arbitrating knowledge, and negotiating and authorising meaning through curated exhibitions of objects deemed sacred and significant. Jennifer Barrett noted the similarities in the two functions when she argued in Museums and the Public Sphere that, because museums have an intellectual role in society, curators have a public intellectual function as they define publics, determine modes of engagement, and shape knowledge formation (150). The resemblance between the idealised role of the intellectual and the curator in enabling the critique that emancipates the citizen means that both functions have been affected by the atomisation of contemporary society, which has exposed the power effects of the imposed coherency of authoritative and universal narratives. Indeed, just as Russell Jacoby, Allan Bloom, and Richard Posner predicted the death of the intellectual, who could no longer claim to speak in universal terms on behalf of others, so museums faced their own crisis of relevancy. Declining visitor numbers and reduced funding saw museums reinvent themselves, and in moving away from their traditional exclusive, authoritative, and nation building roles—which Pierre Bourdieu argued reproduced the “existing class-based culture, education and social systems” (Barrett 3)—museums transformed themselves into inclusive and diverse sites of co-creation with audiences and communities. In the context of this change the curator ceased to be the “primary producer of knowledge” (Barrett 13) and emerged to reproduce “contemporary culture preoccupations” and constitute the “social imagery” of communities (119). The modern museum remains concerned with explaining and interrogating the world, but the shift in curatorial work is away from the objects themselves to a focus upon audiences and how they value the artefacts, knowledge, and experiences of collective shared memory. The change in curatorial practices was driven by what Peter Vergo called a new “museology” (Barrett 2), and according to Macdonald this term assumes that “object meanings are contextual rather than inherent” or absolute and universal (2). Public intellectuals and curators, as the custodians of ideas and narratives in the contemporary cultural industries, privilege audience reception and recognise that consumers and/or citizens engage with public culture for a variety of reasons, including critique, understanding, and entertainment. Curators, like public intellectuals, also recognise that they can no longer assume the knowledge and experience of their audience, nor prescribe the nature of engagement with ideas and objects. Instead, curators and intellectuals emerge as negotiators and translators of cultural meaning as they traverse the divides in public culture, sequestering ideas and cultural artefacts and constructing narratives that engage audiences and communities in the process of re-imagining the past as a way of providing new insights into contemporary challenges.Methodology In exploring the idea that the public intellectual acts as a curator of ideas as he or she defines and privileges the discursive spaces of public culture, this paper begins by providing an overview of the cultural context of the contemporary public intellectual which enables comparisons between intellectual and curatorial functions. Second, this paper analyses a random sample of the content of books, newspaper and magazine articles, speeches, and transcripts of interviews drawn from The Australian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Institute, the ABC, The Monthly, and Quadrant published or broadcast between 1996 and 2007, in order to identify the key themes of the History Wars. It should be noted that the History War debates were extensive, persistent, and complex—and as they unfolded over a 13-year period they emerged as the “most powerful” and “most disputed form of public intellectual work” (Carter, Ideas 9). Many issues were aggregated under the trope of the History Wars, and these topics were subject to both popular commentary and academic investigation. Furthermore, the History Wars discourse was produced in a range of mediums including popular media sources, newspaper and magazine columns, broadcasts, blogs, lectures, and writers’ forums and publications. Given the extent of this discourse, the sample of articles which provides the basis for this analysis does not seek to comprehensively survey the literature on the History Wars. Rather this paper draws upon Foucault’s genealogical qualitative method, which exposes the subordinated discontinuities in texts, to 1) consider the political context of the History War trope; and 2) identify how intellectuals discursively exhibited versions of the nation’s identity and in the process made visible the power effects of the past. Public Intellectuals The underlying fear of the debates about the public intellectual crisis was that the public intellectual would no longer be able to act as the conscience of a nation, speak truth to power, or foster the independent and dissenting public debate that guides and informs individual human agency—a goal that has lain at the heart of the Western intellectual’s endeavours since Kant’s Sapere aude. The late 20th century crisis discourse, however, primarily mourned the decline of a particular form of public authority attached to the heroic universal intellectual formation made popular by Emile Zola at the end of the 19th century, and which claimed the power to hold the political elites of France accountable. Yet talk of an intellectual crisis also became progressively associated with a variety of general concerns about globalising society. Some of these concerns included fears that structural shifts in the public domain would lead to the impoverishment of the cultural domain, the end of Western civilisation, the decline of the progressive political left, and the end of universal values. It was also expected that the decline in intellectuals would also enable the rise of populism, political conservatism, and anti-intellectualism (Jacoby Bloom; Bauman; Rorty; Posner; Furedi; Marquand). As a result of these fears, the function of the intellectual who engages publicly was re-theorised. Zygmunt Bauman suggested the intellectual was no longer the legislator or arbiter of taste but the negotiator and translator of ideas; Michel Foucault argued that the intellectual could be institutionally situated and still speak truth to power; and Edward Said insisted the public intellectual had a role in opening up possibilities to resolve conflict by re-imagining the past. In contrast, the Australian public intellectual has never been declared in crisis or dead, and this is probably because the nation does not have the same legacy of the heroic public intellectual. Indeed, as a former British colony labelled the “working man’s paradise” (White 4), Australia’s intellectual work was produced in “institutionalised networks” (Head 5) like universities and knowledge disciplines, political parties, magazines, and unions. Within these networks there was a double division of labour, between the abstraction of knowledge and its compartmentalisation, and between the practical application of knowledge and its popularisation. As a result of this legacy, a more organic, specific, and institutionalised form of intellectualism emerged, which, according to Head, limited intellectual influence and visibility across other networks and domains of knowledge and historically impeded general intellectual engagement with the public. Fears about the health and authority of the public intellectual in Australia have therefore tended to be produced as a part of Antonio Gramsci’s ideological “wars of position” (Mouffe 5), which are an endless struggle between cultural and political elites for control of the institutions of social reproduction. These struggles began in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s over language and political correctness, and they reappeared in the 1990s as the History Wars. History Wars“The History Wars” was a term applied to an ideological battle between two visions of the Australian nation. The first vision was circulated by Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating, who saw race relations as central to 21st century global Australia and began the process of dealing with the complex and divisive Indigenous issues at home. He established the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991; acknowledged in the 1992 Redfern speech that white settlers were responsible for the problems in Indigenous communities; and commissioned the Bringing Them Home report, which was completed in 1997 and concluded that the mandated removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities throughout the 20th century had violated their human rights and caused long-term and systemic damage to Indigenous communities.The second vision of Australia was circulated by Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, who, after he came to power in 1996, began his own culture war to reconstruct a more conservative vision of the nation. Howard believed that the stories of Indigenous dispossession undermined confidence in the nation, and he sought to produce a historical view of the past grounded in “Judeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the enlightenment and the institutions and values of British culture” (“Sense of Balance”). Howard called for a return to a narrative form that valorised Australia’s achievements, and he sought to instil a more homogenised view of the past and a coherent national identity by reviewing high school history programs, national museum appointments, and citizenship tests. These two political positions framed the subsequent intellectual struggles over the past. While a number of issues were implicated in the battle, generally, left commentators used the History Wars as a way to circulate certain ideas about morality and identity, including 1) Australians needed to make amends for past injustices to Indigenous Australians and 2) the nation’s global identity was linked to how they dealt with Australia’s first people. In contrast, the political right argued 1) the left had misrepresented and overstated the damage done to Indigenous communities and rewritten history; 2) stories about Indigenous abuse were fragmenting the nation’s identity at a time when the nation needed to build a coherent global presence; and 3) no apology was necessary, because contemporary Australians did not feel responsible for past injustices. AnalysisThe war between these two visions of Australia was fought in “extra-curricular sites,” according to Stuart Macintyre, and this included newspaper columns, writers’ festivals, broadcast interviews, intellectual magazines like The Monthly and Quadrant, books, and think tank lectures. Academics and intellectuals were the primary protagonists, and they disputed the extent of colonial genocide; the legitimacy of Indigenous land rights; the impact of the Stolen Generation on the lives of modern Indigenous citizens; and the necessity of a formal apology as a part of the reconciliation process. The conflicts also ignited debates about the nature of history, the quality of public debates in Australia, and exposed the tensions between academics, public intellectuals, newspaper commentators and political elites. Much of the controversy played out in the national forums can be linked to the Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families report Stolen Generation inquiry and report, which was commissioned by Keating but released after Howard came to office. Australian public intellectual and professor of politics Robert Manne critiqued the right’s response to the report in his 2001 Quarterly Essay titled “In Denial: The Stolen Generation and The Right”. He argued that there was a right-wing campaign in Australia that sought to diminish and undermine justice for Aboriginal people by discounting the results of the inquiry, underestimating the numbers of those affected, and underfunding the report’s recommendations. He spoke of the nation’s shame and in doing so he challenged Australia’s image of itself. Manne’s position was applauded by many for providing what Kay Schaffer in her Australian Humanities Review paper called an “effective antidote to counter the bitter stream of vitriol that followed the release of the Bringing Them Home report”. Yet Manne also drew criticism. Historian Bain Attwood argued that Manne’s attack on conservatives was polemical, and he suggested that it would be more useful to consider in detail what drives the right-wing analysis of Indigenous issues. Attwood also suggested that Manne’s essay had misrepresented the origins of the narrative of the Stolen Generation, which had been widely known prior to the release of the Stolen Generation report.Conservative commentators focused upon challenging the accuracy of those stories submitted to the inquiry, which provided the basis for the report. This struggle over factual details was to characterise the approach of historian Keith Windschuttle, who rejected both the numbers of those stolen from their families and the degree of violence used in the settlement of Australia. In his 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One, Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1847 he accused left-wing academics of exaggerating the events of Aboriginal history in order to further their own political agenda. In particular, he argued that the extent of the “conflagration of oppression and conflict” which sought to “dispossess, degrade, and devastate the Aboriginal people” had been overstated and misrepresented and designed to “create an edifice of black victimhood and white guilt” (Windschuttle, Fabrication 1). Manne responded to Windschuttle’s allegations in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, arguing that Windschuttle arguments were “unpersuasive and unsupported either by independent research or even familiarity with the relevant secondary historical literature” (7) and that the book added nothing to the debates. Other academics like Stephen Muecke, Marcia Langton and Heather Goodall expressed concerns about Windschuttle’s work, and in 2003 historians Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark published The History Wars, which described the implications of the politicisation of history on the study of the past. At the same time, historian Bain Attwood in Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History argued that the contestation over history was eroding the “integrity of intellectual life in Australia” (2). Fractures also broke out between writers and historians about who was best placed to write history. The Australian book reviewer Stella Clarke wrote that the History Wars were no longer constructive discussions, and she suggested that historical novelists could colonise the territory traditionally dominated by professional historians. Inga Clendinnen wasn’t so sure. She wrote in a 2006 Quarterly Essay entitled “The History Question: Who Owns the Past?” that, while novelists could get inside events through a process of “applied empathy,” imagination could in fact obstruct the truth of reality (20). Discussion The History Wars saw academics engage publicly to exhibit a set of competing ideas about Australia’s identity in the nation’s media and associated cultural sites, and while the debates initially prompted interest they eventually came to be described as violent and unproductive public conversations about historical details and ideological positions. Indeed, just as the museum curator could no longer authoritatively prescribe the cultural meaning of artefacts, so the History Wars showed that public intellectuals could not adjudicate the identity of the nation nor prescribe the nature of its conduct. For left-wing public intellectuals and commentators, the History Wars came to signify the further marginalisation of progressive politics in the face of the dominant, conservative, and increasingly populist constituency. Fundamentally, the battles over the past reinforced fears that Australia’s public culture was becoming less diverse, less open, and less able to protect traditional civil rights, democratic freedoms, and social values. Importantly for intellectuals like Robert Manne, there was a sense that Australian society was less able or willing to reflect upon the moral legitimacy of its past actions as a part of the process of considering its contemporary identity. In contrast right-wing intellectuals and commentators argued that the History Wars showed how public debate under a conservative government had been liberated from political correctness and had become more vibrant. This was the position of Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen who argued that rather than a decline in public debate there had been, in fact, “vigorous debate of issues that were once banished from the national conversation” (91). She went on to insist that left-wing commentators’ concerns about public debate were simply a mask for their discomfort at having their views and ideas challenged. There is no doubt that the History Wars, while media-orchestrated debates that circulated a set of ideological positions designed to primarily attract audiences and construct particular views of Australia, also raised public awareness of the complex issues associated with Australia’s Indigenous past. Indeed, the Wars ended what W.E.H Stanner had called the “great silence” on Indigenous issues and paved the way for Kevin Rudd’s apology to Indigenous people for their “profound grief, suffering and loss”. The Wars prompted conversations across the nation about what it means to be Australian and exposed the way history is deeply implicated in power surely a goal of both intellectual debate and curated exhibitions. ConclusionThis paper has argued that the public intellectual can operate like a curator in his or her efforts to preserve particular ideas, interpretations, and narratives of public culture. 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