Archive for February, 2010

Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Desert Channels

The Desert Channels book, edited by Libby Robin, Chris Dickman and Mandy Martin, is the centrepiece of a project that combines book, art exhibitions and web-based materials that explore the understandings of the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland.

Read more about the book, including a full list of contributors, at the Desert Channels web site.

ANZMapS Conference

Friday, February 19th, 2010

ANZMapS invites you to join us in Adelaide, for our 2010 Conference programme

Wednesday 7 April – Friday 9 April 2010: State Library of South Australia

Mapping Climate: an Environment for Change is the second annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Map Society. ANZMapS was formed last year by the amalgamation of the Australian Map Circle and the New Zealand Map Society.

Further details at ANZMapS web site

Museum collections lecture

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

“What is the point of old archaeological and anthropological collections in the 21st century?”

Dr Christopher Chippindale
Visiting curator from Cambridge Museum and Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge England

Thursday 25th February
6.00 – 7.30 pm Friends Lounge
National Museum of Australia

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge is an old collection, founded in 1883 and incorporating older accumulations. Its original mission was the high Victorian idea of a combined ethnology-archaeology, studying the primitives in both their ancient and their modern variants. A new programme to modernise its buildings and re-shape its displays prompts it to ask fundamental questions about its collections and its mission. What are they for? Who is their audience today? Are they still of merit and value? Or should the MAA recognise its obsolescence and simply close?

Cost: $5 Friends, NMA & ANU Staff, $10 non members

Dr Christopher Chippindale is curator of the Cambridge Museum (MAA), also a field archaeologist and Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge England, and a long term associate of the Centre for Archaeology Research at the ANU. He is a Visiting Fellow with the Department of Archaeology and Natural History ANU for February 2010.

Bookings are required for all Friends events. Please phone 02 6208 5048 or send an email to friends@nma.gov.au