Lecturer in Art History at UQ Dr Prue Ahrens says she intends to use an international fellowship to forge stronger links between the University and the Smithsonian American Art Musuem (SAAM).
Dr Ahrens was recently announced as the winner of a Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Fellowship at the museum for three months.
She will be advised by Dr Cynthia Mills (SAAM) and Dr Lee Glazer (Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery) while she's in residence at the Museum's Fellows Office.
"I’m thrilled to have won and to be returning to Washington. I curated a photography exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Washington in 2006," Dr Ahrens said.
She says she intends to study the way the South-Pacific region and its people are represented in American art from the mid-1800s onwards.
"There is a shift in the way the South-Pacific region is represented during this period. As networks of modernity crossed the South-Pacific, artists, photographers and illustrators start to present a slightly different vision from the enchanted exoticism of earlier paintings of the Pacific. The more modernised version of the Pacific Islands pictures urbanisation and monetarism, and is presented through more modern styles and mediums," she said.
The SAAM is home to one of the largest and most inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal key aspects of America’s rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today with more than 7000 artists represented in the collection.
Dr Ahrens' studies will comprise focused analyses of American painting, photography and printed ephemera housed at the three sites and portraying the South-Pacific islands in terms of urbanisation, industry and cultural modernity.
"I hope that this appointment will also help facilitate wider research collaborations between the Smithsonian and scholars at The University of Queensland," Dr Ahrens said.
"To that end, I am working with my supervisors at the Smithsonian to involve UQ scholars in an interactive, online colloquium entitled 'Surface Beauty: American Art and Freer's Aesthetic Vision'.
"This colloquium will explore the complicated narratives of cultural transmission and translation that lie beneath the surface harmonies of collector Charles Lang Freer’s aesthetic vision."
The colloquium will be run as a "webinar" from Washington DC on Wednesday, May 12. "It is a fantastic opportunity for UQ scholars to engage and interact with other international researchers in the field without even having to leave campus," Dr Ahrens said.
She will take up her fellowship from September 15 this year.
Media: Dr Ahrens (UQ School of English, Media Studies & Art History) at p.ahrens@uq.edu.au or 3365 2710 or Shirley Glaister at UQ Communications (3365 1931).
