The Canberra Museum and Art Gallery (CMAG) has entered a partnership with the University of Canberra (UC) to work with the university’s students of Cultural Heritage and Conservation.
The students are working their way through more than 3,500 Press Gallery images dating back to the 1920s, sorting, cataloguing and archiving the collection.
According to the Assistant Professor and Discipline Lead of Cultural Heritage and Conservation at UC’s Faculty of Arts and Design, Alison Wain, the work provided practical, work-integrated learning opportunities for the students who experienced how to approach a collection of such a scale first-hand.
Dr Wain said it was wonderful to have CMAG staff spending time with the students discussing the photos and sharing their expertise.
Acting Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Collections at CMAG, Rowan Henderson said CMAG did not have the resources to catalogue its enormous collection in the detail required.
“This is what has made the partnership with UC such a great success, Ms Henderson said.
“The students have been incredibly diligent, working their way through more than half of the collection these past few weeks,”
Dr Wain said the second and third year students who enrolled for the special winter unit had gained more insight and practical experience from this project than anticipated.
“From working out the details of each photograph mostly in handwritten text, to collating the photos against the parameters set by CMAG, scanning and filing each image made for an integrated learning experience,” Dr Wain said.
CMAG is planning various exhibitions and interactive methods to ‘crowd source’ the stories attached to the photos from its collection.
The photographs have already turned up one Canberra story with Digital Media student, Amy Campbell discovering that a picture (above) of a little girl riding on the Civic carousel more than 30 years ago was the sister of her mother’s work colleague.
