Handing on the Torch: Curatorship of the ANU Classics Museum

Since its inception in 1962, the ANU Classics Museum has been curated by a series of extraordinary women such as Professor Beryl Rawson, Dr Ann Moffatt, and most recently, Professor Elizabeth Minchin. These women undertook the role of curator in addition to full-time teaching and research, and very often in a voluntary capacity. Now, for the first time in the museum’s history, a dedicated curatorial role has been established through the philanthropic support of the Friends of the ANU Classics Museum. This position, the Friends’ Lecturer and Curator of the ANU Classics Museum, has been taken up by a former student (at both undergraduate and doctoral level) of Elizabeth’s, Dr Georgia Pike-Rowney.

Georgia’s first experiences with objects from the ANU Classics Museum occurred during a course devised and taught by Elizabeth, ‘Artefacts and Society in the Greco-Roman World’. In this course, students were able to handle ancient artefacts and learn about daily life in Ancient Greek and Roman society. Georgia remembers the experience vividly:

‘Elizabeth handed me a lovely Roman red slip-ware dish – and asked me to turn it over. She indicated some splotchy marks on the base of the dish, and asked me to place my fingertips onto these marks. These were the fingerprints of the potter who had dipped it into the red slip 2,000 years ago. It is the kind of experience that provides a direct connection with a person who lived so many centuries ago. I have never forgotten it.

Through her new role, Georgia is now developing programs that will provide the same kind of hands-on engagement with ancient artefacts for ANU students, school students and teachers, community groups, and visitors. She is also encouraging a wide range of disciplines to consider the application of the Classics Museum collection in their research and teaching. An evening for staff and HDR students from the newly merged School of Medicine and Psychology provided attendees with the opportunity to handle many items, including an ancient bronze surgical implement, glass and ceramic unguent bottles, and a fragment of a marble sculpture in the form of a big toe.

In the Centre for Classical Studies, replacing that specific course that allowed students to engage with the collection, objects from the museum will be embedded into all Classics courses, including Ancient History, Latin and Ancient Greek. And artefacts from the ancient Mediterranean world will feature in courses in other disciplines such as Art and Design, Museum Studies, Art History and Curatorship. These hands-on experiences are supplemented by the extensive online catalogue of the entire collection which, thanks to support from the DVC (Research & Innovation) and the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, was launched in 2020.

The process of passing on the curatorial torch from Elizabeth to Georgia is ongoing. One of the first steps was to work together cleaning the museum cases, opening up the cabinets and allowing Georgia to familiarise herself with the collection. In this informal manner, Elizabeth shares stories and experiences about the objects and the people that have cared for them over the museum’s 60 years. In time, Georgia will pass the torch to another, and will share stories about the objects and about her predecessors, so that the museum’s long history of careful academic curatorship might be maintained into the future.

Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Minchin
Dr. Georgia Pike-Rowney
School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.