University of Melbourne Special Collections: Exhibitions

Exhibitions

Current Exhibition

Murderous Melbourne: A Celebration of Australian Crime Fiction and Place

Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 10 June to 7 September 2008

Australia has nurtured many fine crime fiction writers over the years, starting with Mary Fortune and Fergus Hume in the late 1800s. However, the post-World War 2 years represent crime fiction’s ‘golden age’ in this country. The ranks of Australian crime fiction writers from this period include Carter Brown, S.H. Courtier, Geoff de Fraga, Charlotte Jay (inaugural winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1954), Helen Mace, A.E. Martin, Margot Neville, Eric North, James Preston, Elizabeth Salter, Arthur Upfield and June Wright — to name but a few. More recently, Marshall Browne, Peter Corris, Kerry Greenwood, Barry Maitland, Shane Maloney and Peter Temple (winner of the UK Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2007) have been widely acclaimed for their crime fiction writing.

The exhibition Murderous Melbourne features items from the University of Melbourne’s extensive collection of Australian crime fiction. It also showcases work by third-year students of architecture and Master’s students of landscape architecture from the University of Melbourne, who have used Australian crime fiction as a tool for stretching the boundaries of creativity and design. The architecture students have designed a Centre for Australian Crime Fiction, to be located on the car park adjacent to the north court of the Union building. A major influence on their designs was June Wright’s 1961 crime novel Faculty of Murder, set in the University of Melbourne. The landscape architecture students have designed stage props for S.H. Courtier’s crime novels See Who’s Dying (1967) and Murder’s Burning (1967), both set in the Australian outback.

Forthcoming Exhibition

Write of Fancy: The Golden Cockerel Press

Ground floor, Baillieu Library, 17 August-26 September 2008

The exhibition Write of fancy, curated by Kerrianne Stone, will explore the hearts and minds of the inventors, writers and artists of this British press which operated between 1920 and 1960. It will showcase examples from the Baillieu Library’s exceptional collection of Golden Cockerel books, comprising the gifts of various individual donors and the Friends of the Baillieu Library. Examples include Eric Gill and Robert Gibbings’ collaboration on The four Gospels (1931), John Buckland Wright’s illustration of Endymion (1947), and maritime history books.

Golden Cockerel books achieved a visual harmony between content, typography and illustration. The exhibition is a chance to discover how this private press from its inception was a flight of fancy, and how through its words and images it became a ‘write of fancy.’

Past Exhibitions

Cambridge Collected: The Pierre Gorman Story

Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 20 March to 30 May 2008

Cambridge in Prints and Books

Comprising close to 3000 items dating from 1568 to the present, the collection of books and prints at the University of Melbourne relating to Cambridge – the University and the town – may well be the most extensive outside Cambridge itself. The University of Melbourne since its establishment in 1853 has had strong links with Cambridge University and collected books on all aspects of Cambridge. The acquisition of Pierre Gorman’s collection in 1994 on the initiative of the then Collections Management Librarian, Juliet Flesch, was therefore a valuable addition to the University’s material and the additions since that time, mostly donated by Pierre Gorman, has made the University of Melbourne collection of Cambridge books and prints truly world class. Amongst the particular strengths of the Cambridge Collection are the guide books and the histories of the university and colleges, many of them illustrated by the foremost artists of their day. There are important black and white or colour illustrations in various sizes by notable artists including Loggan, the Harradens, the Storers, Mason, Dyer, among many others. The University of Melbourne Library is the only Australian library to possess the rare Loggan 1st edition (1690) and the even rarer 2nd edition (1715). A highlight of the collection is a splendidly illuminated 1662 heraldic manuscript depicting the arms of the Earls of Cambridge, the Chancellors of Cambridge University and the colleges of Cambridge University.

Dr Pierre Patrick Gorman (1924-2006)

Pierre Gorman was born in Melbourne as the only child of Sir Eugene and Marthe Gorman. After graduating from Melbourne Grammar and then from the University of Melbourne with a BAgSci in 1949 and a BEd in 1951, Pierre went on to study at Cambridge University, from where in 1960 he became the first deaf person to take out a PhD.

Pierre was totally deaf from birth but, through the dedication of his parents and teachers as well as his own willpower and intelligence, he learnt to master the spoken language and became an expert lip reader.

Pierre had a long and distinguished career in England and Australia as educator of the deaf and a tireless advocate against discrimination towards people with disabilities. After retirement from the Faculty of Education at Monash in 1983 he offered his large collections of books and prints relating to Cambridge to the University of Melbourne where they were acquired in 1994 and 1995 respectively.

Perhaps because he did not have a sense of hearing, Pierre came to be particularly interested in the visual arts. He collected in great depth all aspects of the history of the University and town of Cambridge, but especially prints and books relating to his beloved Corpus Christi College.

The books and prints in the Gorman Cambridge Collection at the University of Melbourne were collected over a lifetime and to the end of his life Pierre continued to collect Cambridge books and donate them to the University. He documented the Gorman Cambridge collection in an exhaustive bibliography which also includes books on Cambridge found in other parts of the University of Melbourne collections.

For his services to the University of Melbourne Pierre was awarded an LLD honoris causa in 2000.

Past exhibitions using the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne