Interview with Catherine de Lorenzo, Alison Inglis, Joanna Mendelssohn and Catherine Speck
This week the Art Association of Australian and New Zealand held their annual conference at RMIT University in Melbourne. Given that nearly all of the writers for Memo Review are art historians, we thought that this week we would take up the subject of art history itself. But also, given that Memo Review reviews an art exhibition every week, we thought it would be interesting to take up the subject of art history and the art exhibition. Luckily, four Australian art historians—Catherine de Lorenzo, Alison Inglis, Joanna Mendelssohn and Catherine Speck—have recently published a book, Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening Our Eyes (Thames & Hudson, 2018), a history of the art exhibition in Australia since 1960, and Memo Review interviews them here.
Okay, everybody, could you please tell us readers what the book is about?
JM In a way, it's a love letter to the profession of museum curator. Actually, the subject of the book is something we were trying to explain to ourselves while we were writing it.