Margaret Plant is a Professor of Australian art history, and as of November 2022
Emeritus Professor
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of Visual Arts at
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
.
Career
Born in
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
in 1940, Plant grew up in
Williamstown and as a schoolgirl saw paintings by
John Perceval
John de Burgh Perceval AO (1 February 1923 – 15 October 2000) was a well-known Australian artist. Perceval was the last surviving member of a group known as the Angry Penguins who redefined Australian art in the 1940s. Other members include ...
of fishing boats the suburb's harbour,and later wrote the first monograph on the artist.
Plant began tutoring in the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
Department of Fine Arts in 1962 until 1965 and completed a Master of Arts in 1969 there with her thesis ''The realm of the curtain : Paul Klee and theatre''. Meanwhile, with
Ursula Hoff
Ursula Hoff (26 December 1909 in London, UK – 10 January 2005 in Melbourne) was an Australian scholar and prolific author on art. She enjoyed a long career at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, where she was deputy director from 196 ...
she wrote ''The National Gallery of Victoria; Painting, Drawing, Sculpture'' published in 1968,
and that year was appointed Lecturer at
RMIT University
RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city ...
. Hers was the first academic appointment of an art historian within an Australian art school; she was made Senior Lecturer there, a position she held until 1975.
Plant returned to the University of Melbourne as senior lecturer in fine arts 1975–82 and resided in
Malvern
Malvern or Malverne may refer to:
Places Australia
* Malvern, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide
* Malvern, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne
* City of Malvern, a former local government area near Melbourne
* Electoral district of Malvern, an e ...
. She completed her doctoral dissertation ''Fresco painting in Avignon and northern Italy : a study of some fourteenth century cycles of saints' lives outside Tuscany'' in 1987.
From 1982–96, long association with
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
as Professor of Visual Arts followed, and she has continued there as Emeritus Professor. Frequently a presenter at events and exhibitions at the
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.
The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
, she has been outspoken about the invisiblity or, or erasure of,women in Australian art and social histories and their representation in collections. From 1984-87 Plant was appointed to the Council of the
Australian National Gallery, where on her retirement it was noted that her "contribution as one of Australia's leading academics in the field of visual arts, together with her particular knowledge of Australian art, was invaluable." In the 1990s she was an invited member of a committee, headed by the chief commissioner of Port Phillip Des Clark, established to build a museum of contemporary art in Melbourne, recently realised in design and construction of NGV Contemporary.
Plant's research and writing is wide-ranging, in catalogue essays, academic papers, book reviews, journal articles and monographs, from
Turner
Turner may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Turner (surname), a common surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
* Turner (given name), a list of people with the given name
*One who uses a lathe for turni ...
and
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
to settlers' domestication of the Australian bush, 7128717926 and including a children's introduction to
Australian art
Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early-twentieth-century painters, print makers, photographers, and ...
.
Paul Giles in the ''Australian Book Review'' hailed Plant's 2017 book ''Love and Lament: An essay on the arts in Australia in the twentieth century'', as "multivalent, wide-angled" and "ranging widely across architecture, film, photography, music, dance, and popular culture, as well as literature and painting
emonstratingconvincingly that, as she puts it, there was 'no dormant period' in Australian cultural and artistic life during this time."
Honours
Plant was elected to the
Australian Academy of the Humanities
The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...
in 1985.
Monash University instituted the 'Margaret Plant Annual Lecture in Art History' in 2018, at which presenters have been James Meyer, curator,
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
, Washington, in 2018;
Christina Barton, director of the
Adam Art Gallery
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
Te Pātaka Toi, at the
Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand.
The university is well know ...
, in 2019;
Ming Tiampo, Professor of Art History, Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at
Carleton University
Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...
, Ottawa, Canada, in 2021; and in 2022, Erika Wolf, research fellow at the Neboltai Collection of 20th Century Propaganda.
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plant, Margaret
Australian art historians
1940 births
Women art historians
Australian art
Australian academics
Australian women writers
Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Living people