How the Antiquities Museum got its pots – recent cases and new directions at the RD Milns Antiquities Museum

Date: Sunday 2 June 2024

Time: 2–4pm

Location: E302, Forgan Smith Building, St Lucia Campus

 

Join UQ’s Friends of Antiquity at the June Sunday Series event, ‘How the Antiquities Museum got its pots – recent cases and new directions at the RD Milns Antiquities Museum’.

 

Provenance is a term that gets used a lot in museum circles, meaning an artefact’s collecting history of biography before being acquired by a particular collection.

 

‘Good’ provenance is desirable, ‘poor’ provenance might mean repatriation. But what does it all mean, how does one start to understand and research provenance, and what are the implications for UQ’s RD Milns Antiquities Museum?

 

Join James Donaldson, Museum Manager and Curator, RD Milns Antiquities Museum to hear about recent research in provenance at the Museum, and new directions being taken on how valuable collections are researched, developed, communicated and maintained for future generations.

 

The talk will be followed by afternoon tea.

 

 

James Donaldson is Manager and Curator of UQ’s RD Milns Antiquities Museum and a PhD candidate in History with the School of Philosophical Inquiry.

 

James’ interests are in how antiquities came to Australia and how they have been used here over the last century or more. His PhD research explores why Australian service personnel took antiquities as souvenirs during the First World War. James is a BA Hons (Archaeology) and MPhil (Ancient History) graduate of UQ.