Museum Noise

save this for a rainy day…

Rain Falling draft 2

elizabeth farm, north elevation

In 1974, the fate of Elizabeth Farm hung in the balance. Since 1968, attempts at restoration carried out by a local band of neighbours and benefactors had proven unsuccessful. Saved from demolition, the property remained derelict and vulnerable.

Though passionate and well-connected, the Elizabeth Farm Museum Trust was struggling to finance further repairs. Fears were mounting, at least within heritage circles, that poor skill and judgment was placing the property at further risk.

As moves were underway in state parliament to frame new heritage laws, a small departmental report was prepared by government architect Charles Weatherburn and project architect Peter Bridges, recording evidence and listing options for the future of Elizabeth Farm.

Succinct and persuasive, this document featured a series of vivid black and white photographs that in years to come would form, perhaps unwittingly, one of the museum’s most important visual records – the site captured at a critical turning point, on the eve of government ownership.

Due to its ruinous state of repair and the exposure of details normally hidden within walls and ceiling areas, Elizabeth Farm displayed much that made it significant: masonry, paint, plaster, joinery and roofing structures along with archaeological traces and clues connecting this dwelling to the earliest days of colonial Sydney.

oak tree room, showing early stone footings

elizabeth farm, eastern elevation

roofspace, showing early skillion ghost detail

eastern verandah rafters showing repair detail

roofspace, showing 1805 corner joint and shingles

roofspace, showing 1793 ironbark truss system

roofspace, above north verandah

interior doorway to dining room closet

So what makes Elizabeth Farm different?

What makes Elizabeth Farm different is the way in which it sneaks up on its visitors – what might at first seem like a conventional house museum peddling the usual blend of comfortable half-truths and comforting illusions, turns into a yarn that doesn’t add up, or is open ended, or has fascinating twists… not your usual house museum: part abstract installation, part period piece, part education tool, part historic shrine…

I use the term ‘post-modernism in drag’ to characterise the curatorial treatment of Elizabeth Farm because the guiding principle at the heart of the museum is a kind of wilfully deceptive, game being played – not only on visitors but also on its own history. I like the notion because it captures a variety of other attributes – dressy, theatrical and iconoclastic…

Room arrangements have been intentionally distorted, filled with errors and inaccuracies. Some objects are covered, others are left bare. Pictures that never hung in the house, some never even seen by the family are given pride of place. Modern replicas of historic pieces have been chosen over originals. Spaces like the Drawing Room, known to be busy family spaces, filled with books, ornaments, pictures, journals, are furnished in the most minimal way possible – walls have been left bare, decoration is limited to candlesticks a mirror and a handful of miniature paintings. The house is essentially empty – there is no evidence of occupants – yet the place feels welcoming and comfortable, perfectly at ease with its new role as cultural icon. To heap contradiction on contradiction, waxed floors, door knobs and cedar joinery are polished daily, open fires are lit, cabbage boils away on the kitchen range and fresh flowers, based on the colonial garden of Elizabeth Macarthur, displayed throughout the house in text-book Victorian arrangements. But as I said earlier, there is wilful deception at play – all is not how it seems.

And going a little further with the ‘dressing in drag’ metaphor, there’s a message in the madness… the ‘fluff’ hides a sting.

I’ll explore these ideas further after we take a quick tour of Elizabeth Farm.

[click here to view (or print off) the presentation slideshow on flickr]

Starts with an aerial shot taken a few months ago…you can see Parramatta CBD in the background, the river, the railway, the reserve…this is the boundary of the old Macarthur estate – soldiers barracks, queens wharf, mill, gate lodge, driveway, etc.

[next slide] Here you can see the 3 main buildings and the café under the trees…

[then run through slides...]

I’ll run through the main points quickly now… explaining how Elizabeth Farm is in various measures: deceptive, theatrical, illuminating, iconoclastic.

WHERE TO START…

Lets start in 1968, when Elizabeth Farm was on the eve of becoming a national treasure…ramshackle, overgrown and rustic, infested with termites, too much for the elderly sisters living there.

Something was happening in the late 1960s, at both a personal, social and government level…the archives office had just made available microfilmed records of the colony’s earliest years, including convict and immigration records. People were becoming fascinated in their own histories. Older clans like the Macarthurs were reaffirming their family’s importance to a distinctly Australian history.

With the house and a couple of acres soon to go on the market, a band of local supporters, councilors and members of the Macarthur family formed a preservation committee ‘The Elizabeth Farm Museum Trust’ to effectively buy the farm back.

After a few years of amateur and heavy-handed restoration work, involving the removal of any fabric considered ‘un-Macarthur’, the government stepped in to rest control away from the preservation committee, slapping the state’s first permanent conservation order on the property in 1977.

It would appear that this pioneering PCO gave formal recognition to the cultural significance of Australia’s earliest surviving European dwelling, but it also saved the house from certain destruction at the hands of well-meaning but untrained restorers.

Between 1978 and 1983, under the management of the Heritage Branch of the Public Works Department and the direction of the government architects office, Elizabeth Farm was carefully and meticulously peeled back and rebuilt. Damaged joinery and plaster was replaced with new materials. Where possible, sturdier woodwork was stripped, conserved and refinished though not always returned to the same place it was taken from. The house was de-electrified with a new circuits placed under the floorboards for museum purposes only. Paint finishes, based on archaeological scrapes and evidence, were reinstated. Sandstone and brickwork was repointed and made serviceable. The roof was re-sheeted with corrugated metal, painted red and then grey. Termite eaten shingled areas were ripped up and re-laid with new shingles, finished on their undersides in limewash paint, just like the originals. The massive beams in the main cottage, most dating to 1793, were injected with epoxy fillers to stiffen and secure the roofing structures, before new plaster ceilings were fitted, using cornice mouldings taken from surviving original sections. As most of the old cottage was built on highly unstable clay soils, underpinning was used to prop up walls.

When all this work was nearly complete, leaving the site looking brand new, lifeless and clinical, Elizabeth Farm was offered to the Historic Houses Trust to manage and operate as a house museum. This was in late 1982.

So the trust took responsibility for a newly refurbished, in may ways faked up, jewelbox, handed over on a platter. There was no collection – and much of its architectural fabric, or clues, had been heavily altered during the massive restoration program.

DECEPTION

What was the Trust to do with this curious object…?

Firstly a garden was needed – to give the the cottage context – this was an agricultural enterprise…an abstracted ‘cubist’ garden was created able to demonstrate or interpret 1000 acres of farm, orchard, kitchen garden, pleasure garden and driveway…in a single hectare, evoking or simulating a ‘big’ garden.

Using huge archive of Macarthur records and connections with Macarthur descendents, Elizabeth Farm was furnished with fakes.

And rather than fill it up with unrelated antiques it was decided to go with a more abstract approach, using highly accurate copies of furniture known to have lived at EF, well-researched reproduction fabrics and curatorially acceptable props – all to create an impression, aid storytelling, provide points of departure…

It was also decided to avoid pinning the house down to the a specific timeframe. Elizabeth Farm, like all houses evolved over time, was dragged through several phases of occupants, who left different layers of evidence… here was a house with many moments

RATIONALE: TREAT THE BUILDING AS A COMPOSITE OF CLUES
multiple points of departure, multiple voices, intersecting plots – the whole POMO catastrophe…make sure the audience are empowered, aware of the fiction, make sense of the illusion…

CONVERSATION

I also like to use the term ‘cleared space’ coined by Peter Emmett the first curator of Hyde Park Barracks and the famous museum post-modernist behind MOS.

This refers to the way in which museums can ‘open up’ possibilities for storytelling and interaction…for creating more elbow room, clearing space to let other stories and threads to creep in – and especially, locating the house, the family, their many stories within a wider colonial context, within a bigger conversation…

And this is an important point…The history of Elizabeth Farm is part of a much larger tale: a continuing conversation about people, places, ideas and journeys. The narrative arc of John and Elizabeth Macarthur sweeps across several hundred years of Highland warfare, merchant capital, the voyages of Captain Cook, wars of independence, the opium wars, parliamentary reform, industrialization of the English countryside and colonial self-government. As a family at Elizabeth Farm, the Macarthurs lived through a catastrophic period of environmental and cultural change, much of it influenced by decisions and actions initiated from the homestead at Parramatta. And within the home was the familiar experience of colonial life – long periods of separation, fractured lives, uncertainty and instability. Theirs is a tale of lives turned inside out and then out again, of managing close family connections across long distances, of dealing with newness, upheaval and attempting to put down roots in a strange location. And it is the articulation of these ideas and experiences, these conversations, that holds the most promise for maintaining the museum’s relevance in a world where such experiences are equally commonplace.

THEATRE

Most interesting of all, the principles of theatre set design were applied…using a small number of resonant objects, employed in abstract arrangements to evoke a range of meanings and impressions.

Theatre Designer Peter Hall, quoted in a recent article be Julie Clark, advises that …

stage design should not seek to be archaeologically oppressive. It should be visionary…a world of suggestion rather than actuality, creating an environment which allows meaning to be expressed in all of its contradictions. Brevity and simplicity will succeed where over-wrought and oppressive attention to detail will fail, so long as the audience is able to connect and makes sense of the illusion…

The conscious, unapologetic use of fakes throughout the house not only allows people to use the furniture but it also deflects attention away from the objects themselves and invites them to think about and move about the in more ‘connecting’ immersive, or stimulating ways…

For example, the dining room features 2 paintings by Conrad Martens, both made in the mid 19th century…an 1860s view of the homestead across paddocks from Parramatta River and an 1850s view of the eastern garden. (ie both painted after family left estate, sentimental, showy, etc)

In the same room are curtains out of place in a regency period dining room, being more suited to a cheerful drawing room or morning room…

This is no frozen interior, this is not a dolls house, we as curators are not searching for the ‘right feel’, but rather a house filled with criss-crossing conversations. A house filled with contradictions, with complications, with possibilities…

ILLUMINATION

You might be surprised to hear after all this mumbo-jumbo, that Elizabeth Farm is also a place of teaching or instruction – where specific things are taught and discovered.

How a colonial house felt, to some extent…
How it was lit, kept warm or cool…
Traditions of design, ornamentation, vernacular construction…
Arrangements of rooms – divisions between servants and family
toileting, sanitation, sickness, birth, death, etc
Eating, diet, cooking, food management…
smell, touch, taste
work, heat, cold…

all of these are things are able to be learnt about at Elizabeth Farm

program of talks, tours, workshops, seminars along with our famous education programs…

ICONOCLASM

I’ve talked briefly about opening up the frame of reference, tackling history from various angles, using fiction, theatre and art to prod the imagination and taking pride in being unconventional to some extent. Well in recent years we’ve become increasingly interested in myth-busting. And there’s no story more laden with myth and romance than the historical treatment of John and Elizabeth Macarthur.

Its generally accepted that John Macarthur was a creep, or a rotten scoundrel, or a bad husband and that Elizabeth Macarthur was a shining light of taste, breeding, agricultural know-how and the colony’s first lady. Who agrees? What do you know of the Macarthurs? What is the general perception?

These depictions are well established – though that doesn’t mean they’re not anachronistic and deceptive and a long way from what records reveal. And, really, the romantic old tales are just plain boring compared to the more likely ones.

You might be aware of the basic details, but who knew Elizabeth was pregnant at the alter in 1788, having known John less than a year…? They were both 22, in desperate straits…

[breif story of John and Elizabeth at the altar, pregnant, impoverished, anxious, in desperate straits, etc...]

Here’s a few we’ve been having fun with in recent years…

• It appears that Elizabeth Macarthur never managed the estate
• that the family’s wealth was more reliant on John’s work in London than Elizabeth’s efforts in the colony during his absences
• that her letters to John may have been intentionally deceptive or that she withheld information
• Johns youngest sons coordinated lunacy proceedings against him, ensuring control of his fortune passed on to them before he lost his faculties,
• that he was forcibly restrained in his bedroom before being sent to Camden to minimise a growing image problem
• that John actually never saw his house completed - never enjoyed the details added after he died – the cedar joinery or paint schemes

This is my favourite – one thats gained quite a bit attention this year, especially with the family…

• the famous portraits of John and Elizabeth Macarthur were not only painted years after the couple had died, they didn’t arrive in Australia until 1935 and never hung in a Macarthur family home. Its also likely the so-called portrait of Elizabeth is of someone else – the image of a young prosperous lady, with heirloom jewellery doesn’t fit with the circumstances of Elizabeth who was well into her 50s before she experienced anything like financial security or comfort.

wikis Useful exercise in recently updating and expanding wikipedia entry for EF and John/Elizabeth and encountering the peer review process filtered through…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia

here are the list of participants in the peer review process…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Participants

tagging keep our eyes on Powerhouse tagging project and wait to see if this is a fad or new information architecture. Main problem is lack of time for curators to refine collection notes/records.

blogging lets keep talking - the GG work-in-progress blog will be a useful kick off, although we will need to determine the style, focus, authorship and interactivity of intended blogs down the track.

podcasts Not sure where these are heading in the big wide world - there appears to be less and less written about em. Nonetheless, podcast tours appear to be getting produced by most big museums. What about a series of 15 minute biography podcasts, written and presented by HHT curators…?

flickr Flickr allows you to create theme based (or tagged) photo sets, along with links through to HHT site, organised into topic, project or event and then made available via a single URL…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpbm/

delicious Delicious allows an ever increasing (or changing) list of tagged sites to be grouped together and made available from a single URL…this could be organised according to the interests or focus of each museum.

http://del.icio.us/garycrockett/7aug

SMH article on the rise and alleged fall of blogging … back in april 2007.

Don’t you hate lazy redirections…? Well here’s another one - interesting nonetheless.

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Who’d have thought that so much mystery and misunderstanding would surround one of Australia’s most admired pioneering figures?

Undated, untitled portrait in oil, by unknown artist, assumed to be Elizabeth Macarthur, held in the Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales.

Though often regarded as one of a pair, her portrait was painted by an unknown artist – possibly in England – in the 19th century, several years apart from its companion piece – the large oil of John Macarthur. At the time of being painted, the ‘subjects’ John and Elizabeth Macarthur were living in Australia. The paintings depict them at the age of about 30 – 40 years old, dating them roughly (if we are to assume they are in fact John and Elizabeth Macarthur) to the years 1810-1820. Its unlikely the Macarthurs ever saw these paintings or even knew of their existence. Both portraits are unsigned, undated and untitled and match neither in size, skill or style. As we’ll learn, the portrait of John might well look like him. Any resemblance to Elizabeth, however, is uncertain.

PART ONE

Its almost a truism though, or at least more common than not, that the more iconic someone’s story becomes, the more celebrated or treasured, the more likely that story is to become skewed and prone to invention. In becoming public property, they become tainted with all the expectations and ideals that public aspires to. And the more likely that story takes on the quality of fable. In my opinion, this, unfortunately, is what’s become of Elizabeth Macarthur. The impressions we have of her, like the portrait often used to qualify and lend visual weight to assumptions about her character – her courage and capability, her practical nature, her tactfulness and even her beauty – are highly unreliable – given all the evidence we have. She has become fabled and, along the way, her story has been co-opted by all manner of storytellers – historians, genealogists, curators, journalists, teachers, cultural planners, feminists, artists – to underline a myth, an important myth nonetheless. Its a well known, well worn ‘new world’ progress myth…that one person can make a difference…that courage, loyalty and grit will conquer ruthlessness, greed and, in the case of early colonial New South Wales, that taste and sophistication will rise above and dominate a barbaric, uncivilised world. That is what Elizabeth Macarthur has come to represent and this, in my opinion, is why Australians have become so protective of her. Her story reminds us that one person, one not so very special woman, can make a difference, despite all the odds.

PART TWO

Firstly a little background detail. When the young Elizabeth Veale, from Devon, married the young soldier John Macarthur, from Plymouth, in Bridgerule, Devon, in 1788, he was on unauthorised leave from his army regiment in Gibraltar, on stern orders to return. For the previous 5 years, he’d remained in the district, no doubt demoralised, on half-pay, where his regiment had been recalled and finally disbanded. He was around 16 when he enlisted in 1783, although wars in America had just ended and conflicts with France and Spain

were temporarily in limbo, leaving him probably frustrated and feeling left behind. The more lucrative postings to India typically went to officers with better connections and families. A military career, his only way up the English social ladder, was rapidly turning sour. There’s a possibility he’d been living above his means and may have fallen into debt… but that another tale.

So back to the alter…John aged 21, had met Elizabeth also 21, through his work as a teacher at a local Grammar school. Despite his predicament with the army, he was perhaps most anxious about becoming a father, as Elizabeth was at least 4 months pregnant, and neither knew what the next few months, or years, would hold. Relocating to Gibraltar appeared out of the question although the income was needed. It was at this stage he was possibly planning on leaving the army entirely to recoup the 400 pounds borrowed to purchase his original commission. On the horizon, was a dark cloud, with John’s reputation, and therefore the prospects of his young wife and child, in desperate straits.

In the months following their wedding the Macarthurs must have spent sleepless nights weighing up options, their lives in the hands of fate. John needed to either take up duties in Gibraltar or face court marshal. In late 1788, a series of complicated and taxing negotiations with the War Office eventually offered a way out – resulting in Macarthur taking up a new posting, as a trade off, with a regiment being hastily assembled for the prison settlement, here in Sydney. New South Wales, according to early reports, was an untapped Garden of Eden.

The first few months of 1789 were frantic with correspondence and travel between London and Devon. Elizabeth suffered a difficult coach ride, in her final days of pregnancy, giving birth to a son five months into their marriage, at a travellers’ pub in Bath. Its perhaps worth noting… there were no family or friends present at the birth of their first son Edward. As historian Alan Atkinson has suggested, their lives must have felt stripped bare at this point – outsiders with uncertain futures. Six months later (11 months into their marriage) the Macarthurs were on board the squalid Neptune, awaiting orders to pull out from Gravesend, along with a fleet of transports, the new colonial regiment and around 1000 prisoners locked below decks. And Elizabeth was again pregnant.

The 6 month voyage to Sydney left 278 prisoners dead, a quarter of those who boarded. On landing at Sydney Cove in 1790, the Macarthurs found a ramshackle settlement on the brink of collapse. Stores were almost totally gone. Governor Phillip’s vision of an orderly and planned agricultural settlement had crumbled due to an absence of farmers, appropriate crops, fertilisers and farming tools. The Marines were close to mutiny – they were reduced to sharing the same rations as convicts …and so was the Governor.

It was 1793 before a house was built; at Parramatta, west of Sydney Cove. Their first and only family home. And it had taken 5 long years before John was in a position to fully employ his skills in commerce, diplomacy, brinkmanship and wit. In coming decades the Macarthur’s trading and farming interests, along with John’s political affairs, came to dominate colonial society. From nine births, seven children grew to adulthood. The family’s landholdings, both in Parramatta and later in the fertile Camden district, expanded through grant and purchase. Speculative ventures with trading goods, agriculture and eventually the production and export of fine wool reaped huge returns for the Macarthurs in the early decades of the 19th century. While John made two visits to England to strengthen family business and patronage, Elizabeth remained in Australia for the rest of her life. Their family home, Elizabeth Farm, survives today as Australia’s oldest European dwelling.

PART THREE

So lets get back to the paintings. Here’s the short version – The pair were purchased by the benefactor Sir William Dixson for the State Library’s Dixson Galleries, passing into public ownership in 1935. Prior to their appearance on the London art market around 1930, the pair belonged to Sir James Lewis Knight-Bruce, a keen portrait collector and Lord Chief Justice of Appeal from 1851. His great grandson, a Mr Thomas Cathcart believed the paintings had hung continuously in his family’s (somewhat vast) collection until the time of sale. Any history other than this was unavailable. A slim provenance indeed.

Yet, as we’ll learn, doubts surrounding their authenticity appear to have dogged the paintings from the start. And this is where the story gets interesting – though somewhat more complicated. Shipped initially to Sydney in the early 1930s where they appeared to raise suspicion amongst collectors, the pair were sent south to the Victorian bookseller and dealer AH Spencer, with the hope they might find more interest in Melbourne. According to handwritten comments in the margin of a letter to the Library in 1935 regarding the paintings’ possible purchase, State Librarian William H. Ifould concedes … I thought there was a catch somewhere. They must have been knocking about for a very long time. Wymark (the Sydney dealer) would try to sell them to Mr Dixson and Mr Macarthur Onslow. G.R. Robertson evidently made up his mind they would not pass muster with us and would let Spencer see what he could do with them in Melbourne. WHI 7/3/35.

George Roberston had recently published Sibella Macarthur Onslow’s edited transcripts of Macarthur family papers, which included, notably, a photographic plate of a cameo miniature of John Macarthur, which almost certainly was copied to make the large oil, then up for sale. Both he and Denzil would have been well aware of this source. Both would have held and admired the miniature on many occasions yet strangely neither appeared to be interested. Even more curious still, later on when the paintings were eventually acquired for the Mitchell Library, there is no mention in meetings of any discussion whatsoever regarding provenance or authenticity. And according to library records, a search through correspondence from Spencer, Robertson, Wymark and Dixson in the Angus and Robertson papers has yet to locate any reference to the portraits.

Even more interesting, back in the late 1880s, another portrait copied from this cameo had been made by a colourful and influential Italian painter Girolamo Nerli, for the Macarthur Onslow family at Camden, which was also reproduced in the 1890s by the Library in an early compilation of historical records of New South Wales. Pieces of this particular puzzle have only recently fallen into place with the help of research conducted by Annette Macarthur Onslow. Apart from this, the interesting question remains…why is no portrait of Elizabeth mentioned or why was one never commissioned…?

PART FOUR

So what happened in Melbourne…? To gain interest the paintings needed names. And Spencer needed a story – a convincing connection between the paintings and known people. Now you’d expect in this situation to bring out the big guns …the biggest guns you could get away with – in this case the obvious association between the miniature (owned and cherished by the Macarthur descendents at Camden) and the likeness of John. For this in reality was (and remains) the only link. Why Spencer made no use of the miniature is unknown. Perhaps he was unaware – perhaps no one told him. Remarkably, given the apparent difficulties he faced in gaining interest, Spencer chose not to exploit strengths, but to build from weaknesses. We need only to look at his Provenance notes to realise how tenuous his story was…

So just to recap… His ‘vital’, or otherwise only, ‘key to identification’ consisted in a ‘casual reference’ made by Mr Cathcart, linking the portraits, by ‘family tradition’, to the name of Veale. Perhaps a ‘young bride’s family’ suggested Spencer, ‘would possess portraits of their exiled relatives who were away in the wilds of Botany Bay.’ And then with more certainty; ‘These portraits are the ones cherished by the family of the most famous woman pioneer settler in the commencement days of Australian history.’ It appears, remarkably, the provenance created by Spencer was not only tenuous, but flawed.

PART FIVE

So what do we know of this family? Who were these Veales, assumed to be pining for their famous kin across the seas? Unfortunately, it appears there were none. Elizabeth’s father died when she was 6 years old. Her mother remarried in 1778, becoming Mrs Leach, when Elizabeth was 12. Her only sibling, a sister, died at the age of 2. The last we hear of Elizabeth Veale was on her wedding day in 1788. Apart from John Veale, probably her uncle, who ran her father’s farm for a few years after his death in 1772 (when Elizabeth was 6), there is no record of contact between the Australian Macarthurs and English Veales. And while one of Elizabeth’s first letters to her mother after leaving England mentions a grandfather, he is almost certainly her mother’s father and, hence, not a Veale. Even if they existed, any portraits in their possession could not have been painted from life. Spencer’s ‘vital key’ – his painting’s only connection to the Macarthurs – is seriously flawed, with no basis in fact. And remember…no mention of the miniature.

PART SIX

As we can see, Spencer’s provenance, or his claim of authenticity, hung precariously on a tenuous, single thread. Whatever the motivation, his paper-thin provenance was not short on passion. To sweeten the sale, the paintings were discounted to 160 pounds, where others, he believed, ‘might easily think them worth 500 pounds’. So, as I mentioned earlier, having been offered for sale to George Roberston and Sir Denzil Macarthur Onslow and no doubt other Sydney collectors and institutions, all without success before being sent to Melbourne, the paintings were acquired by Dixson in 1935 and presented for donation to the State Library Committee on 8 March 1935. And as I also mentioned, it appears no explanation was given concerning doubts raised at the time of purchase. To let you in on a not so well kept secret, Dixson’s eye for detail has long been questioned by subsequent curators.

PART SEVEN

So lets cut forward to the 1970s, when interest in colonial history was again on the boil. Archaeological work was taking place at Elizabeth Farm and Denzil Macarthur Onslow was heavily involved in the repair and restoration of his ancestral farmhouse. Downstairs in the State Library, conservators were preparing the portrait of Elizabeth for her first public showing. Having been laid low since acquisition some 4 decades earlier, other twists were soon to appear. During cleaning, it was discovered that an earlier version of the female subject had been over-painted, altering its appearance and age. An original lace bodice had been infilled, making it solid black, her narrow sleeves were given more volume, while her fuller face had been thinned down, presumedly to reflect a more mature character. This patchy over-painting had been performed in a stiff, inelegant manner, probably several decades after the initial work.

Comparing the two portraits, conservators also noted stylistic similarities between the studio aging of ‘Elizabeth’ and the overall treatment of John. Perhaps the artist who modified and redressed ‘Elizabeth’, probably around 1820-30, also painted John from scratch? It might also be possible that several years after the portrait of ‘Elizabeth’ was painted (not from life, perhaps from a likeness), the work was sent to another artist – for changes or repairs – who also supplied a ‘companion piece’ of John, most likely from the old Macarthur watercolour. This fails to explain however, why the paintings differ in size.

PART EIGHT

Its also worth considering the semi-reversed state of ‘Elizabeth’. Whilst the clumsy over-painting of her clothing was undone, revealing the lacy bodice, her altered facial features were untouched – leaving her partly old/partly young. Her portrait might be described as a partially altered, artist’s impression of an unknown female subject. John’s portrait, by contrast, is less conjectural, having only ever been painted by a single hand.

Along with these technical anomalies lies a contradiction in imagery. The depiction of a prosperous, well bred 20-30 year old in stylish evening wear, heirloom rubies, pearls and gold, is inconsistent with the social and economic circumstances of Elizabeth Macarthur at the turn of the 18th century and for many years to come. Without inheritance, influence, self-confidence or support, Elizabeth moved amidst a harsh, violent, unpredictable and socially isolated world. Perhaps it was this obvious incongruity that persuaded Sydney patrons to pass on this particular offer.

PART NINE

So there you have it… The authenticity of Elizabeth’s portrait hangs by a thread. Unwittingly, Spencer’s intuition may have been spot on and only his argument was flawed. To be fair, there is actually, I think, a good likelihood that the pair are connected, somehow, and given the undeniable association between the miniature and John’s portrait, by default, its partner, or at least the painting historically linked to it, is likely to be a painting of Elizabeth, his wife.

So why, if its almost certain that neither painting ever hung in a Macarthur home, do the portraits play a central role in the current museum interpretation of Elizabeth Farm? Why not remove them until we have more evidence. Why, because history is a story unfolding and the role of a museum like Elizabeth Farm is to foster storytelling and involvement. What makes Elizabeth Farm unusual and why it works so well is that the story it tells doesn’t have to add up – as long as it continues to build connections and involve visitors in the conversation… then that’s more than enough.

I started this presentation with a few comments regarding the tendency of societies to embellish and sugar coat history to serve deeper cultural needs and in particular our treatment of Elizabeth Macarthur. Behind the myth and romance is, no doubt, an extraordinary person – but we need to get there first. We need to dig deeper. While pictures like this are taken at face value and used to support romantic allusions, we are not doing our job as historians. So, as I’ve said before, what secrets really do lie behind the reticent smile of this beguiling woman?

Here’s an example of hijacking an existing web platform… try this

Here’s three ways other museums have added value by harnessing online participation.

Inviting and broadcasting musical or artistic response to element of museum… TATE

Inviting and broadcasting a poem of the month… also at TATE

Providing project updates via a moderated blog (as Caroline mentioned today) … Australian War Memorial

moma giacometti | a smart exhibition adjunct
tate podcasts | inventive ways to appreciate collection
sony | product placement, kid focus
tate modern | classic new museum web site
san fran moma | simple entry, content rich, keep drilling
noguchi | a good front page, otherwise been there done that
jewish museum berlin | simple stylish, just enough content
jewish museum ny | good structure, easy entry
maillol | flash gone mad… make it stop
seidler | innovative and enthrawling
urban | nice graphics, tricks and feel

This homey article from the London Guardian looks at changing perceptions of private and public business.

Not really anything to do with blogging or online involvement but nonetheless a sobering rethink on the rise and rise of powerpointism…here is a wired article, cited in (or in other words, lifted gratuitously from) the ever sobering creating passionate users blog.

Here’s a better version of that fantastic chart posted on Museum 2.0, with all due acknowledgement of course.