Civilizing Australia

Abstract

Against the background of the Second World War and post-war cultural change in Australia, this review article discusses the establishment of the profession of art history and art curatorial scholarship in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s. The key figures in this transformation were Franz Philipp and Ursula Hoff (European ‘savant’ refugees from Nazism and anti-Semitism), and the British scholar Joseph Burke (appointed as Herald Professor of Fine Arts at Melbourne University). These figures played pivotal roles in Sir Keith Murdoch's ‘civilizing mission’ to reform Australian culture – a mission centred on Melbourne University and the National Gallery of Victoria under its new director, Daryl Lindsay. Within the context of the ‘culture wars’ dividing the Australian art world at this time, these reformers and pioneering scholars found themselves opposed by a radical art avant-garde under the leadership of the art patron John Reed. The work of key modernist Australian artists, above all Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale, became touchstones for radical and conservative positions in this conflict.