There’s an ironic joke amongst Australian art historians that wherever you go in Australian art, there Bernard Smith was before you. Though he did not invent the discipline in Australia, Smith is remembered as Australia’s first true art historian, with a breadth of knowledge and experience few could match. He was an education officer and touring exhibitions manager at the then National Art Gallery of New South Wales, a scholar at the Warburg Institute, a lecturer in fine arts at the University of Melbourne, founding professor of the Power Institute for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, compiler of The Antipodean Manifesto, president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a collector, curator, benefactor, writer, autobiographer and so many other things besides.
The same may be said for Smith in reference to any number of disciplines outside the fine arts. As a researcher at the Warburg Institute, he paved the way for future generations of expatriate Australian public intellectuals in London. As a scholar of Cook’s voyages and the Pacific, he argued persuasively and with authority that people from Europe and the Pacific had exchanged much more than the bible and syphilis. Megaphone in hand, leading rallies in his beloved Glebe, he advocated for the preservation of the architectural heritage of Sydney, in so doing coining the term ‘federation style’.
Smith’s two stints at the Art Gallery of New South Wales – the first from 1944-8 and the second 1951-2 – were formative. He wrote the first catalogue of Australian oil paintings at the Gallery and managed its touring exhibition program, and through that role occasionally advised on the collection of works such as Eric Wilson’s Hospital theme – the sterilizer 1942. His intimacy with the Gallery’s collection continued to inform his work long after he left; in his seminal Australian painting 1788-1960 (first published in 1962 but since updated to 2000 by Terry Smith and Christopher Heathcote) many of Smith’s key arguments are made through reference to the Gallery’s Australian art collection.
The Legacies of Bernard Smith: essays on Australian art, history and cultural politics, edited by Jaynie Anderson, Christopher Marshall and myself, explores the enduring impact that Smith has had on the many fields in which he worked. The book features essays from 22 authors across a range of disciplines and includes never before published material drawn from the Gallery’s archive as well as Smith’s private records.
The book originated from a series of international symposia held jointly in 2012 by the Gallery, the Power Institute for Art and Visual Culture, University of Sydney and the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne. Legacies is published by Power Publications in partnership with the Gallery, with project sponsors the Art Gallery Society of NSW and with the support of publication grants from the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney and the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Its release coincides with the centenary of Smith’s birth in 1916, a fitting time to revisit the legacies of a remarkable man.
The Legacies of Bernard Smith: essays on Australian art, history and cultural politics (RRP $34.95) is being launched at the AGNSW on 20 July.
