Lecture Series: Artworks of significance: ideas, history, aesthetics, and cultural context

Delivered by significant national and local art theorists, writers, artists, curators and academics, the Drill Hall’s 2026/27 lecture series offers audiences informed, complex and rounded experiences of visual art. With topics spanning Yolŋu art and abstraction; the city of Siena; tradition in contemporary painting; local groundedness against global fascism in Contemporary Art and more, this dynamic series will spark your creative and cultural passion, stimulate and inspire.

Speakers: Louise Marshall, Mary Eagle, Howard Morphy, Gordon Bull, Jude Rae, Ian McLean, Brenda L Croft, Quentin Sprague, Jason Smith, Terence Maloon and more.

Further details of individual lectures coming soon.

Lecture 1: Siena, City of the Virgin
Dr Louise Marshall
Sunday 12 April, 2–3:30pm

At the dawn of the twentieth century modern painting was poised to assert its difference from anything that had Ever since they won a seemingly-impossible victory against hated enemy Florence by pledging their city to the protection of the Virgin in 1260 at the battle of Montaperti, the Sienese have prided themselves on their special relationship with the Virgin Mary, mother of God. This lecture concentrates on the two key sites of Sienese energy and pride, the cathedral (Duomo) and the town hall (Palazzo Pubblico). From the famous fan-shaped Campo (piazza) to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s bustling townscape, art shaped civic consciousness, trumpeted Siena’s honour and dignity to the outside world, and above all, ensured that the Virgin Mary would always favour ‘her’ city above all others.

Louise Marshall is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Art History Department at the University of Sydney, where she taught medieval and Renaissance art for more than thirty years. Her chief topic of research is Renaissance plague imagery, on which she has published many journal articles and book chapters. She lectures regularly at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and other state and local galleries and museums. Since retiring, Louise has enjoyed leading cultural tours to Europe and long-distance walking on the historic pilgrimage routes in Europe.

Lecture 2:
Dr Mary Eagle
Sunday 3 May 2pm

Mary Eagle, an art historian now in her 82nd year, grew up in the country, in a few acres surrounded by farms. The house was on the edge of a sandstone escarpment pitted with seashells. The land on one side ran flat for many miles down to the ocean. On the other side was a rich river valley across which were foothills leading to the mountains of the Great Dividing Range. Her first acquaintance with political argument was when her father, who had timber-mills as well as other businesses, opposed the complete destruction of forests for paper manufacture. When his attempt to have the government turn away from this to a gardening style of forest management failed, he bought a large extent of forest to preserve, half of which was given to extend the indigenous site of the Den of Nargun.  A grand-daughter back in the 1990s, and a grand-daughter very recently also chose to buy land to restore to nature. Those memories relate in some way to the talk Dr Eagle will be giving.

Lecture 3: Rethinking abstraction through Yolŋu art
Professor Howard Morphy
Sunday 14 June, 2pm

Howard Morphy has conducted extensive fieldwork with the Yolŋu people of Northern Australia since 1974 and published widely in anthropology and museum studies with a primary focus on art, material culture and land rights. His pioneering analysis of Yolŋu art and aesthetics has been foundational in the study and understanding of Aboriginal art and non-Aboriginal art in academia. He was an expert witness in the Blue Mud Bay case, in which Yolŋu art as law (rom) was integral to the case. Morphy has advocated the inclusion of Yolŋu voices, inviting leaders to visit and contribute to ANU research, acknowledging and incorporating their work as integral to Australia’s cultural and intellectual life.

Lecture 4: The 1960s
Professor Ian McLean
Sunday 5 July, 2pm

The early 1960s was a highwater mark for Australian art with Nolan, Drysdale and Boyd gaining recognition in London and in Australia creating a new up-to-date postwar post-Anglo national image. Unseen by the artworld, other developments, not least in Aboriginal Australia but also in a new generation of artists, would set in train a far more radical shakeup of the national idea.

Ian McLean is an Honorary Professorial Fellow and the inaugural Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on relations between Indigenous and European Australian art in articles, book chapters and monographs: Double Nation A History of Australian Art (2023) and Rattling Spears A History of Indigenous Australian Art (2016) and How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art (2011).

Lecture 5:
Gordon Bull
Sunday 2 August, 2pm

Gordon Bull is an art historian and retired academic.  He taught art history and theory in Australian universities for over thirty years, principally at the School of Art and Design at Australian National University (ANU) where for ten years he was Head of the Art Theory Workshop, and for seven years the Head of School. He is now a Member of the Emeritus Faculty of the ANU.

Lecture 6:
Jude Rae
Sunday 6 September, 2pm

Jude Rae is a Sydney based artist known for her still life paintings, portraits and architectural interiors. Over the last forty years Jude has held over 60 solo exhibitions of her work in Australia, New Zealand Germany and the USA, and been awarded residencies in France, Italy and New Zealand.

In 2005 and 2008 Jude won the Portia Geach Memorial Award for Portraiture and was Highly Commended in the Archibald Prize in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and in 2025 she was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape.

Her other awards include the prestigious Bulgari Award presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of NSW and significant portrait commissions including Parliament House and the High Court of Australia.

In 2017 a survey of her work was held at the Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery. Her work is held in major public and private collections in Australia and New Zealand.

Lecture 7:
Jason Smith
Sunday 11 October, 2pm

Jason Smith has worked in major Australian public art galleries since 1993.  Since February 2025 he has been Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Previously, from 2016-2024 he was Director & CEO of Geelong Gallery, one of Australia’s oldest and most important regional galleries. From 2014-16 he was Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, at the Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art. Between 2008 and 2014 Jason was Director & CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art, one of Australia’s most important cultural institutions, where he led the acclaimed reinvigoration of the Museum’s modern and contemporary artistic program. Between 1997 and 2007 Jason was Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he worked closely with many leading Australian and international artists. He has individually and collaboratively curated 70 solo, group and thematic exhibitions and has written on the works of more than 150 artists for a range of publications.

Venue: HC Coombs Lecture Theatre (Building 8A), Acton Campus, ANU. 
Accessibility: The Coombs lecture theatre has wheelchair access and accessible bathrooms. If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation plan please contact anne-marie.jean@anu.edu.au

2024/25 Lecture Series – recordings available on YouTube