CCWM Conversations: Micro: Macro with Dr Paul Donnelly
Join us at the Chau Chak Wing Museum for a floor talk on the exhibition Micro:Macro: models of insight and inspiration.
Models shift perceptions and change understanding. Through altering scale, the miniature becomes visible, the massive, understandable. Single cells are expanded thousands of times, insects hundreds, and a whole suburb shrinks to a tabletop.
The exhibition Micro:Macro explores the role of models in understanding and exploring our world, and features models from science, mathematics, medicine, engineering, art, and architecture.
At the University of Sydney, models have been a valued part of teaching and learning since the late-19th century. This exhibition examines the tradition of models on campus ever since and explores how all these models share the desire to explore and understand our world and universe – to give visibility to otherwise formless concepts, expose the hidden, unlock the kinetic, or reveal patterns.
This floor talk will take you through the models displayed.
About our speaker
Paul Donnelly is Deputy Director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum. In this role he works with the curators and broader team in developing the exhibition program for the Chau Chak Wing Museum. Prior to this, he was a curator of decorative arts and design at the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Art and Sciences) where his curatorial responsibilities expanded across many collections including numismatics, ceramics, furniture, and design. Paul is also an archaeologists associated with the Zagora Archaeological Project in Greece and the Pella excavations in Jordan.
Header image: Micro:Macro (installation view), Chau Chak Wing Museum, 2024. Photo by David James.