Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology
Established in 2006, ACAAA coordinates, consolidates and expands teaching and research in modern Asian Art and Archaeology, and pre-modern art not previously covered in Australia.
ACAAA collaborates with research and teaching programs within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences - Art History, Asian Studies, Archaeology, History, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Southeast Asian and Indian Subcontinental Studies – the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, the Faculty of Science and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
ACAAA also cooperates widely with leading Asian and Australian institutions such as the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, The University of Tsukuba in Japan, The University of East Anglia, Norwich, the Authority for the Protection and Management of Ankgor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA) in Cambodia and the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient in Siem Reap.
Past conferences have included Angkor: Landscape, City and Temple, and War Art in East Asia. ACAAA also led a number of ARC Grants and major publications in the field.
St Lee Annual Lecture in Asian Art and Archaeology
The Annual Lecture in Asian Art and Archaeology is endowed by Dr Lee Seng Tee, owner and director of Lee Industries, Singapore. Dr Lee Seng Tee has been a generous supporter of the Angkor Research Program at The University of Sydney.
- 2016: Dr Damien Evans, Research Fellow at the French Institute for Asian Studies
- 2015: Dr Susie Lingham, Director of the Singapore Art Museum
- 2014: Professor Qin Dashu, School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University
- 2013: Professor Nora Taylor, Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- 2012: Associate Professor John N. Miksic, Southeast Asian Studies Department, National University of Singapore
- 2011: Patrick D. Flores, Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines
- 2010: Professor Miriam Stark, University of Hawai'i-Manoa
- 2009: Dr Pascal Royere, EFEO, Siem Reap, Cambodia
- 2008: Dr Eugene Wang, Harvard University
- 2007: Dr Annaebel Teh Gallop, British Library
- 2006: Dr Christophe Pottier, EFEO, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Projects - Australian Research Council (ARC)
ARC Linkage with the Australian Museum and the Batuan Project, Singapore: Professor Adrian Vickers and Emeritus Professor Peter Worsley, with Siobhan Campbell as APA-I.
Collecting Balinese Art
Professor John Clark, Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship for five years (2008-2012), working on re-defining concepts of Asian Modernity on Art through historical analyses of the work of around twenty-five artists in five cohorts between the 1850s and 1980s across Asia. The Fellowship also funds a Junior Lectureship in Asian Art for five years.
Australian Research Council (Discovery Project): Professor Roland Fletcher, Professor Jeffery Riegel, Dr Martin King
Funding: AU$907,493
Partners: Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO), University of Hawai’i-Manoa, National University of Singapore, Royal University of Fine Arts, Cambodia, Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA)
Summary: Angkor, the vast low-density Khmer capital founded in the 9th century CE, was abandoned some time in the past 500 years. The processes, rate and period of its demise are still unknown. The project will identify (i) the ancestry of Angkor’s social and spatial organisation in the first millennium BCE; (ii) the way the urban complex operated to diagnose; and (iii) why, when and how it was abandoned and reveal the transformations from the 16th to 19th centuries that created the modern landscape out of 3000 years of cultural continuity.
Read more about the Angkor Research Program's current projects.
Asian-Australian Art Now
In association with Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney
A gathering of key artists, arts administrators, writers, theorists, and curators from around Australia in an open workshop discussing what constitutes Asian-Australian Art Now.
Chinese Buddhist Art: New Directions and Perspectives
In conjunction with the Lost Buddhas exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Artist-Run-Initiatives in the Asia Pacific
In association with the Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney
Discussion panel with Ade Darmawan (Jakarta) and Aaron Seeto (Sydney)
War Art and the Representation of War in the Asia-Pacific
A free one-day workshop at the University of Sydney presented by the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology (University of Sydney) and the Research School of Humanities, Australian National University, with the support of the Japan Foundation.