Earlier this year, we put the call out to all UQ students to express interest in joining the UQ Art Museum Student Engagement Council (SEC). They didn’t have to be experts in art – but they needed to be passionate about embracing a leadership opportunity that would see them working with our team to make the Art Museum an even better place for the UQ community. We’re pleased to introduce you to this year’s Council and to share a little more about them and their interests.

Last year, we announced the generous $8 million bequest by Paula and Tony Kinnane to establish two endowment funds at the UQ Art Museum and the UQ School of Music.

Ellie Buttrose is Associate Curator of International Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, where she serves on the curatorial team for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Ellie graduated from The University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Art History and Philosophy.

Upon first glance, Anastasia Booth’s copper sculpture Teresa appears to be a wingspan or a bird about to take flight: an ethereal vision that is part of this world but destined for elsewhere. Yet, these carefully polished copper rays are highly tangible; when illuminated, they exude warmth, while the shadows they cast vary and extend their mysteries further.

During the 1940s, Professor Henry Caselli (H. C.) Richards (1884–1947), Chairman of The University of Queensland’s John Darnell Fine Arts Committee, played a key role in building the art collection. An active and committed philanthropist, he brokered gifts from donors and was broadly supportive of the work of contemporary Australian artists.

Brenda L. Croft has been involved in the contemporary arts and cultural sectors for three decades as an artist, arts administrator, curator, academic and consultant. She was recently in Brisbane for the opening of Still in my mind: Gurindji location, experience and visuality, an exhibition she developed through long-standing, practice-led research with her father’s community, Karungkarni Art and Culture Aboriginal Corporation and UNSW Galleries, UNSW Art & Design. UQ Art Museum is proud to be a partner on the project and to host the exhibition until 19 October 2017. We caught up with Brenda to learn more about her connection to the people, land and communities impacted by the historic events at Wave Hill 51 years ago.

Almost four centuries after its creation, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–52) remains the supreme emblem of religious visionary experience and the Baroque sensibility in art. Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond takes the mystical experiences of Bernini’s Saint Teresa of Avila as its starting point, bringing together historical depictions of ecstasy with more recent works focused on the transcendence of normal consciousness, including trances, moments of expanded awareness, and visionary insight. Hear from exhibition curator Dr Andrea Bubenik about how the exhibition has been influenced by Bernini’s masterpiece.