The Big Draw.
Image: Bernard Caleo
Source: Museum Victoria
Melbourne Museum has received a Macquarie University Vice Chancellor’s Drawing Innovation Award.
This award was presented to Bernard Caleo from Melbourne Museum Visitor Programs for participation in The Big Draw Australia 2005, a nationwide program designed to engage people of all ages in cultural heritage through drawing.
Among the goals for the Award was the promotion of good practice in using drawing as a way of seeing and making meaning. Melbourne Museum offered three programs for children, adults and students.
For Discover Drawing, a drawing studio was set up in the Discovery Centre for Adult Learners’ Week, where some of the weird and wonderful objects from the museum’s natural history collection could be sketched.
In The Big Draw program participants sketched exhibition objects onto paper. Artists then assisted to transfer the drawings onto the pavement of the Museum Plaza using chalk pastels, creating an enormous drawing gallery.
The Drawing on Nature series of seminars each featured a talk examining the use of scientific drawing in research, followed by a scientific drawing workshop with acclaimed nature artist Andrew Seward. As part of the featured talks:
- scientific illustrator Rhyll Plant talked about her work,
- John Kean, 2005 Thomas Ramsay Fellow, discussed illustrators who worked for Frederick McCoy, the first director of the museum,
- Professor John Long described the techniques he uses to illustrate his palaeontologic work.
For further information on Drawing Australia, including events, awards and research, be sure to visit the Drawing Australia website.