The Bernard Smith lectures
The Bernard Smith art history lectures were given to the undergraduate students in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Melbourne by Bernard Smith from the beginning of 1956 to the end of 1966. They are lectures in the history of art that range from Palaeolithic to Contemporary art. During this period, the other two full-time members of the department were Sir Joseph Burke, Herald Professor of Fine Arts, and Mr Franz Philipp, a former student of the University of Vienna. Burke, however, made good use of other specialists to give appropriate lectures in their field of expertise, such as Dr Ursula Hoff, then Keeper of the Prints in the National Gallery of Victoria, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, formerly of the Bauhaus, but then teaching art at Geelong Grammar School, and Professor A.D. Trendall, then Master of University House, Australian National University, who came quite regularly to give three lectures on the art of Ancient Greece. During the 1950s and 1960s the Herald Chair of Fine Arts, established in 1947 by Joseph Burke, was the only art history department in an Australian university.
These lectures are presented here as they were originally written, the only corrections being concerned with dates and misspellings. That is to say, they are archival in nature and no attempt has been made to bring them up-to-date. They belong to their time.
This is a work in progress. Throughout 2007, the list of lectures will be developed and will later include illustrations.