Selected artefacts from the David and Marion Adams Collection
16 Apr 2009 to 11 Oct 2009
Curator: Spencer-Pappas Trust Curator and Lecturer Dr Andrew Jamieson
Professor Marion Adams (1932–1995) enjoyed a long and distinguished academic career in the field of German literature at the University of Melbourne. She was dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1988 to 1993—a milestone in the history of the University of Melbourne, as she was the first women to hold this office. Among her many interests was an enthusiasm for collecting objects from antiquity. During her lifetime Marion acquired an impressive art collection including works from Greece and Rome, Egypt and the Near East, Africa, India, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Following her untimely death on 6 January 1995, Marion’s husband David Adams has continued to add to the collection in memory of his wife and as a legacy of their shared interest in the cultures of the past.
The artefacts selected for this exhibition may be grouped into several geographical regions: 18 pieces of Roman or Italic origin, 19 from Greece and Magna Graecia, 26 Egyptian objects, and 19 artefacts that span the civilizations of the ancient Near East, Iran (or Persia), Central Asia and the Indus Valley. Across this vast terrain is represented an equally wide spectrum of cultural horizons, including the Villanovan, Etruscan, Daunian and Italo-Corinthian; Athenian and Corinthian; Egyptian (Pharaonic and Ptolemaic); Mesopotamian (Syro-Hittite and Sumero-Elamite) and Parthian; Proto-Bactrian and Bactrian-Margiana; and Gandhara and Mehrgahr artistic traditions. Also included in the exhibition are a collection of 32 coins, mostly from the Roman Empire with a small group from ancient Greece.
Professor Marion Adams played an important and far-reaching role within the university community. This role continues today, through the Marion Adams Fund, the Marion Adams Memorial Lecture and through the generous support given to the University of Melbourne by David Adams.
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