Joan Kerr in context: a biography

Abstract

Art historian Joan Kerr (1938-2004) championed many little-known artists in her democratic approach to Australian art history. As an architectural historian she held strong views on how ‘heritage’ restoration should be conducted. She was always entertaining, at times controversial. Virginia Spate described her as fulfilling Baudelaire’s definition of a critic as ‘partial, passionate and political’. 1. Using material from Kerr’s personal papers, interviews with Kerr herself and with family members, friends and colleagues, as well as selections from her impressive body of published work, I have aimed to write a sympathetic yet clearsighted biography of a woman who was, to quote her husband Jim Kerr, ‘a teacher, writer, wife, mother and possum stirrer’. 2. Biography has not always enjoyed academic attention and until late in the 20th century it was traditionally consigned to history.3 Yet this has been an uneasy liaison and biography is now considered a hybrid form, between history and literature, with links to autobiography, psychology, sociology and anthropology. In the introductory chapter I explore the potential of these disciplines for interpreting the facts of a life. I also include a survey of literary biographical writing (including useful models), a discussion of the concept of ‘public intellectual’ in relation to Joan Kerr’s reputation in Australian art history and technical issues such as structure, voice and ‘speaking for’. Subsequent chapters trace Joan Kerr’s private life – childhood, health, education, marriage and motherhood – as well as her academic achievements, her work in 19th- and 20th-century Australian art and architectural history, her curatorial practice and major publications, her use of humour and satire and confrontations with art critics, academics and administrators. The final chapter encompasses Kerr’s tribute dinner at Government House in June 2003, her death on 22 February 2004 and funeral on 1 March 2004. In writing this biography I have aimed to do justice to Joan Kerr’s life and work as well as to produce an informed piece of scholarship that could be enjoyed by everyone interested in Australia’s cultural heritage.