Interrogating Joe Burke and His Legacy: The Joseph Burke Lecture 2005

Art history’s history in Melbourne began with the appointment of Joseph Burke (1913-1992) to the Herald Chair of Fine Arts in 1946. Burke made a number of remarkable appointments with Ursula Hoff, Franz Phillip, and Bernard Smith to create the seminal department of art history in Australia. Burke’s real field of expertise was in the English eighteenth century. Like many intellectuals of the diaspora, he transposed his scholarship to a different society. This article is based on Burke’s correspondence with Daryl Lindsay and Kenneth Clark. Burke’s support for Australian artists is analysed, notably Hugh Ramsay, Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan