Linda Young
I'm a historian of the nineteenth-century British World. After a BA(Hons) in History and Art History at the University of Sydney, I lucked into museum work: a tremendous education in material culture and historical interpretation. I worked at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in Sydney, and then the Western Australian Museum in Perth. In Sydney, I did an MA in Historical Archaeology, ending with a thesis on the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 (more historical than archaeological), which further oriented me to appreciating objects and looking at them as historical evidence. Now that I’ve retired, I’m again picking up the exhibition thread, working on a history of the colonial Australian international exhibitions, 1879-1899.
A highlight of my years with the WA Museum History Department was the opportunity to work on the museumisation of the Samson House in Fremantle. It launched my life-long interest in houses as heritage and in domestic collections as historical evidence. The WA Museum also enabled me to delve into the topic of gold digger jewellery, an interest which began with a brooch in the MAAS collection in Sydney. Over the years, I’ve followed it in the USA and Victoria.
I did a PhD, starting in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania and finishing in Sociology at Flinders University in Adelaide. The coursework in Phila was a fantastic education in cultural history, material culture and, well, American civilization; it introduced me to another dimension of the British World. My PhD thesis ended up driven by lists of 1840s Australian furnishings rather than collections in situ, and it turned out to reveal the dynamics of consumption in middle class culture. The Australian National University in Canberra offered me a post-doc to convert it into a book that stretched the argument and evidence to the UK and the US. I wanted to call the book 'The Struggle for Class', but Palgrave Macmillan insisted on 'Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain' (2003). It posits via Bourdieu that culture is a vital index of class distinction, and that gentility can be tracked as a transnational (British World) culture of the middle class.
At that time I was teaching Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Canberra. I became involved with the Canberra & District Historical Society and its cottage museum, Blundells’ Cottage. That was an education in ‘amateur’ history, ie history with hardly any resources except lovely people (including students) — a salutary experience in professional (ie, resourced) heritage management. To help with interpreting the cottage, I researched the Blundells’ context, which eventually turned into 'Lost Houses of the Molonglo Valley' (2007). I still feel proud of that work as a product of the principle, ‘Think global, act local.’
House museums became a research interest while I was in Canberra, less in museum management terms than as a genre of museums/heritage. In order to examine the genre I began a taxonomic survey of house museums in Australia, which showed up little-noted institutional characteristics. The survey took on an international dimension to contextualise the Australian evidence; the antipodean story was rather overwhelmed. It took ten years to get to know UK and US house museums, mainly via internet, phone and email, plus some conference-funded visiting. Eventually it emerged as 'House Museums in the US and the UK: A History' (2017). Sometimes I despair of house museums, but I’m endlessly curious about them, and some give me deep satisfaction.
A highlight of my years with the WA Museum History Department was the opportunity to work on the museumisation of the Samson House in Fremantle. It launched my life-long interest in houses as heritage and in domestic collections as historical evidence. The WA Museum also enabled me to delve into the topic of gold digger jewellery, an interest which began with a brooch in the MAAS collection in Sydney. Over the years, I’ve followed it in the USA and Victoria.
I did a PhD, starting in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania and finishing in Sociology at Flinders University in Adelaide. The coursework in Phila was a fantastic education in cultural history, material culture and, well, American civilization; it introduced me to another dimension of the British World. My PhD thesis ended up driven by lists of 1840s Australian furnishings rather than collections in situ, and it turned out to reveal the dynamics of consumption in middle class culture. The Australian National University in Canberra offered me a post-doc to convert it into a book that stretched the argument and evidence to the UK and the US. I wanted to call the book 'The Struggle for Class', but Palgrave Macmillan insisted on 'Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain' (2003). It posits via Bourdieu that culture is a vital index of class distinction, and that gentility can be tracked as a transnational (British World) culture of the middle class.
At that time I was teaching Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Canberra. I became involved with the Canberra & District Historical Society and its cottage museum, Blundells’ Cottage. That was an education in ‘amateur’ history, ie history with hardly any resources except lovely people (including students) — a salutary experience in professional (ie, resourced) heritage management. To help with interpreting the cottage, I researched the Blundells’ context, which eventually turned into 'Lost Houses of the Molonglo Valley' (2007). I still feel proud of that work as a product of the principle, ‘Think global, act local.’
House museums became a research interest while I was in Canberra, less in museum management terms than as a genre of museums/heritage. In order to examine the genre I began a taxonomic survey of house museums in Australia, which showed up little-noted institutional characteristics. The survey took on an international dimension to contextualise the Australian evidence; the antipodean story was rather overwhelmed. It took ten years to get to know UK and US house museums, mainly via internet, phone and email, plus some conference-funded visiting. Eventually it emerged as 'House Museums in the US and the UK: A History' (2017). Sometimes I despair of house museums, but I’m endlessly curious about them, and some give me deep satisfaction.
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