Narelle Jarry, Curator, UNE Natural History Museum
Narelle Jarry, Curator of the UNE Natural History Museum, admits to being more intrigued by things hidden in the back rooms of museums or art galleries rather than the highlights on display. She likes those things too but to have access to collection material not readily available to the public is something she covets. And with 95% of collections hidden away in back rooms Narelle is in her element.
She graduated from the University of Canberra in 1994 with a Bachelor of Applied Science in the Conservation of Cultural Material before working for some of the world’s biggest cultural institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
“The care of contemporary art often requires an innovative and collaborative approach. Artworks may be enormous in scale with display and installation challenges, they could be ephemeral in nature or made from inherently poor quality materials. Often the conservator is required to work directly with the artist to re-create a work in the gallery space. Conservation in these circumstances is a highly engaging and fascinating profession.”
After a move to Armidale Narelle as the Registrar and Collections Manager of the New England Regional Art Museum. Her interests then moved to the Community Arts and Cultural Development sector where he spent a number of years working with Beyond Empathy, a not-for-profit organisation that uses the arts to influence change and enrich the lives of individuals and communities experiencing recurring hardship. In 2014 Narelle was accepted into the Australia Council Emerging Leaders Development Program.
A chance encounter with a whale skeleton needing conservation treatment in 2016 led to Narelle’s current position at the UNE Natural History Museum.
“I have spent my career as advocate, champion and carer – whether it be for fine art, people who could not advocate for themselves, or as I do now – for biological specimens, collected and preserved in the pursuit of knowledge of the world around us.”
To Narelle, museums are the ultimate reflection of our cultural traditions and value system. Why was that particular object acquired? Why is it significant? What story does it tell? Museums and art galleries are repositories of what we value or historically valued as a society, and they act as safe houses for those cultural traditions. The collections held are like time capsules that represent intellectual movements, philosophies and ways of thinking in the era they were made.
“A natural history museum has the same ability to capture the world at a specific point in time, only it is the biological world we are interested in. Like a library of life, natural history collections are made up of samples of the world around us, kept in a stable, protected environment, a snap shot of what was happening at a specific location on a specific date. Specimens become markers in time – a resource for comparative studies into the natural world.”
“To see the vast array of specimens in storage at the UNE Natural History Museum is a wonder. Our collections are a crucial resource for teaching. To be student at UNE means you have access to specimens across the biological world: vertebrate and invertebrate, specimens stored wet for sampling and testing, skulls and skeletons for measuring and comparison based research, skins and hides taxidermied for study of physiology and function.
“There is opportunity to delve into the storeroom. It is here for your benefit (and my guilty pleasure).”