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Paul Paffen PhD, is a Fellow of the School of Culture and Communication (Art History), University of Melbourne. Born in Carlton, Paffen spent a musical childhood and his early teenage years in country Victoria, before returning to Melbourne, aged 17, to commence undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne. His first degree was a Bachelor of Music. After a time working in corporate business, Paffen returned to tertiary studies majoring in Fine Art subjects leading to a Postgraduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies at the University of Melbourne. As Dux of his Diploma year Paffen was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Research Award and a travel grant to continue his studies in the UK and Europe. He remains an inveterate traveller. His doctoral thesis, The Art of Memory: Portraiture in Van Diemen's Land (4 vols, 1998), conferred by the University of Melbourne in 1999, focussed upon the imminence of memory in numerous interpretations of Tasmanian colonial portraiture. A two volume detailed catalogue raisonné of all the known colonial Tasmanian portraits was submitted with his thesis. Examined by Professors Joan Kerr and Michael Roe, Paffen's dissertation was awarded first class honours requiring no corrections or amendments. It was nominated for the Vice-Chancellor's award for a thesis of excellence. Chapters of his thesis have been published in article form (see publications by Paffen). For a number of years Paffen lectured on non-indigenous Australian art, from white settlement to around the 1950s, in the School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology, University of Melbourne. He also supervised theses of undergraduate and postgraduate students, many of whom are today well placed in the world of art both in Australia and abroad. Paffen was also employed as the Senior Research Assistant to the Herald Chair working on an Australian Research Council funded project examining the history of the National Gallery of Victoria. The project was titled: Patrimony exemplified by the History of the multicultural collections at the National Gallery of Victoria (1850-2000). He composed meticulous research material relating to the directorship of Lindsay Bernard Hall (1867-1935) and particularly Hall's 1905 purchases of art made overseas for the Felton Bequests' Committee. Paffen is currently working on three significant publications, namely an epic biography that promises to bring to light the extraordinary art and life of Australia's finest etcher of the first half of the twentieth century, Jessie C. A. TRAILL (1881-1967), and a complete catalogue of her prints. These will be the first major scholarly publications to appear on Jessie Traill and her relatively rare work. The third publication is a history of the H. Septimus Power and M. Napier Waller murals that decorate the walls of the main staircase in the State Library of Victoria. |
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In a diner, New York, February 2007. |
