Dymphna Clark: Women in the Making of Canberra
Saturday, 3 May: 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Manning Clark House
11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest
With some irony and ambivalence, Dymphna Clark would refer to returning to her home in Canberra as ‘creeping back into my cocoon’. Her circumstances, as the wife of one of Australia’s most recognised public intellectuals, the historian Manning Clark, had some particular personal dimensions. But she was far from alone among the wives of the often more recognised men associated with the development and national status of Canberra in having to find some kind of balance between the distinctive character of private, community and public life in the city.
This workshop will explore some aspects of women’s experience, contribution and significance in Canberra’s history, especially from the 1930s to the 1970s. It will be led by women who will reflect on their own sense of those times – how the period might be remembered? – and also by those involved in collecting, curating, interpreting and enhancing our appreciation of the active, creative and engaged work of those generations: how might their history be presented? These perspectives are certain to stimulate discussion among all who attend. What can we learn from these stories? What heritage needs to be unearthed? What history is too easily forgotten?
The workshop will be held in the Clarks’ heritage-listed award-winning home at 11 Tasmania Circle – which itself, like so many houses, has its own role in the story. Designed, at Dymphna’s suggestion, by Robin Boyd, and lived in by the Clark family from 1953, the house was far from a cocoon. It was the base from which Dymphna consolidated her own friendships and networks, pursuing causes which were part of both the city’s and the nation’s evolving culture of aspiration and debate. In much of this, she was far from alone.
Workshop leaders
Roslyn Russell (Heritage Consultant, Chair)
First Person Reflections
Anne Buttsworth
Louise Moran
Historical Rediscovery
Antoinette Buchanan (ACT Heritage Library)
Virginia Rigney (Senior Curator, Visual Arts, CMAG)
Nicole Sutherland (Acting Senior Curator, Social History, CMAG)
Susan Mary Withycombe (Historian)
Summary
Nicholas Brown (Historian; Manning Clark House Inc)
Tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/CYHBZ