Career
Born in South Australia in 1940, Plant grew up in Williamstown and as a schoolgirl saw paintings by John Perceval of fishing boats in the suburb's harbour in Melbourne, [1] and later wrote the first monograph on the artist. [2]
Plant began tutoring in the University of Melbourne Department of Fine Arts in 1962 until 1965 and completed a Master of Arts in 1969 there with her thesis The Realm of the Curtain : Paul Klee and Theatre. [3] Awarded a Pro Helvetia award in 1967, she studied Klee's work in the Klee-Stiftung in Bern, Switzerland. She wrote art criticism for newspapers The Age and The Australian between 1965 and 1970. With Ursula Hoff she wrote on contemporary art in The National Gallery of Victoria; Painting, Drawing, Sculpture published in 1968, [4] and that year was appointed Lecturer at RMIT University. Hers was the first academic appointment of an art historian within an Australian art school; she was made Senior Lecturer there, a position she held until 1975.
Plant returned to the University of Melbourne as Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts from 1975 to 82. She completed her doctoral dissertation, Fresco Painting in Avignon and Northern Italy : a study of some fourteenth century cycles of saints' lives outside Tuscany in 1982.
From 1982–96, a long association with Monash University as Professor of Visual Arts followed, and she has continued there as Emeritus Professor. [5] Frequently a presenter at events and exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, [6] the National Gallery of Australia and Artists' Week during the Adelaide Festival of the Arts.
From 1984-87 Plant was appointed to the Council of the Australian National Gallery, [7] where on her retirement it was noted that her "contribution as one of Australia's leading academics in the field of visual arts, together with her particular knowledge of Australian art, was invaluable." [8]
Plant's research and writing is wide-ranging, in catalogue essays, academic papers, book reviews, journal articles and monographs, from 14th century Padua to J. M. W. Turner [9] and Paul Klee [10] to settlers' domestication of the Australian bush. [11] In 1995 she published Painting Australia a children's introduction to Australian art. [12] [13] [14]
In 2002, Venice: Fragile City 1797-1997 was published by Yale University Press. The Economist reviewer greeted it "as far the most comprehensive and lovingly researched history of Venice since Napoleon sacked the city". [15] The architectural historian, Richard Goy, wrote that it was "an encyclopaedic and much-needed work, which will become, no doubt, a benchmark for future cultural studies for the post-Republican city. [16] The book studies the deterioration of Venice during French and Austrian occupation, but, at the same time, its cultural resilience in many fields - literature, local and foreign, opera, glass-making, lace-making, and its high tourist value. And more and more its task in withstanding destruction from the sea.
Paul Giles in the Australian Book Review hailed Plant's 2017 book Love and Lament: An essay on the Arts in Australia in the Twentieth Century, [17] as "multivalent, wide-angled" and "ranging widely across architecture, film, photography, music, dance, and popular culture, as well as literature and painting [demonstrating] convincingly that, as she puts it, there was 'no dormant period' in Australian cultural and artistic life during this time." [18]
Honours
Plant was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1985. [19] She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2025 Australia Day Honours. [20]
Monash University instituted the 'Margaret Plant Annual Lecture in Art History' in 2018, at which presenters have been James Meyer, curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2018; Christina Barton, director of the Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, at the Victoria University of Wellington, in 2019; Ming Tiampo, Professor of Art History, Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 2021; in 2022, Erika Wolf, research fellow at the Neboltai Collection of 20th Century Propaganda; in 2023 Andrea Bubenik, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Queensland. [21]
