Guide to the Papers of Janet Venn-Brown, 1954-2022

Summary

Collection number:

MS 10291, MS Acc23.046

Creator:

Venn-Brown, Janet

Extent:

(31 ms boxes + 2 map folios + 3 folio box + 12 folders + 10 audiovisual carriers + 4 digital carriers)

Language:

English and English

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Janet Venn-Brown, National Library of Australia, [class/series/file/item number(s)]'.

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The original MS 10291 collection comprises papers relating to Wael Zuaiter, Palestine and Janet Venn-Brown's artistic career, including diaries and notebooks covering daily life and several trips between 1979-2006 to Jordan, Syria and Palestine; correspondence with family, friends and associates; video and audio cassettes; photographs and exhibition invites; publicity and catalogues. (18 ms boxes + 2 folio boxes + 1 shared box)

The MS Acc23.046 includes mostly colour photographs, negatives and transparency slides of Janet Venn-Brown's works drawn from her travels through the Middle East and Europe. Her exhibitions overseas and in Australia are documented in notebooks, flyers, invitations and guestbooks. Books, magazine articles and catalogues also detail works about Venn-Brown. There are transcripts, research material and published copies of Venn-Brown's book For a Palestinian: a memorial to Wael Zuaiter. An intended new edition edited by Venn-Brown and Peter Manning can be seen in research material and a proposal. Other papers include copies of the trial verdict and printouts of the website article Murdered for being Palestinian: Wael Zuaiter remembered 40 years on. The consignment includes papers related to Peter Manning's biography Janet Venn-Brown: a life in art, including notes, correspondence and interview transcripts with Lesley Dimmick, Clive Lucas, Wendy Littlewood, Barbara Fisher, Susan Palmer-Ward, Clodagh Harrison; and correspondence with David Malouf, Egidio and Favia Scardamaglia, Felix Venn-Brown, Bruno Cagli, Silvio Tongiani and Bill Tait. There is also material highlighting Venn-Brown's contributions working for human rights for the Palestinian people including copies of speeches, interview transcripts, certificates of appreciation, a wall plaque, a certificate from the Parliament of N.S.W. officially honouring Janet's work for the Palestinian community and a photograph of Janet with Yasser Arafat, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The consignment also contains personal items including postcards, birthday cards, photographs with family and friends at Janet's residence in Rome, and later in Glebe, Sydney, sketchbooks (2008-2015) and ephemera which show that Janet continued an active role in the arts, exhibiting late in life until her nineties (13 boxes, 1 medium folio box, 1 small folio box, 11 folders, 3 digital carriers).

Biographical / Historical:

Janet Venn-Brown was born in Sydney in 1924, grew up in Drummoyne and went to school at Presbyterian Ladies College, Croydon. She undertook secretarial studies working at Angus and Robertson bookshop and Ure Smith Publishers, and studied painting in evening classes with Guiseppe Bisietta. She stopped in Italy on her way to England in 1952, returned there and remained for 44 years living in Rome. Her work has been exhibited in Naples, Rome, London, Amman, Baghdad and Sydney, where she returned to live in 2008.

Janet Venn-Brown edited Per un Palestinese (Milan, Mazotta Editore, 1979) as a memorial to her partner, the exiled Palestinian intellectual Wael Zuaiter, killed by Israeli security forces on 16 October 1972 in retaliation for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. An English translation, For a Palestinian: a memorial to Wael Zuaiter was published by Kegan Paul International in 1984.

Janet died in Glebe, Sydney 2022.

Collection Retrieval Advice:

Please note: each class in this collection has a separate box number sequence (i.e. there are multiple Box 1's). Please cite the relevant Class number as well as the Box number when requesting retrieval of material from the collection.

Indexed terms

Subjects:

Arts
Politics and government

Conditions Governing Access:

Access conditions may apply to this collection, please refer to the collection's catalogue record for further information (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn7251465).

Conditions Governing Use:

Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Janet Venn-Brown, National Library of Australia, [class/series/file/item number(s)]'.

Location of this collection:

National Library of Australia

Parkes Place

Canberra ACT 2600, Australia

Contact:

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