Copy of Reviews
REVIEWS AND REFLECTIONS
Pick of the Week in Steven Carroll’s ‘In Short Non-Fiction’ column in The Age, 10 August 2018.
A Tear in the Glass. By Mary Ryllis Clark.
Anchor Books, $45
When Nina Stanton, a museum director for most of her life, was dying in 2009 she was working on a memoir with a difference. She had been director of Melbourne's Johnston Collection and chose 100 paintings, sculptures and artefacts from it to illuminate and illustrate her story. When she knew she was too sick to finish it she asked her friend Mary Ryllis Clark to take over. The result - Stanton's writing in italics housed in Clark's commentary and observations of her friend's life - is sad, moving, but always lit with the beauty of the talismanic objects. A funerary horse from the Tang dynasty, for example, takes Stanton back to the house in Glenroy where she grew up where her father would create shadow figures on a wall with his hands. The strategy is highly effective in evoking a much troubled yet professionally successful life.
‘The Castlemaine Mail’, August 17 2018
A Tear in the Glass
New book, A Tear in the Glass, is set to strike a chord with members of the local arts community.
The book, by author and journalist Mary Ryllis Clark tells the story of one of the foremost director/curators in Australia – the late Nina Stanton, former director of the Johnston Collection in Melbourne.
Nina befriended many in the Castlemaine region when she commissioned members of the local Embroiderers Guild to do Christmas decorations at the Johnston Collection in 2007. In fact many of those who worked on the project attended the recent book launch in Melbourne.
The book began with a gift to Mary Ryllis Clark of a box of files from her late friend Nina Stanton. Mary says Nina’s papers contained a raw depiction of a painful childhood, a troubled life and her entry into a world in which she found a passion for beautiful and historic objects and a capacity to educate others.
More than two years before Neil MacGregor began his famous broadcasts of ‘The History of the World in 100 Objects’, Nina Stanton began writing a memoir, choosing nearly 100 beautiful objects in the Johnston Collection, a house museum in East Melbourne, including antique furniture, clocks, paintings, silverware, glass and porcelain.
Diagnosed with cancer, she had been stung by a comment that there was an underlying emotional cause. She believed that she might find an answer by exploring the connection she felt with objects.
She also wanted her writing o objects to be an introduction to the fine and decorative arts. When her time can out and she knew she was dying, Nina asked Mary to complete her work.
“I have been guided in this by my friendship with Nina and my own intuitive sense of what would be meaningful to her,” Mary says. “The reader is encouraged to read each segment on Nina’s life, look at the objects she chose and make their own emotional connections between Nina and the objects, just as I have.
“Nina also wanted her work to influence people to use objects to explore their own lives as well as see them in a social and cultural context,” Mary says.
A Tear in the Glass is Nina’s final work, created at the end of her career. It is an insightful, informative, and sometimes heartbreaking look into the life of an outstanding professional whose ability to inspire others was a true gift and a reflection of the central passion of a life dedicated to the care and interpretation of objects and the power they hold in transforming people’s lives.
28 August 2018 | Art Almanac
A Tear in the Glass
Mary Ryllis Clark
Anchor Books Australia
‘Learning to read objects is like learning to read oneself.’ – Nina Stanton
Nina Stanton (1948-2009), curator and director of museums and cultural heritage sought to find out if there were underlying emotional causes for her cancer diagnosis by exploring the connection she felt with fine art and decorative objects. With the aim of searching for understanding Stanton examines and documents 100 pieces from The Johnston Collection. Unable to complete this work, she entrusted writer and friend Mary Ryllis Clark to continue her journey.
A series of personal writings paired with images and descriptions of each of the 100 items displayed throughout this memoir are deep reflections on Stanton’s life, and the things that connected her to her world.
Furniture History Society Newsletter – November 2018-12-10
Diana Morgan reviews this fascinating collection of stories woven around objects by Mary Ryllis Clark
Nina Stanton was the charismatic director/curator of The WR Johnston Collection between 2000 and 2008. Before her early death in 2009, she wrote that when she was offered the job at The Johnston Collection she made a commitment that she would develop engaging ways for people to learn about objects. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer Nina chose nearly 100 objects, paintings, furniture, ceramics and glass from The Johnston Collection, and constructed her life stories around them. She also started the work of putting the objects in their fine and decorative arts context.
A few weeks before she died Nina asked Mary Ryllis Clark, a professional writer, historian and long-term friend, to complete her unfinished manuscript. This Mary has done, creating a magical evocation of Nina and the world she occupied.
Each of the objects in the book is accompanied by a segment of Nina’s life story and both Nina and Mary Ryllis Clark’s well-researched commentary not only on each object, but about the society and the cultural and historical background from which it came.
Of particular interest to the Furniture History Society are the many examples of English, French and Dutch furniture and wooden objects put in scholarly context.
This book is a refreshing and creative approach to both the art of biography and also to the power of decorative arts to inspire and fascinate. It would be of as much value to a young person setting out as to someone with a life-long interest in the decorative arts.
This book is hugely informative and, most importantly, hugely enjoyable.
About the Johnston Collection
The Collection is the legacy of William Robert Johnston (1911-1986), an antique dealer and collector of beautiful things … (and) delighted in arranging objects together to create extraordinary interiors.
In the 1970s…William Johnston decided he wanted the bulk of his now vast antique collection to be available to the public after had death. He had enjoyed collecting it, he had enjoyed using it and it was a source of immense satisfaction that his friends received so much pleasure from his Collection as well.
The W R Johnston Trust was established in 1986 to preserve and develop this unique Collection and it is administered as an independent not-for-profit museum.
Reflections in a letter to Mary Ryllis Clark on A Tear in the Glass from Emeritus Professor William Johnston.
Johnston taught European cultural history at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of several books in his field, notably The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938 for which the city of Vienna awarded its Golden Medal for Cultural Services.
Dear Mary,
Your book is a triumph – of seamless melding of two manuscripts with each other as well as with images that you did not select. The story-line, though full of surprises, emerges crystal clear, for one always knows where one is in the tale of Nina’s troubled life. Your skill in weaving your prose into hers offers a lesson to all writers in how to alternate voices. Hers is the more incisive, almost abrasive voice and yours the moderating, the instructing, the reconciling voice. The two interact exquisitely. She is a Stoic, while you are a Christian humanist – a classic dialectic of Australian sensibility
Those are comments about the writing. The thrust of the content for me in two dimensions. One, for the first time you explain the diverse provenance of choice items in the Johnston Collection. They come not only from the UK, but also from India in the 1950s and 1960s, and from North Africa (!). Jan Morris would delight to see such evidence that tokens of the British Empire diffused around the globe ended up in Australia. You have done an immense service in making sense of objects that travelled to dispersed locales and that yet now cohere into something very British or British-imperial. Deftly laid out around the photos, your prose affirms that the objects will outlive us all and will continue to provide a memorial to Nina as much, or even more than they do to my namesake who acquired most of them. As you show, the Johnston Collection required her guiding hand and her discernment in order to coalesce into a house museum. I do not know whether everyone at that institution will rejoice in your revelation of the necessity of the partnership.
The second dimension of the tale, however, is the one that will linger with me because nothing had prepared me for it. This is a story of Nina’s hardships, one after another. She was brave to undertake an account of them, and you were compassionate to fill out the story. It is a story that ends sadly, in fact miserably and undeservedly. It is a tale of obstacles that keep arising and keep getting overcome and then recur in some other form. I could not believe the Dickensian machinations that led to the Copland Foundation, and the story of the cancer diagnoses breaks one’s heart. I hope that either some reviewer or some essayist will build on your and her book to draw some conclusions about how well-placed men colluded with circumstance to obstruct this gifted women over and over. As in a Victorian novel, a strategy orchestrated by powerful men in Australia kept shunting Nina onto some new course. Your book is a triumph, and so in its way is the Nina-shaped Johnston Collection. At least for me, however, Nina’s life is as much a tale of setbacks as of triumphs. I read it is a tale of woe repeatedly undergone and repeatedly defied, not always happily and never for long. For some reason the dynamic of her repeated setbacks reminds me of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Any satisfaction that a reader feels at a momentary gain by the heroine proves temporary. A Gothic frisson keeps recurring. Thank heavens that the objects sit there on page after page, sublimating the pain – pain of loss, pain over what might have been, and pain of lacrimae rerum.
This is your bravest book, your most complex book, and your most heart-rending book. No one will be the same after reading it.
Pick of the Week in Steven Carroll’s ‘In Short Non-Fiction’ column in The Age, 10 August 2018.
A Tear in the Glass. By Mary Ryllis Clark.
Anchor Books, $45
When Nina Stanton, a museum director for most of her life, was dying in 2009 she was working on a memoir with a difference. She had been director of Melbourne's Johnston Collection and chose 100 paintings, sculptures and artefacts from it to illuminate and illustrate her story. When she knew she was too sick to finish it she asked her friend Mary Ryllis Clark to take over. The result - Stanton's writing in italics housed in Clark's commentary and observations of her friend's life - is sad, moving, but always lit with the beauty of the talismanic objects. A funerary horse from the Tang dynasty, for example, takes Stanton back to the house in Glenroy where she grew up where her father would create shadow figures on a wall with his hands. The strategy is highly effective in evoking a much troubled yet professionally successful life.
‘The Castlemaine Mail’, August 17 2018
A Tear in the Glass
New book, A Tear in the Glass, is set to strike a chord with members of the local arts community.
The book, by author and journalist Mary Ryllis Clark tells the story of one of the foremost director/curators in Australia – the late Nina Stanton, former director of the Johnston Collection in Melbourne.
Nina befriended many in the Castlemaine region when she commissioned members of the local Embroiderers Guild to do Christmas decorations at the Johnston Collection in 2007. In fact many of those who worked on the project attended the recent book launch in Melbourne.
The book began with a gift to Mary Ryllis Clark of a box of files from her late friend Nina Stanton. Mary says Nina’s papers contained a raw depiction of a painful childhood, a troubled life and her entry into a world in which she found a passion for beautiful and historic objects and a capacity to educate others.
More than two years before Neil MacGregor began his famous broadcasts of ‘The History of the World in 100 Objects’, Nina Stanton began writing a memoir, choosing nearly 100 beautiful objects in the Johnston Collection, a house museum in East Melbourne, including antique furniture, clocks, paintings, silverware, glass and porcelain.
Diagnosed with cancer, she had been stung by a comment that there was an underlying emotional cause. She believed that she might find an answer by exploring the connection she felt with objects.
She also wanted her writing o objects to be an introduction to the fine and decorative arts. When her time can out and she knew she was dying, Nina asked Mary to complete her work.
“I have been guided in this by my friendship with Nina and my own intuitive sense of what would be meaningful to her,” Mary says. “The reader is encouraged to read each segment on Nina’s life, look at the objects she chose and make their own emotional connections between Nina and the objects, just as I have.
“Nina also wanted her work to influence people to use objects to explore their own lives as well as see them in a social and cultural context,” Mary says.
A Tear in the Glass is Nina’s final work, created at the end of her career. It is an insightful, informative, and sometimes heartbreaking look into the life of an outstanding professional whose ability to inspire others was a true gift and a reflection of the central passion of a life dedicated to the care and interpretation of objects and the power they hold in transforming people’s lives.
28 August 2018 | Art Almanac
A Tear in the Glass
Mary Ryllis Clark
Anchor Books Australia
‘Learning to read objects is like learning to read oneself.’ – Nina Stanton
Nina Stanton (1948-2009), curator and director of museums and cultural heritage sought to find out if there were underlying emotional causes for her cancer diagnosis by exploring the connection she felt with fine art and decorative objects. With the aim of searching for understanding Stanton examines and documents 100 pieces from The Johnston Collection. Unable to complete this work, she entrusted writer and friend Mary Ryllis Clark to continue her journey.
A series of personal writings paired with images and descriptions of each of the 100 items displayed throughout this memoir are deep reflections on Stanton’s life, and the things that connected her to her world.
Furniture History Society Newsletter – November 2018-12-10
Diana Morgan reviews this fascinating collection of stories woven around objects by Mary Ryllis Clark
Nina Stanton was the charismatic director/curator of The WR Johnston Collection between 2000 and 2008. Before her early death in 2009, she wrote that when she was offered the job at The Johnston Collection she made a commitment that she would develop engaging ways for people to learn about objects. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer Nina chose nearly 100 objects, paintings, furniture, ceramics and glass from The Johnston Collection, and constructed her life stories around them. She also started the work of putting the objects in their fine and decorative arts context.
A few weeks before she died Nina asked Mary Ryllis Clark, a professional writer, historian and long-term friend, to complete her unfinished manuscript. This Mary has done, creating a magical evocation of Nina and the world she occupied.
Each of the objects in the book is accompanied by a segment of Nina’s life story and both Nina and Mary Ryllis Clark’s well-researched commentary not only on each object, but about the society and the cultural and historical background from which it came.
Of particular interest to the Furniture History Society are the many examples of English, French and Dutch furniture and wooden objects put in scholarly context.
This book is a refreshing and creative approach to both the art of biography and also to the power of decorative arts to inspire and fascinate. It would be of as much value to a young person setting out as to someone with a life-long interest in the decorative arts.
This book is hugely informative and, most importantly, hugely enjoyable.
About the Johnston Collection
The Collection is the legacy of William Robert Johnston (1911-1986), an antique dealer and collector of beautiful things … (and) delighted in arranging objects together to create extraordinary interiors.
In the 1970s…William Johnston decided he wanted the bulk of his now vast antique collection to be available to the public after had death. He had enjoyed collecting it, he had enjoyed using it and it was a source of immense satisfaction that his friends received so much pleasure from his Collection as well.
The W R Johnston Trust was established in 1986 to preserve and develop this unique Collection and it is administered as an independent not-for-profit museum.
Reflections in a letter to Mary Ryllis Clark on A Tear in the Glass from Emeritus Professor William Johnston.
Johnston taught European cultural history at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of several books in his field, notably The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938 for which the city of Vienna awarded its Golden Medal for Cultural Services.
Dear Mary,
Your book is a triumph – of seamless melding of two manuscripts with each other as well as with images that you did not select. The story-line, though full of surprises, emerges crystal clear, for one always knows where one is in the tale of Nina’s troubled life. Your skill in weaving your prose into hers offers a lesson to all writers in how to alternate voices. Hers is the more incisive, almost abrasive voice and yours the moderating, the instructing, the reconciling voice. The two interact exquisitely. She is a Stoic, while you are a Christian humanist – a classic dialectic of Australian sensibility
Those are comments about the writing. The thrust of the content for me in two dimensions. One, for the first time you explain the diverse provenance of choice items in the Johnston Collection. They come not only from the UK, but also from India in the 1950s and 1960s, and from North Africa (!). Jan Morris would delight to see such evidence that tokens of the British Empire diffused around the globe ended up in Australia. You have done an immense service in making sense of objects that travelled to dispersed locales and that yet now cohere into something very British or British-imperial. Deftly laid out around the photos, your prose affirms that the objects will outlive us all and will continue to provide a memorial to Nina as much, or even more than they do to my namesake who acquired most of them. As you show, the Johnston Collection required her guiding hand and her discernment in order to coalesce into a house museum. I do not know whether everyone at that institution will rejoice in your revelation of the necessity of the partnership.
The second dimension of the tale, however, is the one that will linger with me because nothing had prepared me for it. This is a story of Nina’s hardships, one after another. She was brave to undertake an account of them, and you were compassionate to fill out the story. It is a story that ends sadly, in fact miserably and undeservedly. It is a tale of obstacles that keep arising and keep getting overcome and then recur in some other form. I could not believe the Dickensian machinations that led to the Copland Foundation, and the story of the cancer diagnoses breaks one’s heart. I hope that either some reviewer or some essayist will build on your and her book to draw some conclusions about how well-placed men colluded with circumstance to obstruct this gifted women over and over. As in a Victorian novel, a strategy orchestrated by powerful men in Australia kept shunting Nina onto some new course. Your book is a triumph, and so in its way is the Nina-shaped Johnston Collection. At least for me, however, Nina’s life is as much a tale of setbacks as of triumphs. I read it is a tale of woe repeatedly undergone and repeatedly defied, not always happily and never for long. For some reason the dynamic of her repeated setbacks reminds me of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Any satisfaction that a reader feels at a momentary gain by the heroine proves temporary. A Gothic frisson keeps recurring. Thank heavens that the objects sit there on page after page, sublimating the pain – pain of loss, pain over what might have been, and pain of lacrimae rerum.
This is your bravest book, your most complex book, and your most heart-rending book. No one will be the same after reading it.