A NEW NETWORK TO PROMOTE ASIAN ART RESEARCH Claire Roberts and Chaitanya Sambrani – TAASA Review June 2021

T he Australasian Network for Asian Art (an4aa.org) is an independent, nonhierarchical collective of university, museum and gallery workers and postgraduate students involved in Asian art research in Australia and New Zealand.

It developed out of a need for cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional conversation and an urgency to work more closely together in the interests of expanding the understanding of art and culture from the Asia-Pacific region, promoting Australian and New Zealand scholarship, advocating for Asian art research domestically and internationally, and nurturing future generations of Asian art curators and academics.

This work is made all the more pressing by recent policy changes at peak bodies, for example the National Library of Australia’s decision to curtail the collection of certain Asian language materials, and the ongoing economic and social impacts of the global pandemic on universities, museums and cultural institutions. an4aa builds on a number of earlier academic initiatives including the Australian Consortium on Asian Art (ACAA) established by Chaitanya Sambrani at the Australian National University (ANU)...