Cross-cultural interactions and visual representations in New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific; the works and careers of exiled, refugee, migrant and travelling artists, photographers and architects.

Associate-Professor Bell has taught Art History at the University of Auckland since 1973. His MA/BA (Hons) course, ARTHIST 703, focuses primarily on cross-cultural interactions and representations in New Zealand and the Pacific region from the mid 18th century to the present, though it also includes topics from other parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. At advanced undergraduate level he teaches ARTHIST 302, Crisis and Change: Mid 19th century art in France and Britain. In 2008 he will be co-convening and introducing two new Stage I courses: ARTHIST 110, on topics in art, both Maori and European, in New Zealand from the mid 18th century till the 1960s, and the new General Education course, Reading Images, which explores how images and objects, both art and non-art, are constructed and the ways in which they can be understood and interpreted.

Marti Friedlander, Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2009.

In Transit: Questions of Home and Belonging in New Zealand Art, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2007.

'Looking outwards; looking inwards: threshold spaces in the work of two migrant Central European photographers in New Zealand in the mid twentieth century', Journal of New Zealand Art History, 30, 2009.

'Surveying Peryerland: Peter Peryer Photographer, with essays by Peter Simpson and Perter Peryer', Art New Zealand, (103), p66-68, 2009.

'The Third Richard: a film by Danny Mulheron and Sarah Stretton', Review in New Zealand Jewish Chronicle, 65, p13-13, 2009.

'The Contributions of Jewish Individuals in New Zealand: 1840s to the Present', In: Avrum Ehrlich (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora, Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-CLIO Inc., p.1-3, 2008.

‘Fractured Families: John Davis’s photo-portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson and “family” in  Samoa’, in Art and the British Empire, Eds., Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley & Douglas Fordham, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, pp. 309-26, 2007.

‘Is Art History Global?: reflections from another place’, in Is Art History Global, Ed. Jamers Elkins, London, Routledge, pp. 376-7, 2007.

Shadows and Light’, in Marti Friedlander: Shadows and Light, Auckland, FhE Galleries, pp. 4-14, 2007.

Leonard (or Len) Bell is a highly-regarded scholar both nationally and internationally. His writings (see below) on cross-cultural interactions and representations in all visual media, and on the works and careers of travelling, migrant, expatriate and refugee artists, photographers  and architects have been published in books and periodicals in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, the USA, Germany and the Czech Republic .

His researches into cross-cultural interactions and representations in the Pacific (including New Zealand and Australia) are ongoing. This work includes exploration of the relationships between displacement and creativity, the nature and complexities of boundaries and the negotiations of socio-cultural and mental, as well as physical and architectural spaces, as articulated in visual images and objects. He is also researching towards a book on the eminent British-born, New Zealand photographer, Marti Friedlander (b.1928).

Leonard Bell has had research fellowships at the National Gallery of American Art, Washington D.C. and at the Yale Center for British Art. He was the Daphne Mayo Visiting Professor, School of Art History, Film and Media Studies, University of Queensland in 2005.

He is on the International Advisory Board of Art History [Journal of the Association of Art Historians], and on the Editorial Advisorial Committees of the Journal of New Zealand Art History, the Journal of New Zealand Studies, and Reading Room [Auckland Art Gallery].

He has co-organised the following conferences in recent years:

• ‘Displacement and Creativity: Refugees and the Arts in New Zealand’, The University of Auckland, with an accompanying exhibition at the Gus Fisher Gallery, September 2001
• ‘Worlds Apart: Forced Migration and Cultural Impacts in Britain and New Zealand’, The University of Auckland, November 2002; an interdisciplinary conference.
• Art Association of Australia and New Zealand annual conference, ‘Present Pasts: Present Futures’, The University of Auckland, December 2004.

Art History
Course				Title		Availability in 2010
ARTHIST 110				Visual Art in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Differences and Identities		Semester 1
ARTHIST 202				Crisis and Change: Mid 19th Century Art in France and Britain		Semester 2
ARTHIST 302				Crisis and Change: Mid 19th Century Art in France and Britain		Semester 2
ARTHIST 703 A B				Cross-Cultural Representation		Semester 1 and 2 (full year)