The Board of The David Roche Foundation announced today the appointment of Robert Reason as Senior Curator of The David Roche Foundation House Museum. Reason comes to the museum from the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) where he was curator of European and Australian Decorative Arts.
With twenty years’ experience in the art profession, Reason is recognised as one of Australia’s leading decorative arts curators. Since 2002, he has also been an affiliate lecturer in the graduate programs in art history and curatorial and museum studies at the University of Adelaide.
Previously, he curated The Art of Gladys Reynell; Bravura: 21st Century Australian Craft and Bounty: Nineteenth-century South Australian gold and silver. Recently, he was coordinating curator of Fashion Icons: Masterpieces from the Collection of Musée Des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. In 2008, he worked with The David Roche Foundation to co-curate Empires & Splendour: The David Roche Collection and its accompanying catalogue. Reason has written widely on the decorative arts, including Inspired Design: European and North American decorative arts from the Art Gallery of South Australia, the first book dedicated to this collection.
Reason said, ‘I am honoured to be joining this museum as it moves into its final building stage and to assist in envisaging the future of this exciting new museum for South Australia. For more than a decade I have admired David Roche’s passion and commitment to his collection, which is the finest of its kind in Australia. I look forward to working with the Foundation to make this remarkable private collection available to the public.’
Prior to the AGSA, Reason was curator at the Shepparton Art Museum in Victoria where he was actively involved with the Sidney Myer Fund International Ceramic Award. He completed a post-graduate diploma of art curatorship and museum management at the University of Melbourne, and holds both a master’s and bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
