12 August 2009
Ancestral power and the aesthetic: Arnhem Land paintings and objects from the Donald Thomson Collection
Members joined Lindy Allen, Senior Curator for Northern Australia, Museum Victoria, for a special tour of the exhibition from the Donald Thomson Collection at the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
Date: Wednesday 12 August
Time: 2.00–2.45pm
Venue: The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, near cnr of Swanston Street and Elgin Street.
This exhibition presented bark paintings and other painted objects collected in central and eastern Arnhem Land by anthropologist, the late Professor Donald Thomson (1901–1970). The exhibition featured around a third of an extraordinary collection of bark paintings in the Donald Thomson Collection. This powerful visual suite embodied the essence of many of the major ancestors who created the landscape and gave life and meaning to the people of Arnhem Land, such as the Wagilag Sisters and the Djan'kawu Sisters.
Curator, Lindy Allen
Lindy Allen is Senior Curator for Northern Australia at Museum Victoria, having worked for 30 years in the museum sector. Lindy’s research interests are in Aboriginal material culture and art, museum collections and collecting, museology, museum anthropology and visual anthropology, and most recently memory and memorialisation. She has initiated a focused research program on Indigenous collections and recently co-edited the volume The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections (published by MUP 2008); undertaken extensive fieldwork and fostered relationships with Indigenous communities across Arnhem Land and on Cape York Peninsula; and curated over 30 major exhibitions, the most recent being Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: Arnhem Land Bark Paintings and Painted Objects from the Donald Thomson Collection, currently showing at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne.
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