When the only museum in the U.S. dedicated to Indigenous Australian art launches a national touring exhibition of bark paintings in fall 2022, we can fully expect that the museum world will radically change.

Traditional ways of thinking about and exhibiting works of Indigenous art will never be the same.

The reasons are many. The art itself is stunningly beautiful. But this new way of thinking is also due to the unique attitude toward collaboration. Over the last three decades enormous strides have been made in consulting with Indigenous people about exhibitions, but “Maḏayin” is entirely committed to giving control to the knowledge holders themselves. Today, university museums are the best creative laboratories for art, where experiments are happening, and changes are embraced. “Maḏayin” will be exclusively visiting university museums. It will open in September 2022 at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth before traveling to American University Museum, Washington, DC.; the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; and The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, Charlottesville.

In December 2021, UVA's Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection received two important grants that will support Maḏayin: a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Art Museum Futures Fund, part of which will support Maḏayin, and a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Kluge-Ruhe, which has established a 20-year relationship with the Indigenous Australian art community, is redefining the ways in which museums engage with art and artists. With this exhibition, led and directed by the Yolŋu artists—who produce the eucalyptus bark paintings—the museum is setting a new benchmark for promoting the expression of historically suppressed voices and acknowledging curatorial autonomy. “We are giving them the reigns,” said Henry Skerritt, curator of Indigenous arts of Australia at the museum. “It’s not just lip service. The exhibition is being approached ethically and inclusively—because that’s the way to get a greater understanding and new, fresh perspectives.” The Indigenous artists are considered authorities on their art. As Wukuṉ Waṉambi, one of the chief Yolŋu curators on the project noted, “It’s very important that this curating job is done in the Yolŋu way. No Yolŋu have done this job before, only balanda (non-Aboriginal people) have done it, but in a different way because they have a different way of understanding . . . Yolŋu curating is about creating a clear picture.”

Art in Abundance

When acclaimed painter, sculptor, and printmaker Djambawa Marawili AM spent a two-week term in 2015 as a resident artist at Kluge-Ruhe, he was struck by its extensive collection of Yolŋu bark paintings. The ceremonial leader of the Maḏarrpa clan of the Yolŋu people, Marawili discovered a vast treasure of impressive cultural significance. In conversations with Skerritt, Kade McDonald, a member of the Maḏayin project team, and the museum’s director Margo Smith, the group realized the opportunity to show the history and fullness of Yolŋu cultural contributions through the paintings.

Kluge-Ruhe commissioned 33 new bark paintings by 28 Yolŋu artists for the exhibition. These professional artists are providing deep and sophisticated insights never before conveyed within museum walls. And, as a part of the process, the artists are involved in researching their works and those of their ancestors—and are learning from that research as well. Skerritt recalled, “During one particularly passionate discussion about which works should be included in the exhibition, we suggested to Djambawa he might want to cut some older works that showed some deep ceremonial content. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Keep it in! In this process [of curating] we are also learning about our culture.’” As Smith noted, “This type of reciprocal research benefits everyone and exemplifies what we are trying to do every day at Kluge-Ruhe.”

It was important to the Yolŋu artists and curators that Australians had an opportunity to see the newly commissioned paintings before they left Australia, so they were exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide during Tarnanthi, South Australia’s annual celebration of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art held Oct. 18, 2019 - Jan. 27, 2020.

National Award

Kluge-Ruhe is already well-known in Australia. A recent national award has heightened its standing and strengthens its mission to expand knowledge and understanding of Indigenous Australian art and culture worldwide.

Artist Djambawa Marawili’s bark painting “Journey to America” 2018, commissioned by Kluge-Ruhe for “Maḏayin,” won Australia’s most prestigious Indigenous art award—the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award—in August 2019. Marawili was named the overall winner from 280 entries and 68 finalists for the $50,000 award.

Made of natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, “Journey to America” depicts five different states of water in Blue Mud Bay on the eastern coast of Australia’s Arnhem Land, as well as the Statue of Liberty. The work reflects Marawili’s personal narrative of his travels to visit the Kluge-Ruhe Collection in the U.S. where he spent his residency and relates to his sharing of knowledge with cultures across the seas. “Journey to America” presents these ideas flowing through it like sacred Maḏarrpa saltwater and fire from Australia (represented by the Australian coat of arms) to the U.S., represented by the Statue of Liberty.