The Berndts’ Mid-Century Arnhem Land Bark Painting Exhibition: Its Legacies

Abstract

This article investigates the first exhibition of Aboriginal art to be shown in a state art gallery, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, in 1957. The curators were anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt. The exhibition was held when there was a growing interest in Aboriginal art, its links to national identity and the need to exhibit it to educate viewers about the art. The legacies of this exhibition are various including that it signalled a museological shift from anthropological modes of curating Aboriginal art to an aesthetic approach, and it began a conversation between curators, anthropologists, and art historians, and more recently with First Nations curators, about which approaches to employ in presenting Aboriginal art.

Notes

1 On framing Aboriginal art in a primitive art context, Australian Aboriginal Art curated by Charles Barrett and A.S. Kenyon was shown in 1929 at the National Museum of Victoria.

2 Philip Jones, ‘The Art of Contact: Encountering an Aboriginal Aesthetic from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries’, in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Art, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 23.

3 Nanette Carter and Robyn Oswald-Jacobs, Frances Burke: Designer of Modern Textiles (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2021), 157.

4 Jones, ‘The Art of Contact’, 32.

5 R. and C. Berndt, ‘Aboriginal Art in Central-Western Northern Territory’, Meanjin 9, no. 3 (1950): 183.

6 Ibid., 187.

7 Jones, ‘The Art of Contact’, 22.

8 See Luke Taylor, ‘“They May Say Tourist, May Say Truly Painting”: Aesthetic Evaluation and Meaning of Bark Paintings in Western Arnhem Land, Northern Australia’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14, no. 4 (2008): 865–85.

9 Judith Ryan, Spirit in Land: Bark Paintings from Arnhem Land (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1990), 14–21; Luke Taylor, ‘Bark Painting’, in Anderson, 143–52.

10 Howard Morphy, Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories (London: Routledge, 2007), 51; Anne E. Wells, Milinginbi: Ten Years in the Crocodile Islands of Arnhem Land (Sydney: Angus & Roberston, 1963), 138.

11 Luke Taylor, Seeing the Inside: Bark Painting in Western Arnhem Land (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1–14.

12 Terry Smith, Transformations in Australian Art, Volume Two: The Twentieth Century – Modernism and Aboriginality (Sydney: Craftsman House, 2002), 149.

13 Ronald M. Berndt, ‘Transformation of Persons, Objects and Country: Some Comments’, in University of Queensland. Anthropology Museum. Occasional papers in Anthropology 1979; 9; 143–52, 144, 151.

14 Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby, ‘Introduction’, in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australasian Museum Collections, eds Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 12.

15 Berndt, ‘Transformation of Persons, Objects and Country’, 145.

16 John Stanton, ‘“I did not set out to make a collection”: The Ronald and Catherine Berndt Collection at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology’, in Peterson et al., The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australasian Museum Collections, 528.

17 Berndt, ‘Transformation of Persons, Objects and Country’, 144.

18 Morphy, Becoming Art, 51.

19 Ibid., 48.

20 Ibid., 59–60.

21 The drawings were shown in Yirrkala Drawings, Art Gallery of New South Wales, December 2013–February 2014; Cara Pinchbeck, ed., Yirrkala Drawings (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2013).

22 Ryan, 19.

23 Marcia Langton cited in Smith, 151.

24 See Taylor, ‘Bark Painting’, 143–52.

25 Arnhem Land Art: Exhibition by the Australian National Research Council and the Department of Anthropology, Sydney University, David Jones Gallery, 17–29 October 1949.

26 Philip Jones, ‘Perceptions of Aboriginal Art: A History’, in Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, ed. Peter Sutton (New York: Asia Society Galleries/Melbourne: Viking, 1988), 174.

27 Berndt, ‘Transformation of Persons, Objects and Country’, 144.

28 Ibid.

29 A.P. Elkin, and Catherine and Ronald Berndt, Art in Arnhem Land (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1950), xi.

30 Steven Miller, ‘Select Chronology’, in One Sun, One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007), 332–4.

31 H.E. Fuller, ‘Aboriginal Art Exhibition: Interesting Designs in Ochre Tints’, The Advertiser, 5 July 1939.

32 Benjamin Thomas, ‘Daryl Lindsay and the Appreciation of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in the 1940s: “No mere collection of interesting curiosities”’, Journal of Art Historiography 4 (2011): 1–12.

33 Daryl Lindsay to the Minister for Interior, 18 February 1952, cited in Benjamin Thomas, ‘Daryl Lindsay and the appreciation of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria’, 3; National Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery Board Meeting Minutes, 16 May 1955, item 9, Art Gallery of South Australia (hereafter AGSA) Research Library.

34 Minutes of the Conference of State Gallery Directors, Queensland National Art Gallery, 1–4 August 1956, AGSA Research Library.

35 Margaret Preston’s articles include: ‘Arts for Crafts: Aboriginal Art Artfully Applied’, The Home (December 1924); ‘The Indigenous Art of Australia’, Art and Australia 11 (1925); ‘What Is to Be Our National Art?’, Undergrowth (March–April 1927); ‘The Application of Aboriginal Designs’, Art in Australia 31 (March 1930).

36 Ian McLean, White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 90.

37 Ibid., 90–6; Steve Miller, ‘Designs on Aboriginal Culture’, in Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia, eds Ann Stephen, Philip Goad and Andrew McNamara (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2008), 30.

38 Terry Smith cited in in Deborah Edwards, Margaret Preston (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2005), 52.

39 Sylvia Kleinert, ‘Aboriginal Enterprises: Negotiating an Urban Aboriginality’, Aboriginal History 34 (2010): 183–7. In 2021 Triki Onus and Alex Morgan released a film about Bill Onus: Ablaze, https://iview.abc.net.au/show/ablaze (accessed 24 July 2023).

40 McLean, White Aborigines, 90–6.

41 Ian McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 2011), 22.

42 The position was funded by a Carnegie Corporation Grant for three years: Ronald Berndt, ‘General Report on the Establishment and Development of Social Anthropology in the University of Western Australia, January 1957–March 1958, June 1958’, Anthropology Department Archive, University of Western Australia (UWA) Archives, 1.

43 Catherine and Ronald were not aware at the time of the move of a university policy that spouses were not permitted to teach in the same department. By 1958 Catherine was Visiting Tutor and from 1963 a visiting or part-time lecturer: Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard, ‘The Berndts: A Biographical Sketch’, in Going It Alone: Prospects for Aboriginal Autonomy: Essays in Honour of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, eds Robert Tonkinson and Michael Howard (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1990), 33.

44 J.A. Barnes’ words, reported by Jim Bell to Ronald Berndt, are cited by Gray in Geoffrey Gray, ‘Cluttering up the Department: Ronald Berndt and the Distribution of the University of Sydney Ethnographic Collection 1956–57’, reCollections 2, no. 2 (2006): 168.

45 Ronald Berndt to the Vice-Chancellor, 3 October 1956, UWA Archives, cited in Gray, 34.

46 Annual Report of the Trustees for the year ended 30 June 1958, Museum and Art Gallery of Western Australia, np.

47 Draft of a talk for the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia on the occasion of his opening the Exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Bark Paintings at the Perth Museum, 23 December at 8pm, Anthropology Department Archive, UWA Archives, 6.

48 ‘Exhibition Features Aboriginal Paintings’, West Australian, 19 December 1957.

49 ‘Anthropologists Collect Fine Display of Native Art’, West Australian, 7 January 1958.

50 Berndt, ‘Transformation of Persons, Objects and Country’, 145, 151.

51 Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, ‘Australian Aboriginal Art’, in The Art of Arnhem Land: An Exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art, Arnhem Land Paintings on Bark and Carved Human Figures, Art Gallery of Western Australia, December 1957–January 1958, 4–9.

52 Berndt and Berndt, ‘Australian Aboriginal Art’, 4–9.

53 Marcia Langton, ‘Anthropology, Politics and the Changing World of Aboriginal Australians’, Anthropological Forum 21, no. 1 (2011): 20.

54 Minutes of the Conference of State Gallery Directors, Art Gallery of Western Australia, 14–17 October 1958, AGSA Research Library.

55 Hal Missingham, ‘Foreword’, in Australian Aboriginal Art: Bark Painting, Carved Figures, Sacred and Secular Objects, An Exhibition Arranged by the State Art Galleries of Australia, 1960, np.

56 Ibid.

57 J.A. Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the Western World’, in Australian Aboriginal Art, ed. Ronald M. Berndt (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 63.

58 Howard Morphy, ‘Aboriginal Art in the 1960s’, in Anderson, 157–8; Vanessa Russ, A History of Aboriginal Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (London: Routledge, 2021), 96–8.

59 These were Oenpelli, Goulburn Island, Liverpool River, Milingimbi, Yirrkala, Groote Eylandt, Beswick Creek, Port Keats, Walcott Inlet and Melville Island.

60 Tuckson to Berndt, 23 March 1960, Tuckson Archive: Australian Aboriginal Art, Research Library, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

61 Tuckson to Berndt, 21 April 1960, Tuckson Archive.

62 ‘Aboriginal Art Exhibition: Official Opening by Professor Elkin’, not dated, Tuckson Archive, ‘Acknowledgements’, in Australian Aboriginal Art, np.

63 Charles Mountford, ‘Aboriginal Bark Paintings’, in the Adelaide Festival of Arts March 12–26, 1960 Souvenir Program (Adelaide: Adelaide Festival of Arts, Executive Committee, 1960), 49. Mountford, an ethnologist, straddled art and anthropology and became honorary curator of Aboriginal art at AGSA in 1961.

64 Robert Edwards to John Baily, 27 September 1973, Art of the Dreamtime exhibition file, AGSA Research Library.

65 Frank Norton, ‘Preface’, in Aboriginal Art (Perth: Western Australia Art Gallery, 1975), 2.

66 Dick Roughsey, ‘Introduction’, in Norton, Aboriginal Art, 1.

67 Robert Edwards, ‘Introduction’, in Preserving Indigenous Culture: A New Role for Museums, eds Robert Edwards and Jenny Stewart (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1980), 2–3.

68 Ronald Berndt to Mr Tuckson, 8 February 1961, Tuckson Archive; Russ, 101.

69 R.M. Berndt, ‘Preface’, in Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Art, 3.

70 Ibid., 10.

71 Russ, 101.

72 J.A. Tuckson, ‘Aboriginal Art and the Western World’, in Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Art, 63.

73 [Ronald Berndt], ‘Opening: Aboriginal Art exhib. Perth Art Gallery: 1 February 1961’, Berndt Archive, Berndt Museum of Anthropology, University of Western Australia.

74 R.M. Berndt, ‘Epilogue’, in Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Art, 69.

75 Ibid., 71, 73. My interpretation differs from that of Howard Morphy, ‘Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery’, Humanities Research Journal 7, no. 1 (2001): 39–40.

76 Meyer Schapiro, ‘Style’, in Anthropology Today: An Encyclopaedic Inventory, ed. A.L. Kroeber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 54, 57–8.

77 Ronald Berndt, ‘Some Methodological Considerations in the Study of Australian Aboriginal Art’, Oceania 29, no. 1 (1958): 34.

78 Ibid., 41, 42.

79 Alan McCulloch, ‘The Aboriginal Art Exhibition’, Meanjin 20 (July 1961): 192.

80 Berndt, ‘Some Methodological Considerations in the Study of Australian Aboriginal Art’ (my italics).

81 Taylor, ‘Bark Painting’, 152.

82 This changed nature of some of the exhibits in the 1957 exhibition became apparent when the author examined the non-restricted ones at the Berndt Museum in 2019.

83 McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, 54.

84 Taylor, ‘Bark Painting’, 152; McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, 54.

85 Daphne Wallace was the first permanent Indigenous curator appointed at AGNSW, in 1993; Margo Neale followed in 1994: Margo Neale, ‘Whose Identity Crisis? Between the Ethnographic and the Art Museum’, in Double Desire: Transculturation and Indigenous Contemporary Art, ed. Ian McLean (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 291–2.

86 Neale, ‘Whose Identity Crisis?’, 292–3; Margo Neale, ‘The Presentation and Interpretation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: The Yirbana Gallery in Focus’, in Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians, ed. Michele Grossman (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003), 105, 118–19.

87 Neale, ‘The Presentation and Interpretation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art’, 105, 118–19.

88 Radford was indicating the shift of Aboriginal art to art galleries from natural history museums.

89 Ron Radford, ‘Director’s Foreword’, in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: Collection Highlights, eds Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2010), np.

90 Neale, ‘Whose Identity Crisis?’, 292, 293.

91 Morphy, ‘Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery’, 41, 43.

92 Hetti Perkins, ‘One Sun One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia’, in One Sun One Moon, 14.

93 Howard Morphy, ‘Making the Familiar Unfamiliar: The Aesthetics of Eastern Arnhem Land Art’, in One Sun One Moon, 73–6.

94 Morphy, ‘Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery’, 48.

95 Laura Fisher, ‘The Art/Ethnography Binary: Post-Colonial Tensions within the Field of Australian Aboriginal Art’, Cultural Sociology 6, no. 2 (2012): 265.

96 Stephen Gilchrist cited in Fred Myers, ‘Recalibrating the Visual Field: Indigenous Curators and Contemporary Art’, in The Difference Identity Makes: Indigenous Cultural Capital in Australian Cultural Fields, eds Lawrence Bamblett, Fred Myers and Tim Rowse (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2019), 85, 86.

97 Myers, 78.

98 Stephen Gilchrist, ‘Indigenous Curatorial Interpellations: Insistence and Refusal’, in The Australian Art Field: Practices, Policies, Institutions, eds Tony Bennett, Deborah Stevenson, Fred Myers and Tamara Winikoff (New York: Routledge, 2020), 261.

99 Ibid., 257.

100 Neale, ‘Whose Identity Crisis?’, 309.