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The Big Review | 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art at the Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne ★★★★★

The article reviews the exhibition "65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art" at the Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. The show features over 400 works, including 194 loans from 78 lenders, spanning 11 rooms and a decade of planning. It highlights rarely seen bark masterpieces from Arnhem Land, such as Woŋgu Munuŋgurr's "Djapu’ miny’tji" (1942), and juxtaposes colonial depictions with Indigenous perspectives, including works by William Barak and John Glover. The exhibition is on track to become the most visited in the museum's history.

museum exhibitions schedule May 29, 2025 visibility 3 link 10 artists

Melbourne exhibition celebrates the long overlooked contributions of Indigenous Australian artists

An exhibition titled "65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art" opens at Melbourne University’s Potter Museum of Art on 30 May, celebrating the long-overlooked contributions of Indigenous Australian artists. Co-curated by Judith Ryan and Marcia Langton, the show argues that Indigenous art dates back millennia before European settlement but was only recognized as fine art from the 1980s, having been previously confined to ethnographic categories. It highlights frontier artists like Tommy McRae, William Barak, and Mickey of Ulladulla, as well as contemporary photographers Ricky Maynard, Naomi Hobson, and Destiny Deacon, while addressing the link between racist policies and the denial of Indigenous art's value.

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