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.
The exhibition matters because it argues that Indigenous Australian art traditions were long disregarded until late 20th-century recognition, such as the 1989 "Magiciens de la Terre" at the Centre Pompidou. By interweaving art with the history of colonization, frontier conflicts, and resilience, it challenges ethnographic framing and asserts the centrality of First Nations voices in telling Australia's story. The show's ambitious scope and record-breaking attendance signal a growing institutional and public commitment to truth-telling and Indigenous cultural sovereignty.