Enfilade

Press release (January 2015) for The British Museum exhibition:

Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation
The British Museum, London, 23 April – 2 August 2015
National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Fall 2015

Kunmanara Hogan, Tjaruwa Woods, Yarangka Thomas, Estelle Hogan, Ngalpingka Simms and Myrtle Pennington, Kungkarangkalpa, acrylic on canvas, 2013. © The artists, courtesy Spinifex Arts Project.

In April 2015 the British Museum will open a major exhibition presenting a history of Indigenous Australia, the first exhibition in the UK devoted to the history and culture of Indigenous Australians: both Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. Drawing on objects from the British Museum’s collection, accompanied by important loans from British and Australian collections, the show will present Indigenous Australia as a living culture, with a continuous history dating back over 60,000 years. The objects in the exhibition will range from a shield believed to have been collected at Botany Bay in 1770 by Captain Cook or one of his men, a protest placard from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy established in 1972, contemporary paintings, and specially commissioned artworks from leading Indigenous artists. Many of the objects have never been on public display before.

Shield collected at Botany Bay during Captain Cook’s visit, 1770 (London: The British Museum).

The objects displayed in this exhibition are immensely important. The British Museum’s collection contains some of the earliest objects collected from Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders through early naval voyages, colonists, and missionaries dating as far back as 1770. Many were collected at a time before museums were established in Australia and they represent tangible evidence of some of the earliest moments of contact between Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders and the British. Many of these encounters occurred in or near places that are now major cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. As a result of collecting made in the early 1800s, many objects originate from coastal locations
rather than the arid inland areas often associated with
Indigenous Australia in the popular imagination.

Vincent Namatjira, James Cook—with the Declaration, 2014. © Vincent Namatjira

The exhibition will present not only Indigenous ways of understanding the land and sea but also the significant challenges faced by Indigenous Australians from the colonial period until to the present day. In 1770 Captain Cook landed on the east coast of Australia, a continent larger than Europe. In this land there were hundreds of different Aboriginal groups, each inhabiting a particular area, and each having its own languages, laws and traditions. This land became a part of the British Empire and remained so until the various colonies joined together in 1901 to become the nation of Australia we know today. In this respect, the social history of 19th-century Australia and the place of Indigenous people within this is very much a British story. This history continues into the twenty first century. With changing policies towards Indigenous Australians and their struggle for recognition of civil rights, this exhibition shows why issues about Indigenous Australians are still often so highly debated in Australia today.

The exhibition brings together loans of special works from institutions in the United Kingdom, including the British Library, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. A number of works from the collection of the National Museum of Australia will be shown, including the masterpiece ‘Yumari’ by Uta Uta Tjangala. Tjangala was one of the artists who initiated the translation of traditions of sand sculptures and body painting onto canvas in 1971 at Papunya, a government settlement 240km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Tjangala was also an inspirational leader who developed a plan for the Pintupi community to return to their homelands after decades of living at Papunya. A design from ‘Yumari’ forms a watermark on current Australian passports.

This exhibition has been developed in consultation with many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, Indigenous art and cultural centres across Australia, and has been organised with the National Museum of Australia. The broader project is a collaboration with the National Museum of Australia. It draws on a joint research project, funded by the Australian Research Council, undertaken by the British Museum, the National Museum of Australia and the Australian National University. Titled Engaging Objects: Indigenous communities, museum collections and the representation of Indigenous histories, the research project began in 2011 and involved staff from the National Museum of Australia and the British Museum visiting communities to discuss objects from the British Museum’s collections. The research undertaken revealed information about the circumstances of collecting and significance of the objects, many of which previously lacked good documentation. The project also brought contemporary Indigenous artists to London to view and respond to the Australian collections at the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum said, “The history of Australia and its people is an incredible, continuous story that spans over 60,000 years. This story is also an important part of more recent British history and so it is of great significance that audiences in London will see these unique and powerful objects exploring this narrative. Temporary exhibitions of this nature are only possible thanks to external support so I am hugely grateful to BP for their longstanding and on-going commitment to the British Museum. I would also like to express my gratitude to our logistics partner IAG Cargo and the Australian High Commission who are supporting the exhibition’s public programme.”

Peter J. Mather, Group Regional Vice President, Europe and Head of Country, UK, BP: “BP is extremely pleased to support The BP Exhibition Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, part of our five year commitment to the museum’s special exhibitions programme. BP has had a presence in Australia for almost 100 years and our support for this exhibition is part of BP’s wider contribution to the societies where we operate, enabling audiences to connect with a variety of different cultures. We are delighted to continue our long-standing relationship with the British Museum by supporting this exhibition which we hope will inspire interest in Australia’s indigenous people and culture for many thousands of visitors.”

Dr Mathew Trinca, National Museum of Australia Director, welcomed the British Museum exhibition: “We are delighted to support this major exhibition in London with the loan of some key objects from our collection. We look forward to continuing our work together to realise our ambition for an exhibition of these artefacts in Canberra in late 2015.”

Patron: HRH The Prince of Wales
Supported by BP
Organised with the National Museum of Australia
Logistics partner IAG Cargo
Public programme supported by the Australian High Commission

Gaye Sculthorpe, John Carty, Howard Morphy, Maria Nugent, Ian Coates, Lissant Bolton, and Jonathan Jones, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation (London: The British Museum Press, 2015), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0714126944, £30.

This ground-breaking publication explores the unique and ongoing relationship that Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders have to place and country. It also explores the profound impact and legacy of colonialism, the nature of collecting and the changing meaning of objects now in the collection of The British Museum.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Spirits of the Passage: The Story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Frazier History Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, February 2 through June 16, 2013
The DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, 19 September 2014 — 4 January 2015
Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania, 24 January — 3 May 2015

Slave Shackles from The Henrietta Marie, ca. 1700 (Key West: The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum)

The Reading Public Museum invites guests to the new exhibition, Spirits of the Passage: The Story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, exploring the transatlantic slave trade through a display of nearly 150 historical objects, many salvaged from sunken ships. This exhibition, sponsored locally by The Historic Abraham Lincoln Hotel, was developed in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the turning point it represented for thousands of enslaved people at a pivotal point in the American Civil War. It’s the first exhibit of its kind to examine the entire history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade from the 16th through 19th centuries, while also presenting the most up-to-date research and discoveries to the public. These include the latest marine archaeological discoveries from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, new research on key African societies, and an exploration of the slave trade’s modern day legacies.

Spirits of the Passage allows guests to see authentic artifacts from the wreck of an actual slave ship, such as restraints, tools, plates and trade goods, as well as dozens of other objects from West African societies that show the uniqueness of the individual cultures they represent. These include religious objects, bronze- and beadwork, pottery, and jewelry. These compelling artifacts create a provocative picture of this tragic era, while also engendering a sense of pride in the legacy of strength these enslaved people left behind.

Spirits of the Passage was produced in partnership by The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida and The Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The 1972 discovery of The Henrietta Marie occasioned this 1997 book:

Madeleine Burnside and Rosemarie Robotham, with a foreword by Cornell West, Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1997), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-0684818191.

In a watery grave off the coast of Florida lies the earliest slave ship ever recovered. The English-owned Henrietta Marie plied the waters from Europe to Africa and the New World, sinking in the year 1700. She has waited three hundred years to reveal her story. Taking the wreck of the ship as its dramatic heart, Spirits of the Passage presents the first general-interest history of the early years of the slave trade. Told in part from the decks and the cargo hold of a single merchant slaver, this powerful and fascinating story covers a period that has heretofore been largely the territory of scholars—the late seventeenth century, when the slave trade began a period of explosive growth.

Spirits of the Passage describes the story of the largest forced migration in human history, with a powerful text that personalizes the experience of slavery in the most gripping way. Richly illustrated with artifacts found in the wreck along with etchings and paintings of the time, the book documents a tragic tale of human misery even as it reveals the strength of spirit that made survival possible for enslaved Africans. Included throughout are narratives of resistance and survival, many of them never before told. The mosaic of profiles breathes life into stories from all sides of the trade, stories that will contribute to a more complete understanding of the dilemmas of the time. As integral parts of this important volume, profiles, anecdotes, illustrations, and incisive narrative all combine to create a compelling account of one of history’s most important, and shattering, moments.