Art historian Henry F. Skerritt reviews for Crikey Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: the first ever exhibition of barks paintings from the Donald Thomson Collection.
Aboriginal art
Retrenched factory fodder and public servants better off than CDEP rejects
Three contrasting circumstances sum up why it’s much harder to survive in the workforce if you are Aboriginal these days. Sacked factory workers, Aboriginal workers and public servants fare quite differently in the brave new world of the federal intervention.
Aboriginal art popular at home and abroad
Sales of Aboriginal art generated a mere $666,000 in 1988 but last year turnover hit a new record of $14.3 million and this will be exceeded again this year, writes Geoff Maslen.
National Gallery of Australia snares the Possum
The National Gallery of Australia last night paid $2.4 million for Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s huge painting Warlugulong at a Sotheby’s auction in Melbourne, writes Geoff Maslen.
The politics of culturally significant art work
Sotheby’s Aboriginal art specialist, Tim Klingender, has been protesting for years at the impact the Protection of Moveable Cultural Heritage Act has on the sale of important Aboriginal art, writes Geoff Maslen.
Clifford Possum’s masterpiece can’t leave the country
The federal government will inform Sotheby’s today that its prize Aboriginal painting to go up for auction tonight will not be given an export permit under Australia’s Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act .
