Aboriginal art collections : highlights from Australia's public museums and galleries is a survey of the indigenous collections of fourteen public museums and galleries in Australia.

"This publication accompanies the exhibition Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 5 through September 18, 2016."

A fascinating journey into Aboriginal art collection.

In this highly original study, Vanessa Russ examines the gradual invention of Aboriginal art within the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This process occurred as the social histories of Australia expanded and recognised Aboriginal people, through wars and political shifts, and as international organisations began placing pressure on nation states to expand, diversify, and respect multicultural perspectives. This book explores a state art institution as a case study to consider these complex narratives through a single history of Aboriginal art from early colonisation until today. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and Indigenous studies.

This volume of original essays brings together, for the first time, histories of the making and of the makers of most of the major Indigenous Australian museum collections. These collections are a principal source of information on how Aboriginal people lived in the past. Knowing the context in which any collection was created-the intellectual frameworks within which the collectors were working, their collecting practices, what they failed to collect, and what Aboriginal people withheld-is vital to understanding how any collection relates to the Aboriginal society from which it was derived. Once made, collections have had mixed fates: some have become the jewel of a museum's holdings, while others have been divided and dispersed across the world, or retained but neglected. The essays in this volume raise issues about representation, institutional policies, the periodisation of collecting, intellectual history, material culture studies, Aboriginal culture and the idea of a 'collection'.

New scholarship on a world-caliber museum collection of Aboriginal Australian art

Featuring over 240 colour plates, this volume canvasses an extraordinary diverse range of Aboriginal art. The 27 essays by leading authorities and 13 interviews with key artists are accompanied by an extensive chronology.