Koolanga Boodja Neh Nidjuuk (Children Listening and Looking on Country)

March 21–June 30, 2019

Koolanga Boodja Neh Nidjuuk (Children Listening and Looking on Country), a traveling exhibition organized by the John Curtin Gallery of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, features thirty-eight artworks made by the Aboriginal children from the Carrolup State School at the Carrolup Native Settlement in the late 1940s.

The children artists made use of a vibrant palette to depict the world from their own experiences and started a pictorial landscape tradition that would gain international attention. The works once formed part of a donation to Colgate in 1966 by Herbert Mayer ’29 and remained in the collection of the Picker Art Gallery until 2013 when they were returned to Western Australia. Oversight of the exhibition, education, and research regarding the collection at Curtin University is the responsibility and authority of the Carrolup Elders Reference Group. The Elders have encouraged broad access to the collection through exhibition of the drawings throughout Noongar country in the southwest of Western Australia. This international exhibition honors the enduring relationship between the Noongar community, Curtin, and Colgate in the University's Bicentennial year.

Koolanga Boodja Neh Nidjuuk (Children Listening and Looking on Country) is presented with the guidance of the Carrolup Elders Reference Group and support of the John Curtin Gallery’s JCG Founders Club, Curtin University. The exhibition is partially funded by the Robert J. Gerberg ’59, P’85 Endowment for the Visual Arts, the Tim ’82 and Alexandra Murphy Endowment to Promote the Arts, and by the Friends of the Picker Art Gallery.

On April 12, please join us for the Symposium on the role of museums and galleries in reconciliation, repatriation, and reparation and Welcoming Reception.

Symposium, 3 p.m., Golden Auditorium, Little Hall 

Dr. Margo Smith, director and curator of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia will deliver a keynote talk, "From Deep Listening to Decolonization: How museums are working with Indigenous Australians toward reconciliation and healing." Colgate Associate Professor of Art and Art History Elizabeth Marlowe, and Curator of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology Christy DeLair, will serve as discussants. Professor of Anthropology and Africana & Latin American Studies Michelle Bigenho will moderate.

This event is supported by the Colgate Arts Council, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Museum Studies.

Welcoming Reception, 5 p.m., Picker Art Gallery, second floor, Dana Arts Center

Remarks, 6 p.m., Brehmer Theater, first floor, Dana Arts Center

Image: Barry Loo, Bounding for Home, 1950, watercolor and black ink on paper. The Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork, Curtin University Art Collection.