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Author Archives: Will
Inside and Outside: an essay
Several weeks ago I wrote about a panel discussion at the Toledo Museum of Art in which the topic of restricted knowledge in Aboriginal painting—what Stephen Gilchrist referred to as “registers of knowledge”—created a degree of consternation among some members … Continue reading
The Lake Where Cultures Meet
A desert lake. Paruku. Lake Gregory. This is the place where the ancestral hero, Kiki, came down from the east, a falling star. Landed in the water and created seeds, grapes, bandicoot, and blue-tongued lizard. This is the place where … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Art, Books, Culture
Tagged Ecology, John Carty, Lake Gregory, Paruku
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Living on Country
Melissa Lucashenko’s debut novel, Steam Pigs (UQP, 1997) was a multi-award winner, followed up the next year by a young adult story, Killing Darcy. In 1999 she published Hard Yards, and a second YA novel, Too Flash, appeared in 2002. … Continue reading
Billy Benn’s Hills and Ranges
Exploring the work of the first great artist to emerge from Alice Springs’ Mwerre Anthurre Artists’ studio, Billy Benn (IAD Press, 2011), co-authored by Benn and the studio’s former arts coordinator Catherine Peattie, is a shifting, hopscotch analysis of the … Continue reading
Crossing Cultures at the Toledo Museum of Art
“You’ve captured the imagination of a twelve-year-old boy,” his father said with some pride. Of all the memorable things I heard during the past weekend when Crossing Cultures opened at the Toledo Museum of Art, that is the quotation that … Continue reading
Posted in Art
Tagged Brian Kennedy, Crossing Cultures, Exhibitions, Hood Museum of Art, Margo Smith, Stephen Gilchrist, Toledo Museum of Art
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Crossing Cultures / Toledo Museum of Art Slideshow
Here is a selection of photographs of the installation of Crossing Cultures from the Toledo Museum of Art, shot on the opening day, April 12, 2013. I wasn’t able to capture every angle and image and artwork included in the … Continue reading
Posted in Art
Tagged Crossing Cultures, Exhibitions, Hood Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art
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Reception Theory
In its article on reception theory, Wikipedia quotes Harold (not Herbert) Marcuse to aid in defining the field: reception history is “the history of the meanings that have been imputed to historical events. It traces the different ways in which participants, … Continue reading
The Last Great Art Movement of the 20th Century
I got buzzed and felled by a mean (and I mean mean) intestinal flu bug this week, so I’m lying low on all fronts. Just two brief topics to note this week: Robert Hughes’s assessment that Aboriginal art is the … Continue reading
A Classic Revisited
Last May, on our first evening in Seattle for the opening of Ancestral Modern, we stepped out of a taxicab in front of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan’s loft apartment for the first social evening of the week. A kindly looking, … Continue reading
Seven Sisters Dreaming
The story of the Seven Sisters who were pursued across the country by a man (wati) named Nyiru is one of the most widespread of Dreaming narratives in the desert regions of Australia. It is also one that has instant … Continue reading
