Organized by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection

1960s

Yirrkala Church Panels Wandjuk Djuwakan Marika, Roy Daḏayŋa Marika, Mawalan Marika, Mathaman Marika, Milirrpum Marika and Ninimbitj Marika Mungurrawuy Yunupiŋu, Birrikitji Gumana and Narritjin Maymuru, 1962. Photo by Anne Wells. Dhuwarrwarr Marika (left) with nurses at the Yirrkala Mission Office, 1968. Photo by Jillian Moore.

The 1960s were a decade of tumult and triumph for Yolŋu art and artists. In 1962, fifteen artists collaboratively paint two monumental paintings on masonite boards to be hung behind the altar in the new Methodist Church at Yirrkala. The Church Panels represent the most significant expression of Yolŋu culture produced for public view to date. A renaissance in bark painting follows, as senior artists produce increasingly ambitious artworks. The establishment of a bauxite mine on Yolŋu Country inspires the artists to use art as a tool for political activism.

Year By Year...

1960

Narritjin Maymuru wins prizes in the Aboriginal art category at the Darwin Eisteddfod, the Northern Territory’s annual festival. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, representatives from Arnhem Land mission stations participate in the festival.

Australian Aboriginal Art: Bark Paintings, Carved Figures, Sacred and Secular Objects opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, before traveling to the Queensland Art Gallery; the National Gallery of Victoria; the Western Australian Art Gallery; the National Gallery of South Australia; and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. It is the first major exhibition of Indigenous Australian art to travel to all the state art galleries. A selection of works from the exhibition is shown at the Sixth São Paulo Biennale, Brazil, in 1961. 

1961

Duval Holdings is granted prospecting rights for bauxite on the Gove peninsula. Two years later, the French company Pechiney starts developing a mining town.

Art from Arnhem Land: A Story of the Australian Aborigine opens at Qantas House, Sydney, before traveling to Tokyo, New York, Auckland, San Francisco, Montreal, Tehran, Paris and Rome. Mawalan Marika flies to Sydney to participate in the exhibition, which makes him one of the first Yolŋu to undertake interstate travel in Australia. 

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies is founded.

1962

Indigenous Australians are given the right to vote in federal elections. However, full voting rights are not granted until they are required to register on the electoral roll in 1984. 

Edgar Wells returns to serve as superintendent of the Yirrkala Mission (1962–63). The sale of Yolŋu art increases as art collectors and dealers from southern Australian cities begin visiting. Wells is dismissed the following year over his active support of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions.

Narritjin Maymuru and Roy Daḏayŋa Marika join an Aboriginal dance troupe on a tour of theaters in southern Australian cities organized by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. They visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where Aboriginal art is installed next to European art. Narritjin determines that Aboriginal art should be recognized equally in Australia. He also holds one of the first solo exhibitions of work by an Aboriginal artist.

Narritjin Maymuru proposes that the new Methodist church at Yirrkala should include Yolŋu paintings. He and Mawalan Marika, Wandjuk Marika, Mathaman Marika, Larrtjanŋa Ganambarr, Birrikitji Gumana and Gawirriṉ Gumana, among others, gather to plan and paint using natural ochres on two Masonite panels. In what have become known as the Yirrkala Church Panels, the men depict the primary ancestors of the Dhuwa and Yirritja moieties, representing the most significant, communal expression of Yolŋu Law produced for public view.

James A. Davidson, who runs a gallery out of his Melbourne home, begins traveling annually to Arnhem Land to purchase Aboriginal art. He helps market Aboriginal art by giving lectures and organizing exhibitions in concert with Indigenous events such as the Moomba Festival. He later builds collections for the Americans Edward L. Ruhe and Louis Allen.

Dorothy Bennett begins dealing in Aboriginal art in Darwin, focusing particularly on the art of Arnhem Land. 

1963

Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces that the federal government has approved plans to build a bauxite mine on land excised from the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve. A lease is signed with the Gove Bauxite Corporation, a subsidiary of Pechiney. 

When parliamentarians Kim Beazley Sr. and Gordon Bryant travel to Arnhem Land, they learn that Yolŋu and missionaries were never consulted about the Nabalco mining lease. Yolŋu elders state their intention to send a petition to Parliament after showing the parliamentarians the Yirrkala Church Panels, and Beazley suggests they send a bark painting.

When the new Methodist church opens, the Yirrkala Church Panels are installed on either side of the altar.

The Yolŋu create the Yirrkala Bark Petition, with text in both Gupapuyŋu and English typed by Margaret Croxford, wife of missionary school teacher Ron Croxford. The paper is glued to a piece of bark and framed by miny’tji (sacred clan designs) from the Dhuwa and Yirritja moieties painted by Narritjin Maymuru. Nine men and three women sign the petition on behalf of the Yolŋu. They ask to be heard before Nabalco is permitted to mine and to be consulted before any future agreements are made. Four copies are presented to the House of Representatives on August 14 and August 28, 1963, making them the first documents prepared by Indigenous Australians to be formally recognized by Parliament. 

The Yolŋu create the Thumbprint Petition after the federal government declines to accept the Yirrkala Bark Petition in Parliament. The thumbprints of 33 Yolŋu leaders, both men and women, appear alongside the name of the signatory, each witnessed by a literate person. While never accepted by Parliament, it leads directly to the formal acceptance of the earlier Yirrkala Bark Petition. 

As a result of the petitions, the Australian government establishes the Select Committee on Grievances of Yirrkala Aborigines, Arnhem Land Reserve. The committee publishes a report concluding that Aboriginal Australians have no legal right to their land. It recommends the preservation of hunting rights over sacred sites and the bauxite mining area. 

1964

Emblèmes, totems, blasons opens at Musée Guimet, Paris.

Exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art opens in Tokyo and tours Japan. 

1965

A commission of the board of the Methodist Overseas Mission stipulates that each mission station should have a station council and a church council, with Aboriginal residents involved in the administration. In 1974, a commission advocates for Indigenous control of the communities.

Women begin regularly painting barks for sale. Commercial wood glue also replaces local fixatives. 

Geoffrey W. Spence who began collecting Aboriginal Australian art in the early 1960s, exhibits his collection at the Botanical Gardens Museum and Gallery, Darwin.

Edward L. Ruhe, a professor of English literature at the University of Kansas, begins collecting Aboriginal Australian art while on a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Adelaide.

Australian Aboriginal Bark Paintings, 1912–1964, organized by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, opens at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Aboriginal Bark Paintings from the Cahill and Chaseling Collections opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 

1966 

Edward L. Ruhe purchases bark paintings and artifacts from the Geoffrey W. Spence Collection with Ronald Reivich. In 1968, he purchases the remainder of the collection with Louis Allen and George Gill.

Aboriginal Art from Australia, an exhibition of bark paintings and sculpture from the National Gallery of South Australia, opens at the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, before traveling to the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania.

The Art of Arnhem Land: From the Collection of William McE. Miller, Jr. opens at the Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Bark Paintings from Arnhem Land opens at the Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

1967

The 1967 Referendum passes overwhelmingly when 90.77% of Australians vote to change the Constitution. As a result, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are counted as an identifiable sub-group of the population, which allows the Australian government to make laws on their behalf.

Arte Aborigen Australiano opens at the Sala de Santa Catalina del Ateneo de Madrid. 

1968

The federal government grants Nabalco permission to build a bauxite mine and treatment plant.

In Milirrpum v. Nabalco, or the Gove Land Rights case, Milirrpum Marika, Mungurrawuy Yunupiŋu and Daymbalipu Munuŋgurr take legal action against the mining company Nabalco through the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory. It is the first land rights case in Australian history. Justice Richard Blackburn rules against the Yolŋu in 1971, claiming the evidence proves that Indigenous Australians belong to the land, but not that the land belongs to them. Nabalco is allowed to continue its devastating mining operation.

Australian Bark Paintings: An Exhibition from the Collections of Edward L. Ruhe and Dr. and Mrs. Ronald Reivich opens at University Friends’ Center, Seattle.

1969

Wandjuk Marika serves as adviser to the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, among other governmental organizations.

Wandjuk Marika visits a southern Australian city for the first time. He demonstrates bark painting at the Department of the Interior exhibition at the annual Sydney Royal Easter Show.

Australian Aboriginal Art: The Louis A. Allen Collection opens at the R. H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, then travels to the University Art Galleries, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Austrálie: Osobnost primitivního malir̆e (Australia: The Personality of a Primitive Painter) opens at the Náprstek Museum, Prague.

Pieces from this Decade