Data

Berndt Museum Rock Art: The Arnhem Land Collections

The University of Western Australia

Professor Alistair Paterson (Enriched by)

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ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2FANDS&rft_id=http://www.berndt.uwa.edu.au/generic.lasso?token_value=arnhem&amp;menu=2&rft.title=Berndt Museum Rock Art: The Arnhem Land Collections&rft.identifier=http://www.berndt.uwa.edu.au/generic.lasso?token_value=arnhem&amp;menu=2&rft.publisher=The University of Western Australia&rft.description=<p>The Berndt Museum has about 1,700 objects from the Arnhem Land region. These include paintings and drawings, figures of mythic beings, wuramu figures, and sorcery images. The extensive collection of crayon drawings is particularly significant. Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, remained a relatively isolated region until intensive mining exploration and development began in the 1960s. This was due, in part, to the Federal Government declaring the area an Aboriginal reserve, with restricted access, prior to the Second World War. Today, Arnhem Land is the home of a large Aboriginal population, living not only in the coastal settlements (former mission stations now operated by the communities themselves), but also at many outstations that have been more recently established. Some highlights of the Arnhem Land collections can be seen in the Virtual Tour. Paintings and drawings from Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land, were featured in the Djalkiri Wänga exhibition of 1995. Many of the 1,697 items are multi-purpose, being used for fighting, hunting and music. The Museum has an extensive photographic collection. It contains photographs, negatives and colour slides, and consists of many small collections donated to the Museum.</p>&rft.creator=The Centre for Rock-Art Studies&rft.date=2014&rft.coverage=134.1130319,-11.6248904 132.0640817,-11.6248904 132.0640817,-13.0201715 134.1130319,-13.0201715 134.1130319,-11.6248904&rft_subject=Social and Cultural Anthropology&rft_subject=STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY&rft_subject=ANTHROPOLOGY&rft.type=dataset&rft.language=English Access the data

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The Berndt Museum will be closed to all external requests for access to the Collection (Archives, Objects, Photos and Audio-Visual) between 1 July 2014 and 6 January 2015. Museum staff are instituting protocols to enhance access to the Collection as part of ongoing preparations toward the opening of a new Aboriginal Cultures Museum. We sincerely apologise to community groups, researchers and the general public. We will attend to access requests as soon as we can after the six month closure.

The Berndt Museum, with permission from the appropriate communities, holds some secret-sacred objects. Strict conditions apply to the custody of and access to these objects. Secret-sacred objects are not displayed in the public gallery of the Museum. The objects displayed there are not secret for their region of origin. The Museum will remove any object from display if a qualified Aboriginal elder asks.

Museum policy recognises the need to control image recording within the public galleries in order to safeguard claims to control over cultural property made by members of Australian Aboriginal communities, among others. Notwithstanding this, the policy observes that: • visting members of the public may take, for their own fair dealing for the purpose of research or study, criticism or review (as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968), photographs of a general view of an exhibition gallery space as a whole, while they may not focus on specific individual artistic works that may be subject to copyright and claims of cultural property by Aboriginal communities; • recordings (whether photographic, digital or video) made for any other purpose require express permission in writing from the Director, who will give approval only if the purpose and or context is directly relevant to the purpose, activities and projects of the Museum itself. The Berndt Museum respects the inherent intellectual and moral rights of all artistic creators, and makes every effort to contact the relevant copyright holders and and their communities before displaying or making artistic works available for third party reproduction. All requests for photographic images, whether of objects held by the Museum or historical images, must be made on the prescribed form, which is available for download.

Contact Information

Postal Address:
Berndt Museum of Anthropology, M255A
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, Western Australia, 6009
Ph: (+61 8) 6488 3854
Fax: (+61 8) 6488 1165

berndt.museum@uwa.edu.au

Brief description

The Berndt Museum has about 1,700 objects from the Arnhem Land region. These include paintings and drawings, figures of mythic beings, wuramu figures, and sorcery images. The extensive collection of crayon drawings is particularly significant. Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, remained a relatively isolated region until intensive mining exploration and development began in the 1960s. This was due, in part, to the Federal Government declaring the area an Aboriginal reserve, with restricted access, prior to the Second World War. Today, Arnhem Land is the home of a large Aboriginal population, living not only in the coastal settlements (former mission stations now operated by the communities themselves), but also at many outstations that have been more recently established. Some highlights of the Arnhem Land collections can be seen in the Virtual Tour. Paintings and drawings from Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land, were featured in the Djalkiri Wänga exhibition of 1995. Many of the 1,697 items are multi-purpose, being used for fighting, hunting and music. The Museum has an extensive photographic collection. It contains photographs, negatives and colour slides, and consists of many small collections donated to the Museum.