Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection
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Audain Art Museum 4350 Blackcomb Way, Whistler, British Columbia V0N 1B4
Dick Nguleingulei Murrumurra, "Nadulmi the Kangaroo," ca. 1970
natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, 22 13/16" x 33 7/16" Promised gift of Margaret Levi and RobertKaplan to the Seattle Art Museum© 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS),New York / VISCOPY, AustraliaCourtesy American Federation of Arts
Curator's Tour Saturday, October 6 at 1pm
Organized by the American Federation of Arts
Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection presents a selection of outstanding contemporary art by Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander artists. Since the 1960s, artists from these communities have spearheaded a renaissance in the world’s oldest continuous artistic tradition, innovating within the idioms of visual languages that have developed over the course of millennia. While these dazzling paintings and beguiling sculptures often share formal characteristics with Western modern art, they represent conscientious efforts on the part of Aboriginal artists to share their culture with outsiders. Ancestral Modern will offer an opportunity for many Museum visitors to experience this extraordinary work for the first time. It includes innovators like Rover Thomas and Emily Kam Kngwarreye, who adapted materials and motifs traditionally used in ground painting, body painting, or the preparation of ritual objects in their works on canvas.