Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2009

By Bill Evans

Introduction
Centered in Brisbane, the Queensland Museum holds one of Australia’s major collections of Australian Aboriginal and Pacific art. It was founded on January 20, 1862, by the Queensland Philosophical Society and was initially located at The Windmill on Wickham Terrace (1862–1869), after which it moved to Parliament House (1869–1873), and then to the General Post Office (1873–1879). The Queensland government built a purpose-made home for the museum on William Street, which it occupied for two decades. That building later became the John Oxley State Library. In 1899, the museum moved again, this time into the Exhibition Hall (now called the Old Museum) in the Brisbane suburb of Bowen Hills, where it remained until it shifted again in 1986 to its current home at the Queensland Cultural Centre in the South Bank neighborhood, adjacent to the Queensland Art Gallery.
Divided into six campuses spread across four cities, the Queensland Museum features displays emphasizing natural history, cultural heritage, and science, as well as the ongoing history of the area. It houses and cares for one of the largest and most extensive collections of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artifacts in the world. The main location in South Bank features a section called Dandiiri Maiwar (pronounced dun-deeree-may-war, from the local Aboriginal dandiiri, meaning “to meet,” and maiwar, the traditional reference for the waterway now known as the Brisbane River), a vibrant and living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures center showcasing Australia’s two distinct indigenous cultures through their stories, artifacts, photographs, art, and music. The center’s Open Access Area displays over 1,000 ancient and modern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artifacts, and is an extension of the museum’s storage areas.
The Cultures and Histories program is responsible for research- and collection-related activities across all six campuses of the museum. The program has an extensive collection that includes artifacts, historical and contemporary photographs, documents, and oral histories. The Aboriginal Studies Section of this program holds a collection of 10,000 artifacts and more than 6,000 photographs. The majority of this collection relates to Queensland history, although some items come from other regions of Australia. A great deal of work has been carried out in recent years to make the collection items and all relevant documentation accessible to researchers and other interested individuals.