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The Papunya Tula Archive at the Art Gallery of New South Wales: providing archival services for indigenous art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Steven Miller*
Affiliation:
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
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Extract

Papunya Tula Artists is a company owned and directed by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert, predominantly from the Luritja and Pintupi language groups. It currently has 49 shareholders and represents around 120 artists. The broad aims of the company are to promote individual artists, and to provide economic development for the communities to which they belong, thereby preserving and extending their traditional culture. Towards the end of 1993 the Art Gallery of New South Wales entered into a formal partnership with the company to assist it in preserving, copying and providing access to their immensely important archival records. The project, which at first seemed straightforward and easily manageable, raised a number of important issues about the provision of archival services for Indigenous art and provides a useful case study for reflecting on these.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2008

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References

1. Bardon, Geoffrey, Papunya Tula: art of the Western Desert (Ringwood, Vic: McPhee Gribble, 1991), 10.Google Scholar
2. ‘My heart is breaking’; a joint guide to records about Aboriginal people in the Public Record Office of Victoria and the Australian Archives, Victorian Regional Office I Australian Archives and the Public Record Office of Victoria (Canberra: Australian Govt. Pub. Service, c. 1993).Google Scholar
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