This important international exhibition will focus on the founding moment of Papunya art and look at the first paintings, made on small boards in the years 1971 to 1973.
Organized by the Johnson Museum, Icons of the Desert will travel to the Fowler Museum at UCLA and the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, and has been curated by Professor Roger Benjamin of the University of Sydney. This exhibition and its programs are made possible by generous grants from the Actus Foundation and the Cornell Council for the Arts.
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In the more than thirty-five years since its advent at the tiny settlement of Papunya in the desert heart of Australia, the so-called “dot-painting” movement has become an art instantly and internationally associated with Aboriginal Australia.
This, the first exhibition to focus on the founding moment of Papunya art, will look at the first paintings, made on small boards in the years 1971 to 1973. They have a unique status within the history of Aboriginal art as the first paintings ever to transfer the designs of desert ceremonial imagery to a permanent surface. This exhibition is drawn from the collection of John Wilkerson, PhD Class of 1970, and Barbara Wilkerson, which has never before been exhibited as a group. The collection brings together some of the earliest and finest paintings by the founders of the Papunya movement, including masters like Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Uta Uta Tjangala, and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, among many others.
Beginning Tuesday, February 10, visitors to the Johnson will have the unprecedented opportunity to see two Aboriginal artists create a “ground work” in the gallery using sand and plant fibers, which will remain on view for the duration of the exhibition. .
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is located on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. It houses Cornell's art collection, which was begun in the 1880s by Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White.
For more information click here to visit the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art website.
Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art
Cornell University
Central & University Aves.
Ithaca, NY
14853-4001
Open
Tuesdays to Sundays,
10:00 am to
5:00 pm
For bus information from New York Click here for shuttle bus information
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Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi
Herbert F. Johnson Muesum of Art
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