It’s the art object you will never see, unless you are an initiated Australian Aboriginal male. Nor can it be photographed. The only thing can be noted is its location – no longer at the Seattle Art Museum.
Although SAM has owned the object since museum founder Richard Fuller purchased it in 1970, the museum says it has never been shown. (Fuller retired in 1973.) Not even Australian Aboriginal elders who are pressing the issue around the world knew of its existence.
SAM is not only returning the object, it volunteered to do so without being asked.
Why? Thanks to Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan, who’ve been collecting in this field since the 1980s, SAM has a stake in the subject. It’s one of the only U.S. museums with a gallery devoted to Australian Aboriginal art. The real motivator, however, is SAM’s African art curator, Pamela McClusky. When I met her in the early 1980s, she had mounted an exhibit of traditional Ibo stools. Noticing what struck me as a lax security presence and the small size of the stools, I asked if she were concerned that one or two might be taken.
Not at all, she replied. The stools are spiritually protected. If anyone were foolish enough to steal one, he’d suffer before he came to his senses and brought it back.
A student of Robert Farris Thompson‘s, McClusky is not your ordinary art curator. Like Thompson, she embraces the meaning first peoples give the objects that they create. She is far more likely to see the central Australian Aboriginal object in question as elders see it, rather than in purely aesthetic terms.
Once the object came to her attention, it was as good as gone.
The wording of the press release has her stamp on it:
Secret/sacred objects of the type being returned are typically used in religious ceremonies by
central Australian Aboriginal men. They are considered to be physical manifestations of sacred
ancestral beings and as such have great spiritual power.
Not thought to have great spiritual power. The assertion is that they do in fact possess such power.
The National Museum of Australia will store the object temporarily while consultations proceed regarding its final
repatriation.
Inspiring story. Congratulations to the Seattle Art Museum.