National Museum of Australia – Audio on demand program
Summary: The National Museum of Australia's audio series explores Australia's social history: Indigenous people, their cultures and histories, the nation's history since 1788, and the interaction of Australians with the land and environment. The series includes talks by curators, conservators, historians, environmental scientists and other specialists.
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- Artist: National Museum of Australia
- Copyright: © 2007-2018 National Museum of Australia
Podcasts:
Murray Garde considers the Wubarr ceremony performed in 1948 and examines the tangled cross-cultural politics of non-Aboriginal involvement in secret Aboriginal religious ceremonies in Western Arnhem Land.
Charles Mountford lacked formal credentials as an anthropologist or scientist, yet he led the largest and most complex scientific expedition to remote Australia. Dr Philip Jones explores Mountford’s contribution and the controversy around his leadership.
Whereas the 1948 Expedition presented vast collections of plant and animal life classified according to Linnaean taxonomy, Ad Borsboom explores how the Yolngu organise and present knowledge through mythological Dreaming stories.
Margo Neale explores Charles Mountford’s collection of works on paper, locating them as a useful starting point for reassessing Mountford’s reputation as a collector of Aboriginal art and stories.
Adrienne Kaeppler, Curator of Oceanic Ethnology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, provides an overview of the museum’s Australian collections, focusing on the Arnhem Land collection which comprises more than 400 artefacts.
Kim Beazley situates the 1948 Expedition in the context of postwar international relations.
Suzy Russell describes the Mountford–Sheard collection at the State Library of South Australia, shares insights recorded by Bessie Mountford in a journal she kept during the Expedition, and considers some Expedition controversies.
Sally K May provides a historical overview of the Expedition, its planning and execution.
Dr Anne Clarke and Ms Ursula Frederick revisit Frederick McCarthy’s research in relation to their own more recent analyses of rock art sites on Groote Eylandt, using sites that were not recorded in 1948, and focusing on cross-cultural interaction.
Raymond Louis Specht, botanist on the 1948 Expedition, reflects on the influence of the Expedition and discusses his botanical investigations.
Tony MacGregor examines the 1948 ABC radio feature about the Expedition both as a remarkable contemporary account and as a media object of an emerging form – the radio documentary feature.
Murray Garde considers the Wubarr ceremony performed in 1948 and examines the tangled cross-cultural politics of non-Aboriginal involvement in secret Aboriginal religious ceremonies in Western Arnhem Land.
Expedition botanist Raymond Louis Specht is interviewed by Martin Thomas.
Lynne McCarthy explores the work of Raymond Louis Specht, Expedition botanist, and considers his botanical collection as both a process and a product.
Louise Hamby examines the dispersed collection of fibre objects collected by the 1948 Expedition – the objects and the process and politics of their collection.
