Eternal Signs: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection

Eternal Signs: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection

Considered among the world's oldest, continuous living cultures, Australian Aboriginal people come from ancestral lines estimated to be greater than 60,000 years old. The origins of the cultures and belief systems, often referred to as Dreamings, Songlines, or Creation Time, continue to inform knowledge systems that exist today, which are intricately tied to their Country (homeland) and are represented in their art. Thus their contemporary works of art evidence what has been referred to as an “eternal present.” For artists from remote areas of the continent, their lives continue to be linked to ancient knowledge and diverse customs, which permeate their art forms and become eternal sign systems that evolve in the present. This exhibition highlights the momentous gift of contemporary Indigenous artists from many rural areas throughout the continent of Australia—from the northern region of Arnhem Land (Yirrkala and Maningrida) to the Central desert sites of Utopia and Papunya, and to southern areas of Anangu Pitjanjatjar Lands (APY). Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi, who live in Seattle, Washington, have been acquiring work since the early 1990s, building one of the most esteemed collections of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in the United States. In 2023, Kaplan and Levi gave the Nevada Museum of Art more than seventy works, most of which are presented here for the first time.