Perth Voice Interactive

NGARINYIN/GIJA artist Vanessa Russ is the first Aboriginal director of the 40-year-old Berndt Museum.

The museum features a large collection of Aboriginal artifacts rated by UNESCO as Australian Memory of the World.

Dr Russ grew up in the Kimberley, where she experienced Aboriginal art firsthand in rock paintings and craft objects.

She moved to Sydney where, studying for a degree in fine arts at the University of NSW, she “fell in love with the arts”.

Finishing her degree, she worked at the Art Gallery of NSW before coming back to Perth to study for her PhD at UWA.

In 2014 Dr Russ was one of 13 Western Australians selected for a Churchill Fellowship, which allowed her to travel the globe investigating the effects of national identity of indigenous people in mainstream art museums.

She says her main duty as a director is to ensure the Berndt collection survives at least another 40 years: she will also use the opportunity to raise broader, important questions regarding Aboriginal people and their place in the national identity.

“I’m quite excited with my new role,” she says. “It is only a collection. But there is also an opportunity in the collection to put up some interesting ideas and see what people have to say.

“People don’t want to talk about the fact that we are a colonised country, but some people experience that they are in a colonised country.

“It’s an opportunity to talk about place, and self-determination.”

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA