Exhibiting Indigenous Australian collections in the UK

This thesis asks: what are the uses and meanings of Indigenous Australian collections in the UK today? This question is approached through a comprehensive analysis of one exhibition, Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation, which took place at the British Museum (BM), London, from 23 April to 2 August, 2015. Each chapter considers a different stage of the exhibition’s development and reception. It begins in Chapter 2. Genealogy with a study of how the exhibition emerged from the longer history of collecting and displaying Indigenous Australian material at the BM. It then interrogates the aims and experiences of the people who made Indigenous Australia in Chapter 3. Production. Chapter 4. Text analyses the finished display and, Chapter 5. Consumption, evaluates how the exhibition was received by its audiences. Each chapter considers not only how the exhibition was experienced by the people involved, but also how their aims and understandings relate to broader debates about the role of colonial era collections in contemporary Western societies