Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: Arnhem Land paintings and objects from the Donald Thomson Collection features some of the most extraordinary and rarest bark paintings in existence.

This is the first time that the extraordinary painted works collected by Donald Thomson in the 1930s and early 1940s have been exhibited at Melbourne Museum. It features works by legendary Yolngu figure Djapu clan leader, Wonggu. The first bark painting Donald Thomson collected and the brushes and palette that Wonggu used to produce it can also be seen in the exhibition.

Professor Donald Thomson was a biologist and anthropologist at the University of Melbourne and in 1935 received a commission from the Commonwealth to go to Arnhem Land. In all he spent 17 months there and studied the ceremonies and customs of the numerous clans, collecting around 4500 objects and taking over 2000 black and white images.

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