An artist, educator and writer specializing in Australian indigenous art will be the next director of the University of Virginia’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, a search committee announced Thursday.
The international committee of faculty, staff and volunteer leaders selected Australian artist and curator Nici Cumpston to be the new director of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, succeeding founding director Margo Smith upon Smith’s retirement in May after 27 years of service.
Cumpston is of Barkandji, Afghan, English and Irish heritage. She is a descendant of the Darling River people of northwestern New South Wales. There, she has served since 2008 as the inaugural curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. She has also been the artistic director of the internationally renowned Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art since 2014.
“I see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to build on the work I have been doing for the past 17 years at the Art Gallery of South Australia,” Cumpston said. “I am excited about continuing the relationships I have built with artists and their communities of supporters across Australia and to now be in a position where we can showcase their work to international audiences in the U.S. and beyond.”
Cumpston is familiar with UVA. In spring 2014, Cumpston spent a month as an artist-in-residence at the University. She displayed her works and presented numerous lectures to UVA and community groups, including talks about how fine art can raise awareness of environmental destruction and degradation.
“Nici Cumpston is recognized by her peers as a gifted museum curator, a pioneering art festival director and a tireless advocate for Indigenous artists and communities across Australia,” search committee and UVA Art History department chair Douglas Fordham said. “We had an extraordinarily talented group of applicants for this position, and we are absolutely delighted that Nici has chosen to lead Kluge-Ruhe at this dynamic moment in its history.”
Cumpston studied fine arts, specializing in photography, at the University of South Australia. She is known for, among other things, creating large-scale, hand-colored photographic portraits of ancient trees and waterways along the Barka. Her work is held in major institutions and private collections, nationally and internationally, and she has been commissioned to create signature works for public buildings in Adelaide.
“Nici Cumpston’s appointment signals the kind of innovation that Kluge-Ruhe leads in the global cultural sector – cross-cultural work on a transnational scale – underpinned by rigor, integrity and driven by the principle of ‘First Nations First,’” Kluge-Ruhe Advisory Council co-chair Jilda Andrews said. “We welcome Nici and look forward to working closely with her as she takes the helm.”
The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, which includes more than 3,600 artworks, is the only museum outside of Australia dedicated to the exhibition and study of Indigenous Australian art.
Edward Ruhe began building the collection in 1965, purchasing artworks directly from artists, community art centers and early Aboriginal art dealers. John W. Kluge acquired Ruhe’s collection in 1993 to supplement his own large and growing collection of Aboriginal Australian artworks. Kluge donated the complete collection to the University of Virginia in 1997, where it is available for exhibition, scholarly research and study.
