New Exhibition Opens at University of Pennsylvania Museum October 23, 2004

For anthropologist Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday, what began as a personal journey to better understand the work of her deceased father became a journey into the artistic sensibilities and worldview of Aboriginal peoples living half a world away. The Aboriginal family stories, photographs, video and original artwork she collected from 1999 to 2003 have come together in a provocative new exhibition offering Aboriginal perspectives on the second largest rimmed meteorite crater in the world. Track of the Rainbow Serpent: Australian Aboriginal Paintings of the Wolfe Creek Crater opens at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, October 23, 2004. The exhibition, which features 27 contemporary Australian Aboriginal paintings, runs through March 26, 2005.

The Museum opens Track of the Rainbow Serpent with a festive, family-oriented Australian celebration, featuring didgeridoo music, Australian storytelling, family arts projects and a talk by the curator, noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 23.

Exhibition curator Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday's father, Frank Reeves, was an American geologist credited as the first person, in 1947, to scientifically identify Western Australia's Wolfe Creek Crater--one of the most acclaimed geologic features in Australia--as a meteorite crater. In 1963, Smithsonian Institution scientists visiting the crater identified two new minerals in the weathered meteoritic material, one of which they named "reevesite" in his honor.
                                                  
In 1999, Dr. Sanday (shown here, second from right) visited the crater for the first time and discovered that it was part of the traditional territory of several Aboriginal groups. Determined to investigate the crater's meaning in Aboriginal culture, she quickly learned that, as "traditional owners" of the crater, the Aboriginal people were prohibited from direct discussion of their sacred knowledge. However, they agreed to tell their stories through collaborative paintings. Her quest for a broader perspective on the meteor crater evolved into an exploration of Aboriginal aesthetics and cosmology, where the Rainbow Serpent plays a pivotal role as the primary creative agent, not just of the crater but of all features of the natural environment. For more information on Aboriginal art, click here.

Of the 27 artworks in the exhibition, 20 were commissioned and 7 were acquired by Dr. Sanday. The subject of most of the paintings concerns the genesis of the Wolfe Creek Crater (shown here), known locally as Kandimalal. The artists tell Dreamtime stories of the creation of their ancestral territory by the Rainbow Serpent. As different artists shared artworks and told their stories, variations emerged; these stories are presented in the exhibition, with commentary by the curator. Also included are regional Aboriginal art and stories not directly related to the Wolfe Creek Crater, but rich in the native people's complex worldview.

The Aboriginal paintings in the exhibition feature acrylic paintings on canvas and range in size, some square, others more rectangular, from just over a foot to more than four feet. Vibrant colors--sometimes bright, sometimes earthy--fill the canvases with Dreamtime story-maps that often bring the viewer in from an aerial perspective.

The exhibition, in the Museum's first floor Merle Smith Changing Exhibitions Gallery, features a short video, photographs and stories of the Aboriginal artists, commentary by the anthropologist, a piece of the crater's rare "reevesite" mineral, and a photograph of the crater that brought anthropologist and Aboriginal peoples together.

Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Consulting Curator, University of Pennsylvania Museum, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, last curated the photographic exhibition Eggi's Village: Life Among the Minangkabau of Indonesia, exploring the world's largest matriarchal culture, in 1997.   She is the author of several books, including Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy (Cornell University Press, 2002) and A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial (Doubleday, New York, 1996).

Track of the Rainbow Serpent was made possible, in part, by corporate and private partners including Holt Oversight & Logistical Technologies, BARTHCO International, Dilworth, Paxson, Kalish & Kauffman, Kenneth and Faatimah Gamble, and MidAtlantic Australian NZ Chamber of Commerce. The Honorable Edward Rendell, Governor of PA., is the honorary chairperson of this exhibit.