Prof. Margo Neale

Overview

Adj. Professor Margo Neale is Head of the new Centre for Indigenous Knowledges, Senior Indigenous Curator & Principal Advisor to the Director at the National Museum of Australia.

She was inaugural Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program and the Gallery of First Australians at the Museum, after previously working at the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales where she co-established and curated the first Indigenous gallery, Yiribana. At the Queensland Art Gallery, she was the inaugural curator and established the first Indigenous Art Department and was instrumental in guiding the Australian and Pacific components of the Asia-Pacific Triennials in the 1990s.

Margo is a co-recipient of seven Australian Research Council grants in collaboration with the ANU, Monash, Yale and the University of Victoria. She has published widely across disciplines including social history, art and culture in the Asia–Pacific region, and Aboriginal Australia.

She is the author, co-author or editor of 12 books including the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture and the recent Thames & Hudson book on Songlines. She curated major pioneering exhibitions such as Australia’s largest international solo exhibition for an Australian artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye (2008) which was also the first national touring exhibition for an Aboriginal artist (1998), the first major national touring exhibition for urban-based artist, Lin Onus and the Vatican’s collection of Aboriginal art and artifacts for the canonization of Saint Mary McKillop. (2010). Her award-winning Songlines exhibition is going international to major venues in Europe, UK, USA, and Asia. Successive governments have appointed her to advisory roles.

Margo is of Aboriginal and Irish descent, from Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections.