Two art world figures who played a key role in the career of Australia’s most internationally acclaimed female painter have spoken out against the National Gallery of Australia’s decision to adopt a new spelling of her name.
The Emily Kam Kngwarray retrospective, which opened at the NGA in Canberra earlier this month, was the first major exhibition by the artist, who died in 1996, to use the new spelling.
The artist was known as Emily Kame Kngwarreye during her lifetime, but the NGA is the author of the Utopian community and linguist Dr. who published Central and Eastern Anmatyerr in English in 2010. After extensive consultations with Jennifer Green, she adopted the new version. Dictionary.
Green is not a native, but he had known the artist since the 1970s and learned the Anmatyerr language from him. He said the change reflected the “most current agreements” and was made in close consultation with NGA curators.
“They have taken a principled and consistent approach to words in the Anmatyerr language,” he said in a statement.
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But Margo Ngawa Neale, senior Indigenous curator at the National Museum of Australia and head of the Center for Indigenous Knowledge, who curated the artist’s two previous retrospectives, said the name change was against the artist’s express wishes.
“He was always adamant that his name should remain the same because that was his artist’s name,” Neale said. “He was very clear about that. He was aware that linguists might try to change his name, as they have done with other deceased artists. He said, ‘My name will remain the same because I’m famous with that name,’ and he had a very clear idea about that.”
Neale said that when organizing the retrospective exhibitions in 1998 and 2008, the desire to preserve the artist’s world-famous name, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, was of great importance.
“We had no choice but to keep the name because it would have been extremely disrespectful if we didn’t,” he said.
“Those of us who worked directly with him can no longer change his name posthumously as others have done. That would be extremely disrespectful.”
Christopher Hodges, director of Utopia Art Sydney, the first gallery to organize a personal exhibition of Kngwarreye in 1990 and launch his international career, said his relationship with the artist dates back to 1988.
“Kngwarreye didn’t write any language, spelling didn’t really interest him, but he used the same spelling throughout his career and he recognized it visually. This was never a problem because no other spelling was used,” Hodges said.
“The saying of the agreed words and the use of his image would continue after his death. “We had no idea that more than a decade later a linguist would rewrite this spelling and try to implement it after his death.”
Don Holt is the owner of the Delmore Gallery, located 250 km northeast of Alice Springs, which played an important role in the artist’s founding. He also criticized the spelling change.
“This is ridiculous,” Holt said. “It’s quite unfair and I think very paternalistic.”
Green said claims that the artist had strong views about the spelling of their names because he could not read English or written forms of his own language were “not credible”.
“I am not aware that the artist received explicit instructions regarding the spelling of his name after his death,” he said. “I don’t think a question about whether he prefers this or that spelling of Kingwarray would make any sense to him.
“This isn’t the first time Kingwarray’s skin name has been used [Kngwarray] It’s spelled correctly.”
Hetti Perkins, co-curator of the NGA exhibition, said that both she and fellow curator Kelli Cole rejected suggestions that the name change was disrespectful or arrogant.
“We emphasize that the writing conforms to a community-approved dictionary and that the entire exhibition was developed in close and documented collaboration with the artist’s direct and extended family,” Perkins said in a statement.
A former head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), Perkins curated Australia’s 1997 exhibition at the Venice Biennale; here Kngwarreye’s work (spelled that way) was exhibited alongside Indigenous artists Judy Watson and Yvonne Koolmatrie.
Guardian Australia used the new spelling when reviewing the NGA retrospective as this was the title of the exhibition.
The controversy means that the NGA and the National Gallery of Victoria, two of Australia’s largest art museums with significant collections of the artist, use one spelling, while AGNSW and the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) use the other.
AGNSW declined to comment Friday and AGSA could not be reached for comment.
Since his death, the artist’s works have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars on the international art market; Hollywood actor Steve Martin is among the best-known collectors. In 2007, the massive work Earth’s Creation, widely considered to be his masterpiece, sold at auction for $1.064 million; this was the highest price paid for an Australian Aboriginal artwork at the time and the highest price ever paid for a female artist in Australia. Ten years later, the same work broke its own record when Andrew Forrest paid $2.1 million to purchase it.
In 2025, London’s Tate Modern will stage its own Emily Kam Kngwarray retrospective. The museum is using the new NGA-approved spelling of the artist’s name in its currently published promotional material. Elsewhere on Tate’s website he continues to refer to her as Emily Kame Kngwarreye.