“Making those connections and making those works more visible is key to what I wanted to do here”

In October, Tina Baum, senior curator of First Nations art at the National Gallery, visited the Worldmuseum in Leiden. The Dutch museum has a collection of nearly 3,000-pieces of Australian First Nations' Art. Freelance journalist and historian Ingeborg van Teeseling met with Tina at her last day at the museum, and asked her how she experienced the Dutch collection, and whether her visit may have led to extraordinary discoveries. Tina firstly explained what surprised her the most about the artworks in the Netherlands.

Tina Baum, senior curator of First Nations Art at the National Gallery, on the last day of her four week visit to the Wereldmuseum in Leiden, the Netherlands. [01/11/2024] Tina is the first recipient of the Nguluway Dhuluyarra Fellowship, an international fellowship for First Nations arts workers, which is the result of a partnership between the National Gallery of Australia, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Australia) and the Wereldmuseum in Leiden. Credit: Ingeborg van Teeseling