A 35 year-old Northern Territory mystery surrounding an Indigenous Papunya painting that seemed to vanish without a trace has finally been cracked.
In what could easily feature as a subplot in ‘The Thomas Crown Affair‘ (or is just another example of some classic government incompetence), the artwork – valued at $150K – went totally AWOL after it was loaned to the NT chief minister in what I presume was an attempt to liven up the office. It was handed over in 1978, and somehow disappeared in 1981.
Talk about weeeeeird – either the chief minister was a totally cooked thief who thought he could get away with this whole shamozzle, or it supernaturally faded into the ether a la Will Byers‘ abduction in ‘Stranger Things‘.
Decades later, chief executive of Tourism and Culture, Alastair Shields, casually found the enigmatic artwork in a bloody storeroom and thought it’d look pretty beaut in his department.
Because ~destiny~, the director of Arts NT, Angela Hill, noticed the artwork hanging in the Tourism and Culture headquarters in Darwin when she was there for a meeting. Hill then passed it onto an art historian, Anita Angel, who identified it as a Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri board from 44 years ago.
“The office needed a bit of life and colour, however I had no idea that I was hanging a prized piece of Northern Territory art,” the adorably unaware Shields said.
Now that the famed artwork has finally been found after a 35 year-long mission, it will return to its rightful place – the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Tjapaltjarri’s painting is in pretty good nick, but will undergo a few restorative procedures before it is featured in a Papunya-focused exhibition in July.
Talk about good timing.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: NT Government.
