Parkville’s Potter Museum Reopens With 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art

Seven years after shutting its doors, the Potter Museum of Art has returned with what may be Australia’s most comprehensive exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art to date.

Extensive, honest and educational, 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is a testament to curatorial truth-telling. With a deliberately provocative title, the exhibition works to redefine contested histories through an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lens.

“The show asks us to rethink the roots of Australian art history and culture, and recognise Indigenous artists as the first artists of Australia,” says Charlotte Day, director of the Potter Museum of Art. “It asks us to put in perspective the period of colonisation and settlement, with a much longer sense of time and cultural practice, and to respect, acknowledge and be inspired by it.”

Curated by professor Marcia Langton AO, senior curator Judith Ryan AM and associate curator Shanysa McConville, 65,000 Years brings together more than 400 artworks and documents including six new commissions, rarely seen objects from the University of Melbourne’s archives, and 193 significant loans from public and private collections.

Redeveloped by architectural firm Wood Marsh, the Potter has shifted its entrance from Swanston Street towards the campus grounds. Here, a striking, concave stainless steel facade juts from the original 1998 Fender Katsalidis design, leading you into the lobby. The exhibition unfurls over 11 rooms and three floors.

In the lobby, stretching out over the entirety of the first wall, Brett Leavy’s Virtual Naarm (2025) plays on loop. A multi-sensory work that imagines an uncolonised Melbourne, it pays homage to the Wurundjeri people and sets a reflective tone for the rest of the exhibition.

On the first floor, Sketchbook (1898) presents drawings by Oscar, an orphaned Kuku Yalanji child, which detail graphic colonial violence. And, in a cordoned-off exhibition room titled Dark Heart, the University of Melbourne confronts its own history. Here, contemporary Aboriginal artists interrogate the deeply racist and broadly discredited theory of eugenics.

“We’ve got to be really honest about the context in which we work and its history,” Day says. “Colonisation, and the separation of Indigenous people from Country, and the brutal actions and policies that followed, can’t be glossed over. We need to be truthful about our history, which includes the university’s and other institutions’ complicity in it.”

But alongside this painful truth-telling, there’s a celebration of the breadth and depth of creative brilliance in First Nations communities. On the top floor, Naomi Hobson’s Life on the River series spans out, intimately visualising the symbiosis between First Nations people and the waterways.

Beyond the gallery walls, the new Potter also offers dynamic educational spaces, research labs and event areas, all designed to nurture conversation between students, the art and the public. There is also the new day-to-night restaurant Residence, which will change concept entirely every 12 months, matching the dynamism of the gallery.

“We will continue to develop thematic shows that respond to key issues and concerns of our time, utilising artists’ world views and thinking to contribute to this discourse,” Day says. “I’m hoping we can continue to do it ambitiously and thoughtfully, involving good scholarship and research.”

65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is on until November 22.

potter-museum.unimelb.edu.au