HETTI Perkins has been appointed curator of the National Gallery of Australia’s fourth National Indigenous Art Triennial, which will open in late 2021, it was announced today (August 27) by NGA director Nick Mitzevich.

Mitzevich welcomed Perkins who would, he said, help lead its mission to tell an inclusive story of Australia through the presentation of art from multiple points of view.

Perkins is one of Australia’s leading curators. She began her career at the Sydney gallery of Aboriginal Arts Australia before joining the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, worked for 14 years at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, wrote and presented “art + soul”, two three-part documentary series, for ABC TV, and co-produced four series of “Colour Theory” for SBS/NITV.

In 1997, she co-curated Australia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale with Brenda L Croft and was an agent for “dOCUMENTA (13)”. She co-curated, with Croft, the Australian Indigenous Art Commission for the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in 2006 and in 2017 won the International Council of Museums Australia award for outstanding individual achievement.

The first iteration of the triennial, “Culture Warriors”, opened in 2007 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum and the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee).

“Culture Warriors” is now recognised as a landmark exhibition in the history of Australian art, along with subsequent triennial exhibitions, “undisclosed” in 2012 and “Defying Empire” in 2017, and has become a First Nations-led national survey exhibition within the Australian cultural landscape.

“The opportunity to work on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands with the National Gallery of Australia team and our national collection is very exciting, especially under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich and assistant director Bruce Johnson-McLean,” Perkins said.