by Two key artistic figures 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 is the first major exhibition of the artist, who died in 1996, to use the new spelling.
During her lifetime the artist was known as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, but the NGA has adopted the new version after extensive consultation with the Utopia community and language expert Dr Jennifer Green, who published the Central & Eastern Anmatyerr that English in 2010. Dictionary.
Green is not Indigenous, but she has known the artist since the 1970s and learned the Anmatyerr language from her. She said the change reflected “the most up-to-date conventions” and was made in close consultation with the curators of the NGA.
“They took a principled and consistent approach to words in the Anmatyerr language,” she said in a statement.
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But the Australian National Museum’s Senior Indigenous curator and head of the Indigenous Information Centre, Margo Ngawa Neale, who curated the artist’s previous two retrospectives, said the name change went against the artist’s expressed wishes.
“She was always adamant that her name had to stay the same, because that was her artist name,” Neale said. “She was very clear about this. She knew that the linguists might try to change her name as they have done for other artists who have died. She said ‘My name stays the same because I’m famous for that name’ and she was very clear about this.”
Neale said when compiling the retrospectives in 1998 and 2008, the artist’s desire to keep the name that was known to the world – Emily Kame Kngwarreye – was extremely important.
“We had no choice but to keep the name because it would be very disrespectful not to,” she said.
“For those of us who worked with her directly, we would not be able to change her name after her death now, as others have. That would be extremely disrespectful.”
Christopher Hodges, director of Utopia Art Sydney, the first gallery to stage Kngwarreye’s solo exhibition in 1990, which launched her international career, said his relationship with the artist dates back to 1988.
“Kngwarreye did not write any language, there was little interest in spelling, but the same spelling was used throughout her career and she recognized it visually. Because no other spelling was used, it was never an issue,” Hodges said.
“The speaking of the words and the use of her image were agreed to continue after his death. We had no idea that a linguist would rewrite the spelling more than ten years later and try to apply it posthumously.”
Don Holt is the owner of the Delmore Gallery, 250km north-east of Alice Springs, who also played a significant role in establishing the artist. He was also critical of the spelling change.
“It’s just bloody ridiculous,” said Holt. “It’s quite an unequal thing to do, and very variable, I think.”
Green said claims that the artist had strong opinions about the spelling of her names were not “credible” because she could not read English or written forms of her own language.
“I am not aware of clear instructions from the artist regarding the spelling of her name after her death,” she said. “I don’t think it would make sense for her to ask Kngwarray about whether she prefers one spelling or another.
“This is not the first time that Kngwarray’s skin name has appeared [Kngwarray] spelled correctly.”
NGA exhibition co-curator Hetti Perkins said she and co-curator Kelli Cole rejected claims the name change was derogatory or patronizing.
“We emphasize that the spelling is consistent with a community-endorsed dictionary and that the entire exhibit was developed in close documented collaboration with the artist’s immediate and extended family,” Perkins said in a statement.
Perkins, former head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), curated the 1997 Australian exhibition at the Venice Biennale which featured the work of Kngwarreye (spelled that way) alongside fellow Indigenous artists Judy Watson and Yvonne Koolmatrie .
Guardian Australia used the new spelling to review the NGA retrospective, since that was the exhibition’s title.
The controversy means that two of Australia’s largest art museums with significant collections of the artist, the NGA and the National Gallery of Victoria, use one spelling, while AGNSW and the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) use the other. .
The AGNSW declined to comment on Friday and the AGSA could not be reached for comment.
Since her death the artist’s works have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars on the international art market – Hollywood actor Steve Martin is among the highest profile collectors. In 2007 the massive Earth’s Creation, widely considered to be her masterpiece, sold at auction for $1.064m, the highest price ever paid for an Australian Aboriginal artwork at the time and the highest ever paid for a female artist in Australia. Ten years later the same work broke its own record when Andrew Forrest paid $2.1m to acquire it.
In 2025, the Tate Modern in London will stage its own Emily Kam Kngwarray retrospective. In publicity material already released, the museum is using the new NGA-approved spelling of the artist’s name. Elsewhere on the Tate website it continues to refer to her as Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
