Adj. Professor Margo Neale

Director

Adj. Professor Margo Neale is Head of the new Centre for Indigenous Knowledges, Senior Indigenous Curator & Principal Advisor to the Director at the National Museum of Australia. She was inaugural Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program and the Gallery of First Australians at the Museum, after previously working at the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales where she co-curated the first Indigenous gallery, and at the Queensland Art Gallery where she set up the first Indigenous Art Department and was instrumental in guiding the Australian and Pacific components of the Asia-Pacific Triennials in the 1990s.

Margo is a co-recipient of seven Australian Research Council grants in collaboration with the ANU, Monash, Yale and the University of Victoria. She has published widely across disciplines including social history, art and culture in the Asia–Pacific region, and Aboriginal Australia. She is the author, co-author or editor of 10 books including the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture and curated major pioneering exhibitions such as Australia’s largest international solo exhibition for an Australian artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye (2008) which was also the first national touring exhibition for an Aboriginal artist (1998), the first major national touring exhibition for urban-based artist, Lin Onus and the Vatican’s collection of Aboriginal art and artefacts for the canonization of Saint Mary McKillop. (2010). Her award-winning Songlines exhibition is going international to major venues in Europe, UK, USA and Asia.