Forty Millennia of Indigenous History at the British Museum

The wide press coverage of the opening of the British Museums Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation exhibition was as much a result of Prince Charless quips about Prince Harry on walkabout in Australia as it was of the exhibition itself. The formal reception, held in the museums Great Court, was a memorable event and not just because one museum trustee, Grayson Perry, attended as his alter ego Claire in full Victoriana garb, or because Kathy Lette was swanning about in a dress styled on the Aboriginal flag, or even because Prince Charles asked me if I had managed to submit the chapter I had written for the exhibition book on time. (I had, nearly.) It was memorable also because it felt momentous as ceremonial occasions for landmark events often do. And there is little doubt that the exhibition is a landmark event. This is the first time the British Museum has staged a major exhibition devoted to Indigenous Australia, a fact that Neil MacGregor, the institutions soon-to-be former director, acknowledged more than once. He also observed what an anomalous and unacceptable state of affairs this was, given that Indigenous Australians are considered the oldest continuing civilisation in the world and the British Museum is an institution dedicated to telling the stories of the worlds great civilisations. Promises have been made to remedy the situation, with a permanent display of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and history one possibility. It is late coming, but it is a start