In Australia’s arts sector, two recent reviews have appeared to uphold integrity while quietly protecting the institutions themselves. They tell a revealing story about how federal cultural organisations are handling controversy, and why the public should care.

The first began in 2023, with a major National Gallery of Australia (NGA) exhibition that never opened. Ngura Pulka: Epic Country was meant to be a landmark exhibition by Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) artists. However, it was cancelled following a controversy over the authorship of one of the artworks, by artist Yaritji Young, which involved a non-Indigenous painting assistant.

In the second review, federal arts agency Creative Australia is investigating its decisions around Australia’s representation at the 2026 Venice Biennale originally awarded to artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Dr Michael Dagostino. What links these two cases is a troubling use of official process that effectively sidesteps public accountability. Both reviews — from the same government portfolio — defined their questions in narrow terms that they avoided confronting the very issues that demanded investigation.

At a combined cost that will probably exceed $1 million (based on likely associated costs, artist fees and Creative Australia employing private lawyers) these reviews reflect a broader dysfunction. As artists report declining incomes and many public galleries face chronic funding shortages, significant public money is being spent on reviews that do not ask the hard questions. Every dollar spent on opaque processes is a dollar not spent supporting artists, commissioning new work, funding collection research or opening exhibitions. This appears to be cultural leadership prioritising institutional image over public service at a time when the Australian Public Service has been actively targeting and reducing consultant expenditure.

If the goal of these reviews is to build public trust and promote transparency, they are failing. Instead, they appear to serve as buffers — keeping boards, directors and ministers at a safe distance from scandal. Federal cultural agencies are staffed by executives who are well paid to be highly educated, experienced and knowledgeable. They are supported by boards selected for their knowledge and integrity. Accountability within the resources already at hand, could be expected.

External law firms are contracted for due diligence, while the relevant in-house expertise — legal, curatorial, and cultural would allow intensive review, in-house. Alternatively, reviewers could be Commonwealth Government lawyers, if further objectivity at arms-length from the agency is required (albeit this is not separated from government).

This is not just an internal matter for the arts sector. These are public institutions in the service of providing a key part of our arts landscape. What is at stake is more than a biennale or an exhibition. It is whether our arts institutions reflect the complexity of the arts, and the courage needed — or whether, under pressure, they retreat into a risk-averse fog of management language, reviews and even censorship.

The case of the missing painting

Promoted by the National Gallery of Australia as “one of the largest and most significant First Nations-driven art projects ever developed,” Ngura Pulka became a catalyst for questions of authorship, cultural authority, and institutional accountability.

The decision by the gallery to indefinitely postpone Ngura Pulka came after a video surfaced showing a non-Indigenous studio assistant working with senior Pitjantjatjara artist Yaritji Young. The phrase “indefinitely postponed” may sound neutral, but it has increasingly seemed a euphemism for soft cancellation. As well as Ngura Pulka’s long pause, Stolon Press: Flat Earth, featuring Khaled Sabsabi — a key figure in this Creative Australia controversy — was indefinitely postponed in late March 2025, until Monash University Museum of Art reversed course and opened the exhibition in late May 2025.

Ideally this review would have been Indigenous-led. The formal review was led by lawyers including Colin Golvan KC and Dr Shane Simpson, with Indigenous input from artist Yhonnie Scarce and Professor Maree Meredith. Their job was to determine whether twenty-eight paintings attributed to APY ACC artists were created with “freely exercised creative control.” Glaringly, however, the brief omitted the very painting that originated the controversy, presumably on the grounds that it was no longer slated for exhibition. Its absence turned what might have been a public reckoning into a bureaucratic exercise.

The National Gallery’s review of Ngura Pulka has produced no public explanation of the fate of the twenty-ninth painting or what happened to the exhibition. The NGA has not said it has been cancelled. But there are signs, such as the paintings being sent back, a former curator’s media comment, and Kulata Tjuta: Tirkilpa, quietly on display (1 March 2025 – 29 March 2026) when originally part of NGA’s Ngura Pulka. Eminent Art historian, Sasha Grishin, has described this dramatic spear installation as a “largely unpublicised exhibition.” It is curious for a major national institution and could be a clue that Ngura Pulka won’t proceed. The spear installation is also missing from the review; this helps its current exhibition “fly under the radar”, without the media fanfare of Ngura Pulka. At the NGA’s direction, the review examines paintings only — presumably, white hands don’t touch wood!

It’s unclear why the twenty-ninth painting was removed from the plans for the exhibition. Was it unfinished? Was it withdrawn by the artist or the collective? Or was it simply deemed too problematic to include? The review does not say. It doesn’t ever clearly state that a painting was removed. It leaves only the implication, noting that “… the video has received considerable adverse comment in media coverage… The work in the video is not, however, one of the Paintings.” This is something like a sentence trailing off. Which paintings? Not one of the selected paintings, or not one of the reviewed paintings, or subject-of-interview paintings?

This matters. The review’s finding — that all twenty-eight paintings passed the test of creative control — would carry more weight if the one painting at the centre of public debate hadn’t been excluded. Instead, its absence casts a shadow. Is this transparency, or damage control?

The omission has allowed a new to narrative take root, which leaves audiences with the impression that the exhibition only ever consisted of twenty-eight paintings. This version of events has been repeated in media coverage, in institutional statements by both APY ACC and the NGA, and even during a federal Budget Estimates hearing — a setting where public servants and politicians are expected to be thoroughly briefed. Whether by hubris or happenstance, the ground has shifted since the NGA sold Ngura Pulka as being, “entirely conceived, created, directed and determined by the Anangu people”!

The Gallery used the language of “provenance”, although that term — tracking an artwork’s history and ownership — is not quite correct. The Executive Summary relates that the NGA sought advice on “matters relating to the provenance of 28 paintings,” but no one disputes where these paintings came from. The question is one of authorship.

In an investigation costing already $430,718, why not include the one painting that triggered the review? The NGA’s Exhibitions Policy, s23(a) partly explains: “If an exhibition is to include works on loan, the National Gallery must conduct due diligence and investigate the works’ provenance before approval for inclusion of the loans can be granted.” There is a policy mismatch here, as the APY ACC paintings are not looted artworks. This policy section makes visible what may be a constructive exercise; the NGA Director, Dr Nick Mitzevich, would likely argue that painting #29 is not included in the review simply because it is not in the exhibition, and the Exhibitions Policy appears to justify eliminating the work from review. However, elementary due diligence would have included painting #29 as it appeared to form part of the original publicised exhibition that triggered the review. The public would have anticipated a review that tackled and made sense of the controversy.

Former Head Curator of First Nations Art at the NGA Bruce Johnson McLean, who co-curated NGA’s Ngura Pulka, would no doubt have noticed the omission of the painting from the review. McLean resigned from the NGA largely in relation to the exhibition. He described the situation as fraught, “The political agendas around the APY, and the Ngura Pulka exhibition being cancelled, the “white hands on black art saga,” the political motivations around that were pretty obvious in the year of the Voice referendum.” McLean, like others, sees, “white artists and even urban-based Aboriginal artists have studio assistants … The fact that desert artists are engaging in contemporary studio practice for me is not a shock at all,” he said on Schwartz Media’s 7am podcast. “I find it quite exciting…”

Authenticity, or essentialism?

The NGA Director characterised this issue as about authenticity when addressing the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee: “When there are questions of authenticity, the National Gallery has a very established governance structure to analyse and review any issues that pertain to those matters.” The cost of determining “questions of authenticity” amounts to at least $15,382 per painting, for twenty-eight paintings. The need to “authenticate” follows an essentialist line of thinking. This approach can marginalise the diversity and dynamism of Indigenous art-making and does not fully acknowledge Indigenous Australian culture as a constantly evolving living culture. Critics such as Philip Watkins, the Chief Executive of Desart, have resisted narratives that position Aboriginal artists as manipulated. Watkins described the alleged conduct shown in the video as “an aberration” and “not common practice,” underlining that the majority of Aboriginal art centres operate with integrity and cultural authority, and arguing for the autonomy of Indigenous-led art practices.

Rather than open a public dialogue about authorship in Aboriginal art — what it means, how it works — the NGA chose a policy fix. A more courageous move would have been to keep the exhibition, which was at least 80 per cent installed, pairing it with robust public programming of lectures, panels, and cross-cultural dialogue to explore why the controversy arose. The review instead does little to progress the dialogue surrounding clashes between Aboriginal art authorship and market notions of authenticity. This is a missed opportunity. Although the NGA brief was not designed to progress dialogue, a rigorous academic review would have been more valuable. The NGA has the platform. It chose near-silence.

Erasure by revision

The APY Art Centre Collective initially described Ngura Pulka as comprising twenty-nine paintings. An NGA media release echoed the same. But the 2024 APY ACC Corporation Directors’ report refers to only twenty-eight paintings in alignment with the review: “the 28 paintings that formed the Ngura Pulka – Epic Country body of works.”^[1]

What gets lost in this arithmetic is the story of the artists who may now be seen through the lens of doubt rather than recognition. Being the face of controversy in a broader industry conversation could be traumatic for the artists, including those interviewed by lawyers about their painting method. It might be perceived that Yaritji Young has suffered a disservice by not having her work undergo review alongside the other twenty-eight paintings originally set for exhibition. An unwarranted negative view of her work may now exist.

The decision to remove a painting from the review may have appeared to the review sponsor as a savvy manoeuvre that would produce a tidy outcome. But the exhibition sans the painting is an imperfect proposition. It becomes the Mona Lisa room, the Salle des États without the Mona Lisa: the twenty-ninth painting, the “videoed painting”.

Power and proximity

It could be that the NGA Director’s deep South Australian ties after his 2010 — 2018 Directorship of the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) (which holds over eighty APY ACC artworks) has influenced how he approached this review. Mitzevich has championed these artists since his time at AGSA, where he curated their work for the 2014 Adelaide Biennial. In 2017, at AGSA, I visited a powerful, arresting, and beautiful installation from the Kulata Tjuta Project as part of the Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: Tarnanthi. It comprised wooden spears and bowls created by artists from APY Lands, made in response to atomic bomb testing in that area. The February 2024 acquisition of Kulata Tjuta: Tirkilpa is from this ongoing years-long Kulata Tjuta project, a cultural movement that began in 2010 to revive and pass on the practice of spear-making. This project, just like Ngura Pulka, is run by the APY ACC.

Developing relationships with artists in a state gallery and bringing these to the national institution may even be beneficial but the Ngura Pulka debacle raises questions around institutional allegiances. Part of the difficulty in assessing the review’s credibility is the tangle of relationships surrounding it. Public Relations consultant Sue Cato, who has worked for the APY ACC’s CEO, also sits on the NGA Foundation Board. Even the NGA’s Ethics Advisory Group now includes Dr Lisa Slade, a long-time colleague of Mitzevich across two institutions including as a former Deputy Director of AGSA where many of these APY ACC relationships were first formed. With this web of intersecting interests, the idea of a truly independent review begins to fray. Additionally, Dr Shane Simpson, is one of two lawyers who led the Ngura Pulka review; the NGA has previously engaged Simpsons Solicitors for legal work. Simpson is also a member of the Ethics Advisory Group. In Slade and Simpson, half of the NGA Ethics Advisory Group are closely associated with Ngura Pulka before an exhibition outcome is even given.

In the words of Professor Brenda L Croft, of Australian National University: “This is an internal review, of course they are going to find what they want to find … they have had their own investigate their own.”

The broader stakes

Creative Australia’s review concerning the 2026 Venice Biennale artistic team selection/rescindment was first announced with no timeline, scant detail, and — for a while — a broken website link to its Terms of Reference. When these were first provided, on 14 March, they were as carefully worded as legislation but appeared only to address the selection, not cancellation process. Although Creative Australia clarified their intentions to a third party, their 13 February statement appears to reveal the original intention as just the selection process. Review of the cancellation is, at best, only implied by the Terms of Reference. Even then, the official language appears to remain carefully ambiguous.

Arts advocates like the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) are calling for proper accountability and transparency. I sat next to NAVA staff at the February 2025 Senate Estimates Hearing. Nick Mitzevich also sat in the small gallery for the Hearing, having been called to present. As Creative Australia’s Venice Biennale matter consumed extensive time, he was released early before speaking — one review ended up giving cover to the other. I believe further questions on Ngura Pulka were to be asked of the NGA Director that night. I have not been able to confirm the subject matter in writing with the relevant committee because I am told that pre-meeting content for Senate Estimates is protected as private.

Both reviews appear to feature deliberately selective Terms of Reference that craft the review parameters so that the contentious subject matter is no longer primary. The lessons from the completed Ngura Pulka review emphasise how the Venice review, still in progress, must not avoid the challenging questions.

Institutions at a crossroad

Instead of embracing transparency, and the most contentious Ngura Pulka work, the NGA pressed ahead with what — judging by the review’s artwork list — is a much-changed exhibition. Sadly, some of the original artists have passed away since the exhibition was originally scheduled. It is within the prerogative of the artists, the NGA and the APY ACC to change the curatorial selection. However, the public would have likely expected the review to examine the original curatorial selection.

Given the so-called “white hands on black art” scandals that washed through the media in the 1990s especially, the NGA had every reason to treat this APY ACC matter as contentious and as a governance issue. Yet, society today is more adept at discussing differing cultural systems (regimes of value in the language of anthropologist Fred Myers) and at truth-telling, than it was back then. And courage and leadership in turbulent times are expected of the leaders of our cultural organisations.

It is understandable that the NGA felt caught between conflicting cultural, political and curatorial pressures. But that is the job of leadership: to navigate complexity with integrity, and to do so in the public eye. Institutions do not earn trust by avoiding controversy — they earn it by confronting it.

The NGA has done well proactively publishing its review report, offering public access, as it did for relevant documents with the 2015 review by former High Court judge Susan Crennan concerning thirty-six works of Asian art. That review saw the Gallery return several items from its collection to the Indian government. This was a provenance issue. The provision of access to the documents reflected a level of openness that Creative Australia would do well to emulate. But that good work by the NGA is undermined by a sense that the Ngura Pulka review, for all its cost, was avoidant, even timid in the face of important argument about cultural authority and authorship of Indigenous art. The NGA may insist that it was simply following procedure. But the outcome reads as a case study in institutional hesitancy, where a moment that demanded leadership was met instead with a strategic response — the review — and omission.

*

What has unfolded around Ngura Pulka is a test of how a national institution handles Indigenous cultural content. Sometimes smaller institutions provide the more courageous and compelling responses and content, such as the remarkable 65,000 Years of Australian Art (curated by Distinguished Associate Provost Professor Marcia Langton AO, Senior Curator Judith Ryan AM and Ms Shanysa McConville), on now at the Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne.

Both in the case of Indigenous art or political works such as those by Khaled Sabsabi, our cultural agencies and institutions are increasingly relied upon as platforms for negotiating complex cultural debates. This is an important extension of the role of public venues in the arts especially — to engage audiences and experts and host opportunities for knowledge exchange and responsible dialogue.

The two reviews covered in this article have a rich ideological landscape surrounding them. They show that sometimes contentious issues provide the most fertile ground for important debate. When cultural agencies and institutions adopt an approach that obscures facts or deflects responsibility, they risk missing vital opportunities for cultural leadership and sector engagement. Ironically, this risk-averse stance can provoke the very backlash they hoped to avoid, amplified by a perceived lack of courage or transparency.

The NGA has recently announced its fifth National Indigenous Art Triennial, After the Rain. This is a new opportunity for fresh dialogue around Indigenous art, and concepts of authorship and collaboration; for the forward-thinking conversations that the sector sorely needs, and the institution also, after Ngura Pulka. By choosing transparency, and engagement with complex discourse, institutions can, not only build trust but also lead meaningful cultural conversations.

NGA Director Nick Mitzevich was unavailable for interview on the topic of Ngura Pulka on the occasions that I attempted to discuss this exhibition; the knowledge I possess in this matter stems from a PhD, I am obliged to apply and share that research.

^[1] However, its own website maintains the original count. And, an April 2025 YouTube clip from the APY ACC Elders states, “two regional collaborative paintings, 30 individual artworks and one Kulata Tjuta installation.” The clip evidently seeks to save the exhibition. It features four APY ACC directors, including Iluwanti Ken, and Frank Young who says, “we’ve been waiting too long.” The additional paintings that the APY ACC includes in their 30 individual artworks likely reveal some of the story of the exhibition controversy. The Ngura Pulka review lists a painting by Yaritji Young, ‘Tjala Tjukurpa,’ 2021, that may have been introduced as an alternative to the 2023 painting that Young was reportedly preparing for Ngura Pulka.

Image: Wikimedia Commons