Tarnanthi festival loses longtime director to ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ overseas post
Artistic director Nici Cumpston OAM is bound for America after a decade running the Art Gallery of South Australia’s festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.
The Art Gallery of South Australia today confirmed the departure of longtime curator and founding director of Tarnanthi festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Nici Cumpston OAM.
Cumpston, a widely respected Barkandji artist and curator, joined the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2008 as the institution’s first curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, before taking the reins of the newly established festival Tarnanthi in 2014.
Cumpston will relocate to Charlottesville in March to take up a new role as Director of Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia, commencing in May.
The Kluge-Ruhe collection and museum is regarded as the only institution outside Australia dedicated to the exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture, encompassing 3600 objects.
The institution grew from the collections of University of Kansas academic Edward L Ruhe, who began collecting First Nations art while undertaking fieldwork in Australia in the 1960s, and German-born television mogul and collector John Kluge, who acquired Ruhe’s collection after his death. Kluge later donated thousands of works to the University of Virginia in 1997.
The museum recently hosted the touring exhibition Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, which was first commissioned and displayed as part of the 2019 Tarnathi program.
“I see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to extend the work I have been doing for the past seventeen years at AGSA into an international context,” Cumpston said of her new role.
“I will be forever grateful to all the artists I have worked with who have put their faith in me to support them to deliver their outstanding vision.”
The Art Gallery of South Australia said that Cumpston will continue to oversee the 2025 festival, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in October, before the search for a new director begins.
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Emma Fey, acting director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, praised Cumpston’s contribution to Tarnanthi and the Art Gallery, which has seen its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection acquire an addition 1,000 works across Cumpston’s tenure.
“Under Nici’s direction, Tarnanthi has set a benchmark in best practice with its commitment to working with First Nations artists and communities respectfully, ethically and in culturally appropriate ways,” Fey said.
The news follows the departure of Art Gallery of South Australia director Rhana Devenport in March 2024, and assistant director, artistic programs, Dr Lisa Slade, who left the following June to become Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne.
The Art Gallery of South Australia’s new director, Jason Smith, is due to start in February.