Callie Collins at Milingimbi Art and Culture

In May 2018, rising third-year Callie Collins traveled to the remote Aboriginal island community of Milingimbi for a two week internship initiated by the Kluge-Ruhe Collection. Located off the north-coast of Australia, Milingimbi is home to around 1,000 Yolngu people, and is rarely visited by outsiders. Collins’ internship came at the invitation of UVA Mellon Indigenous Arts Fellows Raymond Bulambula and Mrs. Goriyindi, who undertook a 2017 residency at Kluge-Ruhe, where Collins was a curatorial intern. A Virginia resident who had never been on an airplane before, Collins took up the invitation to travel across the world to spend time learning from Aboriginal elders while researching the extensive collection of artworks from Milingimbi in the Kluge-Ruhe Collection. Her visit was sponsored by the UVA Mellon Indigenous Arts Program and the Office of Global Internships at UVA. While at Milingimbi, Collins was adopted into the local community, and given the Aboriginal name Manangurra Wumutjan Garrawurra. Collins describes her adventure as “a life-changing experience. My new family in Milingimbi will forever be in my heart.”

When she returned, she curated an exhibition of three works in a hallway at Kluge-Ruhe, writing extensively about the works she researched at Milingimbi. This mini-exhibition will be on view through July 2019.