Aboriginal Art Collection: Highlights from Australia's Public Museums and Galleries

Contents: Introduction SUSAN COCHRANE National Gallery of Australia, Canberra WALLY CARUANA National Museum of Australia, Canberra DAVID KAUS Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin MARGIE WEST Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney HETTI PERKINS AND KEN WATSON Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney BERNICE MURPHY Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane MARCO NEALE Queensland Museum, Brisbane RICHARD ROBINS National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne JUDITH RYAN Museum Victoria, Melbourne GAYE SCULTHORPE Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart KIM AKERMAN AND DAVID HANSEN Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth MICHAEL O'FERRALL AND BRENDA L. CROFT Western Australian Museum, Perth ROSS CHADWICK AND MANCE LOFGREN Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide JANE HYLTON South Australian Museum, Adelaide PHILIP A. CLARKE List of Plates Bibliography Editor's Acknowledgments Contributors Index

La Pointe Saint Mathieu, Brittany, France

The "Pointe Saint Mathieu" is one of the most westerly continental landmarks of France. The promontory is located at the entrance of the "Goulet de la Rade de Brest", that is the entrance channel of the harbour of Brest in Brittany (France). It marks also the Southern end of the "Chenal du Four" that is the main navigation channel between the islands of Ouessant, Molène and Béniquet, and Brittany. The "Chenal du Four" is reputed for its dangers. The tidal range is greater than 7 m in spring tides, and the mid-tide current may exceed 5 knots. The Saint Mathieu promontory is equipped with a lighthouse and a semaphore. The former is located in the ruins of an old monastery, founded during the 6th century AD by Saint Tanguy. The present ruins are the remnants of buildings from the 11th to 15th centuries. The first lighthouse was installed in 1689, although the monks of the monastery used to maintain a signal light since the 1250s. Completed in 1835, the present "Phare de la Pointe Saint-Mathieu" is 37 m high and it reaches 58.8 m above sea level During World War 2, the Pointe Saint Mathieu was defended by a series of concrete fortifications built by the Germans. Some were based upon some earlier French bunker systems, like the coastal battery at the Rospects which included 4 main gun bunkers (4*150 mm, or 2*150 mm & 2*105 mm), an observation bunker on the Western side close to sea, and several smaller structures. There was also the large Kéringar Blockhaus system, near Lochrist, located about 1 km inland and designed for 4 guns of 280 mm. Its command bunker remains a landmark along the main road. All this area was very-heavily bombed between 1943 and 1944, and particularly during the battle of Brest in August-September 1944 ("L'Enfer de Brest").

The politics and ethics of relocated art

At the end of Word War II, Soviet occupation forces removed countless art objects from German soil. Some of them were returned during the 1950s, but most either disappeared for good or were stored away secretly in cellars of Soviet museums. The Cold War then covered the issue with silence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, museums in St Petersburg and Moscow started to exhibit some of the relocated art for the first time in half a century. The unusual quality of the paintings-mostly impressionist masterpieces-not only attracted the attention of the international art community, but also triggered a diplomatic row between Russia and Germany. Both governments advanced moral and legal claims to ownership. To make things even more complicated, many of the paintings once belonged to private collectors, some of whom were Jews. Their descendants also entered the dispute. The basic premise of this article is that the political and ethical dimensions of relocated art can be understood most adequately by eschewing a single authorial standpoint. Various positions, sometimes incommensurable ones, are thus explored in an attempt to outline possibilities for an ethics of representation and a dialogical solution to the international problem that relocated art has become.