Nici Cumpston is the first Aboriginal person to take on the role of the Director of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia.
Ms Cumpston OAM, a Barkandji woman from western NSW, has a formidable background as an artist, painter and photographer, as well as a curator, gallery director and art festival organiser.
She is a founding artistic director of Tarnanthi, Australia's largest celebration of contemporary Aboriginal arts and culture, at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In 2014 Ms Cumpston won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Work on Paper Award, with a hand-coloured photograph in which she conveys both environmental devastation and the hope of revival.
The program explains: "the major themes and sub-themes of Nici Cumpston's photography relate to the current parlous state of the Murray-Darling river system, its lakes and tributaries and attendant ecology, and to the attempted erasure of prior Indigenous presence on those sites and the cultural amnesia accompanying this."
Ms Cumpston was resident artist at the Kluge-Ruhe in March and April 2014 and contributed to the lecture programs at the University of Virginia in Environmental Sciences. She also delivered a hand-colouring workshop for UVA students.
Her photograph collection, 'Having-been-there', exemplifying the spiritual dimension to Nici's work, was on exhibition.
The existence of the Kluge-Ruhe Collection is testament to the broad transnational reach of Aboriginal art and culture. It is named after the men whose passion made this possible.
John W Kluge (1914 - 2010) was a successful media entrepreneur, who commissioned or collected more than 1,600 Aboriginal artworks from 1989. The catalyst for Mr Kluge's deep appreciation of the art expression of Aboriginal art had been the 1988 exhibition Dreamings: Art from Aboriginal Australia, at the Asia Society Galleries in New York City.
This exhibition travelled for two years - to Chicago, Los Angeles and then Melbourne, finishing at the Adelaide festival in 1990. This selection of Aboriginal art ignited great appreciation and deep interest amongst the American people.
Edward L Ruhe (1923 - 1989) was already hooked. He had begun collecting Aboriginal art in 1965 while in Australia as a Fulbright scholar. A Professor of English at the University of Kansas, he built a collection of the highest quality by purchasing artworks directly from artists, community art centres and early Aboriginal art dealers.
Mr Ruhe exhibited Aboriginal art across the USA and wrote several catalogues and articles.
His correspondence over 25 years, and his valuable and rare library, are held in the Kluge-Ruhe Library and Archive.
After Mr Ruhe's death, Mr Kluge took the opportunity to acquire his collection in 1993 and donated all of what he collected to the University of Virginia in 1997.
Ms Cumpston is well-qualified to fill the shoes of the founding Director, Dr Margo Smith AM who had been in the position for 27 years.
Originally the curator for John W Kluge's private collection from 1995 - 1997, she became Director of the Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection in 1998. Dr Smith's contribution has been formidable, and she leaves a legacy of an important cultural centre: the only site outside Australia dedicated to the exhibition and research of Aboriginal art.
Dr Victoria Grieves Williams is Warraimaay from the midnorth coast of NSW and an historian.