‘No One Here … Understands the Problem of Aboriginal Art’: The Fulbright Program, Aboriginal Studies and Aboriginal Art, 1950–65

From 1950, the Fulbright Program of academic exchange brought a stream of visiting American scholars to Australia and Australians to the USA. The first wave of these scholars to study Aboriginal society and culture, principally through the discipline of anthropology, played a significant role in developing the field of Aboriginal studies, and in bringing Aboriginal art, music and dance into greater public prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s. We reconstruct these exchanges, track the influence of notable scholars and identify the contribution they made to researching, teaching and collecting Aboriginal art. In featuring the role of women who contributed expertise to the field, as postgraduates, senior researchers or as wives accompanying academic husbands, we reveal their importance and expose a little-known feature of the Program. Scholar Ed Ruhe is recognised for bringing his pioneering collection of Aboriginal art to the USA; this article shows he was not alone.