Cultural Medicine: The Art of Indigenous Healing
Medical History Museum
Monday 25 September 2025 to Wednesday 30 September 2026
Cultural Medicine: The Art of Indigenous Healing follows the premise of Tjukurrpa (dreaming). It looks at traditional Indigenous healing practice as past, present and future simultaneously. It presents examples of healing practice from the many distinct and varied Indigenous communities throughout Australia through contemporary art practice.
In 2015 the Medical History Museum began collecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art that depicted bush medicine and healing practices culminating in a major exhibition The art of healing: Australian Indigenous bush medicine in 2018 that toured internationally to London and Berlin.
Cultural Medicine: The Art of Indigenous Healing reveals new works by First Nations Australians who generously share their extensive knowledge of bush medicine and healing practices. This exhibition builds on existing relationships with artists and communities. Works have been acquired from artists and art centres from throughout Australia including works from Kaiela Arts, Shepparton, Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) Alice Springs, Barkley Regional Arts, Tennant Creek and
Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala,
The key to this exhibition is revealing that traditional Indigenous healing is a current practice informed by the past and an intrinsic part of the life of indigenous people in Australia.
Image:
Vanessa Inkamala (b. 1968)
skin: Nangala
language: Western Aranda
Country: Ntaria Hermannsburg
artist location: Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Northern Territory
Bush Vicks, 2023
watercolour paints on watercolour paper,
51.5 x 71.5 cm
MHM2024.11, Medical History Museum
Shaping a profession: 50 years of dental therapists
Medical History Museum, Monday 11 March to Saturday 15 June 2024.
Shaping a profession: 50 years of dental therapists exhibition and publication celebrates and commemorates dental therapists in Victoria since 1972. It traces this journey through the lived experience of the dental therapists and academics associated with their education and training. Importantly, it highlights the crucial role of advocacy in securing the professional frameworks and tertiary education for dental therapists and oral health therapists. Crucial were the industry associations, the Australian Dental and Oral Health Therapists’ Association (ADOHTA) and Victorian Dental Therapist Association (renamed VDOHTA in 2008), which advocated for change in Victoria.
The project team was led by Professor Julie Satur and Professor Mike Morgan, honorary curator of the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum, with Dr Jacqueline Healy, the director of museums in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, and Tess Scott, the registrar of faculty museums, who consulted with ADOHTA, practitioners, researchers and academic staff. Key to the process was Julie Satur directly contacting the extended network of practitioners, seeking their stories and memorabilia to document pivotal changes over the last 50 years. In the exhibition are loans and gifts of material, such as certificates, class photographs, wax teeth, uniforms, course results and class notes. Significantly, the archive material from the now-defunct VDOHTA, which documents the major legislative and policy changes in Victoria that enabled the practice of dental therapists, has become a substantial addition to the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum collection is also in the exhibition. As well as material that provides evidence of changing social values.
Sponsored by ADOHTA, the Australian Dental and Oral Health Therapists Association.
Publications
Publications complement and enhance the Faculty Museums exhibition program. Themes include women in medicine, cancer, epilepsy and Australian Indigenous healing practice encompassing milestones in health care examining the path of discovery through innovation, education and social change.