Olive Muriel Pink: Artist, Conservationist, Aboriginal Rights Activist

Olive Muriel Pink would spent a decade conducting research on the eastern Arrernte of Alice Springs and the Warlpiri of the Tanami region. She grew to be a passionate activist for aboriginal rights (in fact, historian Julie Marcus suggests that Pink ultimately left academia because she felt it was not serving her activist goals).

Ethel King: Fish Artist Extraordinaire

Preparation of a Queensland groper by Ethel King 1926. Photographer George C. Clutton. Australian Museum Archives AMS351_V09193. Reproduction Rights Australian Museum

Preparation of a Queensland groper by Ethel King 1926. In the 1920’s a group of women artists, working mostly on commission and in insecure, part-time positions, helped create a new visual identity for the Australian Museum. They used their training in applied art and design to produce innovative and colorful Continue Reading

John Tyley: Caribbean Botanical Illustrator in a Colonial World

John Tyley, watercolor on paper of [Fruit], ca. 1802 John Tyley worked as a botanical illustrator at the historic St. Vincent Botanical Garden in the late 1700s creating exquisite depictions of tropical plants.¹ Aside from the beautiful and detailed illustrations he left behind, little is known of this native Caribbean Continue Reading

Maria Sibylla Merian: Botanical Illustrator, Entomologist, and Explorer Ahead of Her Time

Illustration of a Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus) and a False Coral Snake (Anilius scytale) (1701–1705) by Maria Sibylla Merian, watercolor and gloss over etching on parchment   “Ever since my youth I have been engaged in the examination of insects. …I set aside my social life and devoted all my Continue Reading