Luke Taylor

Luke Taylor is an anthropologist who specialises in writing about Aboriginal artists and their art. He obtained his PhD at ANU in 1987. He has worked with Kuninjku people near Maningrida since 1981 and written an ethnography of their art entitled Seeing the Inside with Clarendon Press, 1996. In 2026 he published Peter Marralwanga: Painter of the Djang of Western Arnhem Land with Ivan Namirrkki, Marralwanga's son, for ANU Press. He curated and edited the catalogue for the Painting the Land Story exhibition for the National Museum of Australia in 1999. He also wrote for the Crossing Country catalogue edited by Hetti Perkins for the major exhibition of the same name held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2004 and the rarrk John Mawurndjul Journey Through Time in Northern Australia catalogue edited by C. Kaufmann for a retrospective of John Mawurndjul's work at Museum Tinguely in Basel in 2005. He selected work and wrote for the Old Masters exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in 2013. Luke also prepared the first edition of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Artists Biographical Database published by Discovery Media.
Luke was Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia in the period 1991-2000. He was then Director of Research and later Deputy Principal at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra between 2000-2013. During this period he also taught about Aboriginal arts at ANU. Luke is currently working on ARC funded research with artists in Arnhem Land.