Connections at the National Museum of Australia takes Indigenous art off the wall and into our hearts

The sale almost set a record - the second-highest price fetched by one of the late Indigenous artist's works on the overseas market. It was part of a major New York auction of Aboriginal artworks - proof, if we needed it, that the international appetite for work by Australian First Nations artists remains insatiable.

It seems relevant this week because back in Australia, a very different gathering of Indigenous artwork is about to take place. Works by Kngwarreye will be taking their place among hundreds of works by dozens of First Nations artists, both living and dead.

The show, at the National Museum of Australia, puts paid to the notion that art demands only hushed, deferential viewing, on gallery walls, in auction houses, on the walls of the privileged.

Instead, Connection will be all about immersion, bringing more than 300 works to life through multi-sensory projections in a limited season that will later travel around the country and internationally.

It's becoming an increasingly popular way of viewing art - more exhilarating (for many) than trailing through destination galleries, more inclusive, more photogenic, more engaging.

Call it the Van Gogh Effect, so-called because of the most recent similar experience in Canberra, when three of the Dutch artist's most famous works came to life as a kind of immersive experience made of projected light and sound - a lakeside installation that has now been seen by about 8 million people in more than 75 cities around the world.

The company behind Van Gogh Alive (which also featured this week on MasterChef, to inspire contestants to "create their own masterpieces"), is now bringing a new digital spectacular of epic proportions to the museum, home of one of the world's largest repositories of Indigenous artworks and artefacts.

Like Van Gogh Alive, it speaks to a new era of art consumption, one that immerses the viewers, moves off the walls and into the atmosphere. It shifts, engages, fills the space and, most importantly, looks great on Instagram.

And it's these very features - cutting-edge technology, direct engagement, movement and colour and spectacular visuals - that Margo Neale, the museum's lead Indigenous curator, says brings it directly in line with Indigenous tradition.

"This in many ways is even more traditional," she says.

"The primary way that knowledge is transmitted in Aboriginal culture has been through performance. It's the performative elements that are the most critical elements in passing on knowledge in Aboriginal culture.

"We come from a non-text-based society - remember? This is cinematic, performative art. So in many ways, this is more true to our cultural way of transmitting or passing on knowledge or sharing knowledge.

"This is it, not static bits of things stuck on walls, not framed pictures and stuff on canvas, stuck in galleries, that is less, in my view. So this is much truer to the roots of our cultural practice."

Bruce Peterson, the founder of Grande Experiences, has long had a hunch that this is becoming the new reality - and future - of the modern art experience.

As an ex-physical education teacher who moved into the corporate sector two decades ago, he started Grande as a producer of artefact-based exhibitions. But it was while on a 12-month stint in Italy in 2007, where he was developing a major Leonardo da Vinci show, that he made it a personal mission to take his three young children with him as he toured some of Europe's most grand and famous galleries and museums.

"I was taking them around to the Vatican museum, the Uffizi, Academia, the Louvre as part of my research, and without fail within five minutes, I'm getting a tug on my hip pockets, saying 'Dad, this is boring, let's get a gelati'," he says.

"And I really started to question them as to why, because for me, I'm taking my family over to the sort of epicentre of art and culture around the world, and yet they were disengaged.

"And what really came out of it when talking to them was that it just didn't resonate with them because there was nothing moving. It was very, very static. It was silent. There was no music. It was cold, and there was just nothing that was really engaging or appealing for them.

"And that sort of stopped me in my tracks a little bit."

And yes, it was obvious to him that his kids were being typical kids. But he could see that, well-travelled and steeped in art and history though he was, these large cold museums were a hard sell, liable to bring on Old Master Overload in even the most ardent art-lover.

"I started to look at our own exhibitions that we were doing everywhere, and I was finding there were quite a few adults feeling the same way," he says.

He soon realised that the museum sector, across the board, had a common goal: to grow audiences, to bring more people in and keep them there. But branching out and attracting more people was a constant struggle.

"They try and do that through different genres of art and the like ... but really, it's about the engagement and the way it's presented rather than the subject matter, quite often," he says.

In 2009, Grande Experiences branched out into multimedia, at a time when the technology was relatively new and few institutions were interested.

But 13 years later, the company has created a range of shows that millions of people have seen. Van Gogh Alive is the most-visited, and the most direct in terms of its goal and effect.

Peterson says he relishes being able to deliver art experiences without having to deal with galleries, donors, boards and curators. Most often, he says, he and his team are answerable only to the punters, the millions of people who come through the lit-up spaces and emerge with a newfound sense of wonder and artistic appreciation.

"What we're doing is putting art and culture in front of them in a way that they feel comfortable in experiencing it. They get enjoyment from it without having to know much about it," he says.

But Connections, at the National Museum, has been an entirely different proposition. He and his team have worked closely with curators, artists, consultants and advisers, to harness a living, moving history with ancient roots, contemporary implications and diverse formats, taking in multiple art forms across the country. It's vast, and complex, but straightforward in its mission - to honour First Nations artists.

"One of our big mandates at Grande is to engage more people around art and culture, but we also only do things that have an educational outcome," he says.

"We don't do things that are just pure entertainment, like Harry Potter or Marvel or those type of things, even though they could lend themselves into our medium - I'm looking at how to educate people and make a difference and have an impact on people."

Neale, meanwhile, is convinced shows like Connections will become closer to the norm, if only because they allow for more flexibility, frequency and engagement when it comes to complex shows and ideas.

"Increasingly, it is getting prohibitive to do standard shows, traditional static shows, and bringing our collection out often," she says.

"We have a fabulous collection ... But the blockbusters, like Songlines, are about five to seven years apart, because of the resourcing, the temporary gallery, and now freight costs. Physically, financially and human resource-wise it is difficult to do enough.

"But this way you can do it. Once you set up the infrastructure, you can at least expose your collection in this way, and then you may support it with other 3D objects and stuff, there's lots of ways you can do it."

There will always be art on the walls of galleries, auction houses and fancy homes - Emily Kame Kngwarreye and her ilk will always see to that.

But plenty of this is also making its way into the chaotic ether that now defines our restless world.

And, if visitors find themselves rushing to capture themselves in the space - phones aloft, Instagram filters deployed - then the future is well and truly here.

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