Visual Ecologies on Display: Art, Biodiversity, and Politics in Canberra’s Museum Collections

This article examines how Canberra’s museums engage with biodiversity, contemporary art, and political discourse through curatorial choices and exhibition design that shape cultural and ecological narratives. It adopts a framework informed by visual philology–understood as the close reading of display approaches as interpretive and meaning-making acts–to investigate how institutional stories are constructed and conveyed. Focusing on the National Museum of Australia (NMA), the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), and the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG), the study analyzes how curators employ spatial arrangements, object placement, and temporal sequencing to articulate relationships between nature, culture, and identity. Drawing from interdisciplinary methods in art history, curatorial studies, and the environmental humanities, it explores how museums mediate Indigenous concepts such as Country and Land, framing them not merely as symbolic or aesthetic elements, but as political signifiers of sovereignty and resilience. Rather than treating artworks solely as images, the article considers how exhibition practices operate across material, spatial, and textual registers–making curatorial choices central to institutional knowledge production. It also reflects on how the juxtaposition of colonial and contemporary works can either reinforce or complicate linear narratives of progress. By engaging with display practices, archival materials, and exhibition design, the article positions Canberra’s museums as critical spaces where disciplinary boundaries are blurred, Indigenous and Western epistemologies intersect, and institutional authority is made visible. These dynamics are not only represented–they are enacted through the spatial and temporal structuring of exhibitions, shaping public understanding of ecological relationships and collective memory.