Will Owen writes about a dinner to honour George Chaloupka:
On Wednesday night, August 13, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory’s Foundation sponsored a dinner at the Darwin Convention Center to honor George Chaloupka for his contributions to the study and preservation of Aboriginal rock art. Energy Resources of Australia has funded a Research Fellowship in Chaloupka’s honor, offering a $25,000 stipend for each of the next three years to a scholar who engages in exploration or documentation of rock art sites, consultation with Indigenous owners, or further study based on materials of Chaloupka’s already in the collections of MAGNT.
He describes Chaloupka’s speech:
Chaloupka himself spoke of the critical need to preserve what he called the largest and most important rock art assemblage in the world. Older and more extensive than the more famous galleries of France and Spain, Indigenous rock art galleries document a long, continuous tradition, spanning prehistoric hunting, contact with Macassans in the last five centuries, and the arrival of Europeans on the Antipodean shores. Chaloupka stressed the human element that is so important and unique to Australian sites, and ended with an impassioned plea for more work in the area of conservation and preservation. His final remarks noted that there is no one better positions and equipped to construct such work than the youngest generation of the Indigenous landowners: they are in place, have the cultural background appropriate to the task, and need only to be trained in methods of conservation.
