Snaking through history

The most delightful snake in town these days doesn’t live at the zoo or, for those cynically inclined, at City Hall. The sweetest reptile is the rainbow serpent, the centerpiece of the current exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

"Track of the Rainbow Serpent: Australian Aboriginal Paintings of the Wolfe Creek Crater" is a relatively small show with just more than two dozen works by contemporary Australian aboriginal people. It is delightful in its accessibility and warmth. In other words, one doesn’t need to be an anthropologist nor an art connoisseur to fall under the magic spell of the paintings. The show runs through Feb. 27.

The story behind this collection of primitive, or folk, art is a fascinating historical and personal odyssey of the curator, Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday, a professor of anthropology at Penn and the daughter of the man who initially identified the Wolfe Creek Crater as a meteorite crater back in 1947. It’s the second largest in the world — 2,850 feet across and 160 feet deep. The largest, the Meteor Crater in Arizona, is also younger by some quarter-million years.

Dr. Sanday went to Australia in 1999 and visited the Wolfe Creek Crater to connect with her father’s research. Frank Reeves was a geologist working for an oil company when he identified the crater as being caused by a meteorite. Later, one of the minerals found at the site was named in his honor.

Dr. Sanday wanted to talk to the "traditional owners" of the crater, the aborigines of the area. She soon found out that the site was so important to the cosmology of the people that they refused to discuss the legends, stories and myths of the crater.

But she also found that the traditional owners would have no problem doing artwork with the crater as the central focus. The results are marvelous to behold and more encompassing than expected. The legend involves the rainbow serpent, whose track created topography. The cult of the rainbow serpent "is one of the oldest continuous religious beliefs in the world."

Other aboriginal art, found in caves, rock walls, on the body, etched and/or engraved in rocks and hard sand, is inspired by "Dreamtime," when creator beings (the rainbow serpent being the most important) formed that land and prepared it for the first ancestors.

As fascinating as the 27 pieces of art are from an anthropological point of view, the attraction can be enjoyed by the lay person. The work is vivid, full of saturated colors with a definite composition. The story is a complex one, but the art doesn’t need overinterpretation to be relevant. In many of the forms, the work represents other primitive art in which the artist depicts things as he or she sees them.

There is another layer to all of this, as aborigines consider dreams and the waking consciousness equal, believing what transpires in one dimension is as important as what transpires in the other. In this case, Dr. Sanday was "dreaming" about her father and his work more than 50 years ago and instead uncovered stories from real people about the very basis of their cosmology.

Dr. Sanday commissioned most of the work directly from the artists, all of whom had sufficient connection to the crater to bear the title of "traditional owner." Clearly, the main story line of the rainbow serpent and the creation mythology is widely accepted and the depiction of various elements appears in a number of works. Some of the main elements besides the serpent include the star, the Dingo and the Old Man.

In addition to the similar conventions of other forms of primitive art, there is also an elegance of line and shape that was most recently seen to great advantage in the Huichol Indian yarn paintings, also displayed in one of the museum’s special exhibitions.

Track of the Rainbow Serpent: Australian Aboriginal Paintings of the Wolfe Creek Crater
through Feb. 27
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3260 South St.
215-898-4000
www.museum.upenn.edu
Adults, $8; seniors (62+), students with ID, ages 6-17, $5; under 6, free