MIAMI, FLA.- For more than a dozen years, prominent Miami-based art collectors Debra and Dennis Scholl have focused their collecting attention on Aboriginal Australian contemporary works. This passion has enabled the couple to bolster the West’s appetite for the extraordinary works by commissioning and then touring thematic shows to museums across the country. Now, they pledge to build a permanent bridge to narrow the cultural divide by gifting 200 pieces from their collection to three museums with which they are closely aligned: The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU in Miami; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.

The Scholl gift includes works by the most prominent Australian Aboriginal contemporary painters today, including Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjari, Paddy Bedford, Gulumbu Yunipingu, and Nongirrnga Marawili. These trailblazing artists were inspired by their ancient cultural traditions to forge one of the most dynamic painting movements of recent times. Firmly rooted in Aboriginal life, their works resonate profoundly with the abstract painting of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Frost Art Museum FIU and Nevada Museum of Art will each receive approximately 90 works. The Met will receive 19 works that will be integrated into the holdings of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas and the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

After a long history of collecting international contemporary art, the Scholls’ interest in Aboriginal Australian work was piqued when they began making wine in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. During one of the couple’s trips to the region, Rachel Kent, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, directed Dennis to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see the work on display.

“I turned the corner into the gallery and it was as if I had been struck by lightning,” Dennis Scholl said. Debra and he immediately began to acquire the work from art centers across Australia, collectives where Aboriginal Australian artists come together in a contemporary setting to do what they have for 50,000 years: create culture.

“This is the longest art making tradition known to mankind,” Dennis Scholl said. “For these communities, visual arts are a primary means of communication. That visual language, and the cultural stories being conveyed through the work, are an important part of the global conversation.”

Dennis Scholl said that for far too long, Australian Aboriginal art received an exclusively ethnographic treatment. By collecting – and commissioning – works, and consulting closely with curators and scholars to organize exhibitions and books of the art, the Scholls have helped disrupt that approach and place it in the context of contemporary art globally.

Since 2014, the Scholls have lent the work to three sizeable museum exhibitions. Organized by the Nevada Museum of Art, the shows have toured or will tour to 16 museum venues. No Boundaries (2015-16) is comprised of contemporary desert painting by men. The men and women work separately in art centers, so the women’s paintings are presented in Marking the Infinite, currently on tour. A new exhibition opening in 2019 entitled The Inner World will show 105 commissioned memorial poles from communities across Arnhem Land, in far northeast Australia.

Because the audience response to the exhibitions was so positive, the Scholls decided to give a portion of their collection to three museums they care about deeply. The Frost Art Museum is located at Dennis Scholl’s alma mater, Florida International University, and is named for Phillip and Patricia Frost, who have been mentors to the Scholls throughout their careers.

“With this major donation from Dennis and Debra Scholl of contemporary work by Aboriginal artists, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University will benefit from this remarkable opportunity to showcase these important contemporary works to our visitors, faculty, and students. The Scholls’ passion for these artists and their work, steeped in ancient cultural traditions, will inspire our visitors as we increase the breadth, variety, and global reach of the art we exhibit,” said Dr. Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU.

The decision to gift a portion of the collection to Nevada Museum of Art reflects its deep commitment to this work and to the exhibitions they have presented with the Scholls. The museum has contributed significant scholarship to the endeavor through their Center for Art + Environment. Also, this gift will allow a substantial part of the collection to be available permanently in the West.

“Perhaps no artworks exemplify “art + environment” more succinctly than contemporary Aboriginal paintings from Australia. This extraordinary gift from Dennis and Debra to our Museum is truly transformational. We are forever grateful to the Scholls, and our entire Museum community applauds them,” said David B. Walker, executive director/CEO for the Nevada Museum of Art.

The major gift to The Met enhances the Museum’s commitment to telling an expansive narrative of art. “The Scholls’ gift of dynamic and monumental works from the current generation of Australian Aboriginal artists will encourage our visitors to engage in thoughtful dialogues and will allow us to connect works of art in our galleries from this region—and across time—as only The Met can do,” commented Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of The Met. “Such vivid works foreground the innovation that has been a hallmark of Aboriginal art for many centuries.”

"We feel that this work is some of the finest contemporary art being made on the planet today. We are excited to share it with these three communities,” the Scholls said.

The Frost Art Museum FIU, The Met, and the Nevada Museum of Art have entered into an agreement to share the works liberally with each other. By dispersing the collection among the three institutions, new opportunities for enhancing education and programming across communities emerge.

This is the second large body of art work donated by the Scholls in recent years. In 2012, they donated 300 works of international contemporary art to the Perez Art Museum Miami in anticipation of its opening.