Brenda L Croft is an Australian First Nations woman from the Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra Peoples from the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory of Australia, and Anglo-Australian/Chinese/German/Irish/Scottish heritage.

Since 2017 Brenda has been living and working on Ngambri/Ngunnawal homelands, a place she has known since her family moved there in 1974/5 for her father’s decade-long work with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Aboriginal Development Commission. Her father’s cultural mentoring work with Australian First Nations Peoples from across the continent was a crucial experiential period, embedding in Brenda the culturally expected ways of being and working with First Nations communities.

Since the mid-1980s Brenda has been a path-maker in Australian First Nations, national and international contemporary creative cultural sectors as a multi-disciplinary practitioner – as academic, artist, curator, educator, teacher and creative-led researcher. Brenda’s creative-led research encompasses Critical Indigenous Performative Autoethnography, Indigenous Storywork, grounded by multi-modal methodologies and theories.

Following a year undertaking a Batchelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts (1985), Brenda worked with community-based organisations including being a founding member and later General Manager of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative (1987 – 1996); volunteer broadcaster & board member Radio Redfern (1986 – 1989); board member Koori Radio/Gadigal Information Services, and Ngalawi Housing Co-operative (1990 – 1998). 

As an independent consultant, curator, and project manager (1997 – 2000), key achievements included: participating in the Chicago Artists International Program, Ethnic Communities Exchange Program USA (1996); Australia Council for the Arts Visual Arts Board Greene Street Studio, New York, USA (1997); co-curating ‘fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie and Judy Watson’ for the Australian Pavilion at the 47^th Venice Biennale (1997); curating ‘Beyond the pale: contemporary Indigenous art’ for the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide International Arts Festival (2000); co-curating the Australian Indigenous Art Commission for the Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France (2006).

In 1995 Brenda received a Master of Art Administration from the College of Fine Arts, Sydney. From 1999 - 2009 Brenda worked as a curator at state and federal cultural institutions: Curator of Indigenous Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia (1999 – 2001); Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, National Gallery of Australia (2002 – 09), where she curated significant exhibitions, including establishing the National Indigenous Art Triennial, curating its inaugural iteration ‘Culture Warriors’ (2007).

From 2009 – 2011 Brenda was Senior Lecturer of Indigenous Art, Culture and Design, across the David Unaipon Centre for Indigenous Education and Research (DUCIER) and Art, Architecture and Design (AAD), living and working on Kaurna Country. In 2011 Brenda project managed the 45^th anniversary of Gurindji Freedom Day event working with her patrilineal community at Kalkaringi and Daguragu, Northern Territory.

From 2012 – 2016 Brenda was a Senior Research Fellow with the National Institute for Experimental Art, University of New South Wales Art + Design (UNSWAD), undertaking creative-led doctoral research supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous Award (ARCDI12), living on Wandandian/Yuin and Dhurgha Country, while working on Gadigal/Dharawal Country.

In 2017 Brenda returned to Ngambri/Ngunnawal homelands, where she worked as Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs at the National Museum of Australia, curating ‘A Change is Gonna Come: 50^th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum/25^th anniversary of the Mabo Decision’. Also in 2017 Brenda’s doctoral creative-led research collaborative exhibition ‘Still in my mind: Gurindji location, experience and visuality’, curated in partnership with Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre, Kalkaringi, UNSW Galleries/UNSWAD and University of Queensland Art Museum opened at UNSW Galleries, commencing a national tour through to late 2022.

In 2018 Brenda commenced with the Australian National University, Canberra, where she is Professor of Indigenous Art History & Curatorship. From 2019 as part of a Critical Indigenous Studies framework Brenda has been leading an ANU Indigenous Health & Wellbeing Grand Challenge project 'Murrudha: Sovereign Walks - tracking cultural actions through art, Country, language and music'. In 2021 Brenda completed her PhD.

Academic Awards include a UNSW Alumni Award (2001); Honorary Doctorate (Visual Arts) from the University of Sydney (Sydney College of the Arts) (2009); and UNSW Dean’s Award for Outstanding Thesis (2022).

In 2022-3 iterations of Brenda’s photomedia installation series ‘Naabami (thou shall/will see): Barangaroo (army of me) were exhibited at diverse sites in Canberra and Sydney including Sydney Festival 2023 (Barangaroo Precinct & Old Government House, Parramatta); ‘The National 4’, at the Art Gallery of NSW; and Museum of Sydney, Sydney Heritage Museums. In 2024 a further iteration will be exhibited at the Embassy of Australia, Washington DC, from 8 July – 5 November.

Brenda’s artwork is held in major national and international public and private collections and she has published extensively over the past four decades. In 2024 Brenda was appointed to the Australian Research Council College of Experts. She is also returned as a member of the Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection Advisory Committee (Collections & Curatorial), University of Virginia, Va.

Brenda and her young son have been living and working on the traditional lands of the Massachusett and associated clans/nations while she is the 2024 Gough Whitlam & Malcolm Fraser Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. During 2024 Brenda will be teaching in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, into the Departments of History of Art & Architecture, and Art, Film & Visual Studies; organising visiting guest lectures; presenting lectures in other Harvard University departments and programs, including HUNAP; and working on creative-led research projects.