Arts Monday’s Jane Raffan chats with Ace Bourke – curator, collector, and chronicler of Christian the lion – about his life journeys.

Interview I – Ace’s career as a curator of Aboriginal and colonial art

From his time in London in the late 1960s through to three recent, seminal exhibitions:

Flesh & Blood: A Story of Sydney 1788-1998 (Museum of Sydney, 1998)

EORA: Mapping Aboriginal Sydney 1750-1850 (Mitchell Library, 2006)

Lines in the Sand: Botany Bays Stories from 1770 (Hazelhurst Gallery, 2008).

Interview II – Ace’s interests in wildlife conservation and animal rights

Ace is co-author of Christian the Lion, a story about a pet lion purchased from Harrods in London in the late 1960s, and later released into the wild though George Adamson’s (of Born Free fame) Kenyan refuge.

Interviews III to V – Ace’s life journeys as presented in the exhibition, Ace Bourke: A Collector’s Journey (Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, 2012).

Interview III – Family, Collecting Colonial Art

Interview IV – Aboriginal Art, Friends, Travel, Tribal and Pacific Art

Interview V – Christian the Lion, memorabilia, and the documentary film about the story’s revival

Read more about Ace here: https://acebourke.wordpress.com/

Read more about Christian here: https://www.alioncalledchristian.com.au/