The repatriated objects — including clubs, picks, knives, sheaths, adzes and a boomerang — will go back to their Aboriginal owners in the Northern Territory.
Philbin has helped transform the Hammer into one of the city’s landmark institutions and a leading museum of contemporary art for the nation and the world.
“Particular Histories: Provenance Research in African Arts” is based on the findings of an initiative to trace the movement of objects collected during an exploitative colonial era.