In pre-pandemic 2019, when it was possible to organise international art exhibitions, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) curated and presented an exhibition of contemporary Indonesian art to show the diversity and richness of art in new millennium Indonesia. Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia was the first major survey of post-1998 Indonesian art seen in Australia and a significant number of the works were acquired for the national collection. The genesis of this book was a scholarly international conference organised to complement the NGA exhibition by the Humanities Research Centre at The Australian National University (ANU), working in partnership with the NGA. The three editors of the book were among the conference conveners. The conference was intended to provide a broad scholarly context for Indonesian art and had a much wider historical time frame than the NGA exhibition.