Download - 2010.Q2 | artonview 62 Winter 2010
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JAMES TURRELL’S SKYSPACE ROBERT DOWLING LIFE, DEATH AND MAGIC HANS HEYSEN
3 Director’s foreword
exhibitions and displays
6 Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire Anne Gray
10 Life, death and magic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art Robyn Maxwell
16 Hans Heysen Anne Gray
20 Portraits from India 1850s–1950s Anne O’Hehir
22 In the Japanese manner: Australian prints 1900–1940 Emma Colton
acquisitions
26 James Turrell Skyspace Lucina Ward
28 Theo van Doesburg Space-time construction #3 Jane Kinsman
30 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Eldorado Jane Kinsman
31 Mutuaga The drummer Crispin Howarth
32 Nias Anthropomorphic stone monument Niki van den Heuvel
33 Yami House post Lucie Folan
34 Fred and Lyn Williams gift Emma Colton
36 Walangkura Napanangka Untitled Franchesca Cubillo
38 Shapoor N Bhedwar The Naver—invocation Gael Newton
programs
39 Foundation40 Sponsorship and Development42 Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship
Belinda Cotton
46 Faces in view48 Starry Nights50 At play in van Gogh’s bedroom
Peter Naumann
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ISSN 1323-4552
Print Post Approved pp255003/00078
© National Gallery of Australia 2010
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(cover) James Turrell Skyspace 2010 installation: lighting, plaster, painted concrete, marble, stainless steel, granite, bronze, water and landscape surrounds 800 x 2800 x 2800 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra photograph: John Gollings
View at the entrance to the stupa inside the Skyspace.
Issue 62, winter 2010
artonview winter 2010 3
Director’s foreword
In the last issue of artonview, I said how pleased we were
with the extraordinary success of Masterpieces from Paris:
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond. At the time,
attendances had passed 230 000 during the 2009–10
summer holiday season, setting a Gallery record. We really
did not expect such very high numbers to continue to the
extent they did during the second half of the exhibition.
We were wrong—so much so that we achieved and
easily overtook a new art museum record during what we
normally consider our off-season, when adults return to
work and children to school.
We were extremely fortunate to be able to extend the
exhibition’s season by nearly two weeks to ensure that
as many Australians as possible could see this fine and
deservedly popular show. It is very rare to be able to extend
the season for a show of such quality and size, particularly
as the exhibition opened in Japan in May. The Musée
d’Orsay, however, generously supported the extra time. In
the end, 477 000 people visited Masterpieces from Paris,
making it easily the most popular exhibition ever held in
Australia. We had 38 000 school children and over 60 000
visitors to the Family Activity Room, which was generously
sponsored by the Yulgilbar Foundation. We printed 64 000
catalogues, an art publishing record in Australia. We
also gained an extra 11 000 new members during the
exhibition. In addition, the exhibition pumped nearly $100
million into the Canberra economy. More importantly,
the exhibition brought great Post-Impressionist works to
Australia, where few are owned, for the appreciation of so
many Australians.
The nearly half-a-million attendance demonstrates the
importance of staging exhibitions of this quality and size
in Canberra, which is a convenient city for people from all
over Australia to visit. Nearly 80 per cent of visitors were
from outside Canberra. It would be impossible, of course,
to mount such exhibitions without the support of sponsors
and programs such as the Australian Government’s Art
Indemnity Australia scheme, the generous contribution
of the ACT government for the national marketing
campaign, corporate sponsors, particularly the National
Australia Bank but also Qantas, and other sponsors and
philanthropists.
The energy and effort that goes into these great
exhibitions should not be underestimated—they command
tremendous time and resources. The Gallery is extremely
grateful to everyone involved in making the exhibition such
a success—from our sponsors to, for example, the Gallery’s
security staff, our shop and cafe staff, cleaners, installation
teams, marketing staff, our members, volunteers and the
staff who volunteered to work extra hours to ensure people
enjoyed their experience at the Gallery.
Now, with Masterpieces from Paris behind us, the
Gallery’s focus is on finalising preparations for the opening
season of its new building.
James Turrell’s spectacular Skyspace, the Gallery’s largest
work, is almost completed, with only the surrounding
area to be landscaped in the new southern garden before
it can open to the public. The Skyspace stupa is the first
one of its kind to be built in the southern hemisphere.
This complex architectural work intensifies our experience
of two elements we take very much for granted in our
everyday lives: the sky and light. We will shortly announce
its opening season.
On 13 August, we open to the public Life, death and
magic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art, an
exhibition designed to reveal the power of art made for
rituals of life and death from ancient to recent times. The
animist religion was the earliest in our immediate region
and is still practised in some areas of Southeast Asia.
Objects from museums around the world will complement
the National Gallery of Australia’s own exceptional
collection of ancestral art for this, the first major exhibition
of Southeast Asian animist art ever staged. Unlike similar
Asian exhibitions around the world, which focus on works
from classical Hindu and Buddhist civilisations, Life, death
and magic will reveal the diversity of art produced over
two millennia by animist communities, some of which
still live in mountainous terrain and remote islands. The
Australian International Cultural Foundation and the
Gordon Darling Foundation are generously supporting Life,
death and magic.
Our two major winter exhibitions look at the work
of two exceptional Australian painters of the past: Hans
Heysen and Robert Dowling.
Indonesia, possibly Borneo discovered Flores The bronze weaver 6th century bronze 25.8 x 22.8 x 15.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2006
To feature in Life, death and magic at the National Gallery of Australia in August.
4 national gallery of australia
Hans Heysen began his successful career in Adelaide
in the Federation period. Although he is one of Australia’s
best-known artists, this is the first full retrospective in
over 30 years. It includes his oil paintings, watercolours,
drawings and prints. Heysen’s work was pivotal to the
development of Australian landscape art in the early
twentieth century. He made the Australian gum tree the
monumental hero of his nationalistic pictures. His later
paintings of the rocky, arid region of the Flinders Ranges
from the late 1920s, in the reds and ambers of inland
Australia, depicted our dry sculptural landscape almost
for the first time. Developed by the Art Gallery of South
Australia, this touring retrospective opened at the
National Gallery of Australia on 14 May and will continue
until 11 July. It includes works that have not been shown
at other venues.
Our second winter retrospective is the Gallery’s own
Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire. Robert Dowling
was not only Australia’s first locally trained artist, when
in 1850 he advertised his services as an artist, but he also
later became Australia’s first artist to enjoy a career abroad.
This, the first retrospective of Dowling’s work, has been
curated for the Gallery by John Jones, one of the Gallery’s
inaugural curators of Australian art. The exhibition opened
in Launceston, Dowling’s home town, at Queen Victoria
Museum & Art Gallery in March, where it was very warmly
received by locals. It is currently at the Geelong Gallery
until 11 July—Dowling having worked in Geelong for a few
years after Launceston. Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of
Empire opens at the National Gallery of Australia on 24 July
and will later travel to the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Recent generous gifts have made significant
contributions to the Gallery’s collections of International
Prints and Drawings, Australian Prints and Drawings, and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.
The Modernist Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg’s gouache
painting on paper Space-time construction #3 1923 is an
exceptionally generous gift by Penelope Seidler in memory
of her husband, acclaimed architect Harry Seidler. Van
Doesburg is an important figure in early twentieth-century
European art and, along with Piet Mondrian, was a
founding member of the De Stijl movement in 1917.
De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and made a considerable
impact on architecture. Space-time construction #3, in
particular, was a major influence on Harry Seidler’s practice
as an architect. A highly valued personal possession of the
Seidlers since the early 1970s, this work is now a crucial
addition to the national collection.
Another important acquisition for the collection of
International Prints and Drawings is Henri de Toulouse-
Lautrec’s famous poster Eldorado 1892, which brilliantly
captures the bravado of the notorious French cabaret
singer Aristide Bruant. This very large and rare lithograph
artonview winter 2010 5
complements the Gallery’s important collection of
Toulouse-Lautrec’s works on paper. It was acquired through
the National Gallery of Australia Foundation with funds
raised at the Foundation’s Gala dinner in March.
For the Australian Prints and Drawings collection, the
Gallery received prints and artists books from the collection
of Lyn Williams and the late Fred Williams. This significant
gift includes early works by major Australian printmakers
John Brack, Tate Adams, Jan Senbergs, George Baldessin
and others who shared the printmaking studios with
Williams at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
during the 1960s.
Walangkura Napanangka’s Untitled 2009 was
acquired for the Gallery’s collection of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Art with the generous support of
The Myer Foundation in acknowledgment of the 2008
National Apology to the Stolen Generations. This
engaging contemporary work is a large acrylic painting
from the Western Desert region of Central Australia,
the birthplace of this contemporary Indigenous art
movement derived originally from sand drawings.
This valuable and much appreciated addition to the
collection will be included in the opening displays in our
new Indigenous galleries.
The Gallery also received two Indonesian textiles, gifts
of Ani Bambang Yudhoyono, the first lady of Indonesia: a
fine hand-drawn batik from Java and a luminous silk and
silver brocade from Bali. Accompanied by Thérese Rein,
Mrs Bambang Yudhoyono toured the Asian galleries
and the exhibition Emerging Elders: honouring senior
Indigenous artists in March. The two gifts were made in
recognition of the Gallery’s role in establishing Indonesian
textiles as one of Southeast Asia’s most vibrant art forms.
Over the past two years, the Gallery has made key
purchases of rare Southeast Asian ancestral sculpture
that will be first seen in our major exhibition mentioned
earlier, Life, death and magic. The recently acquired stone
figure of a grand nobleman from the Indonesian island of
Nias and the tall boldly painted house post from the Yami
community of Taiwan will be among works on display.
The Gallery continues to refresh the important
collection displays. A selection of early Indian portrait
photographs now on show in our new photography gallery
reveals the vitality of Indian culture and the unmistakable
character of Indian photographic portraiture from after
1850 to 1950. The Indian portraits are from the Gallery’s
growing and important collection of early Asian and
Pacific photography.
In addition to vitally needed new facilities, the new
building includes 11 generous spaces for our collection
of Indigenous Australian art, the largest and finest
anywhere. A book on the Indigenous collection will
be published in conjunction with the opening of the
building. It will provide a comprehensive introduction to
Indigenous art from early barks and early Papunya boards
to contemporary urban works.
The new building, nearing completion, will be a special
feature of the next artonview.
Ron Radford AM Director
Ron Radford, Director, Ani Bambang Yudhoyono, first lady of Indonesia, and Thérèse Rein in the Southeast Asian gallery with the two textiles given to the Gallery by Mrs Bambang Yudhoyono.
(opposite) The queue for Masterpieces from Paris, 7 January 2010.
6 national gallery of australia
exhibition
Robert Dowling Tasmanian son of Empire
24 July – 3 October 2010 | Orde Poynton Gallery and Project Gallery
Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire is a tribute to a
remarkable colonial artist, the first locally trained artist in
Australia. It opened at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art
Gallery, Launceston, on 5 March, and then at the Geelong
Gallery on 8 May, and will be on display at the National
Gallery of Australia from 24 July to 3 October. It is the
Gallery’s most significant Australian colonial art exhibition
since its John Glover retrospective in 2004.
Although Dowling’s work is held in private and public
collections across Australia and overseas, this is the first
time that a significant body of his work has been presented
to the public. The exhibition includes more than 70 works.
The exhibition and the accompanying book both
explore Dowling’s successful career in Australia and Britain.
It not only re-establishes his place in Australian art history,
but also shows how he earned a place within British art.
Paradoxically, some of his successes have remained hidden
for many years. Breakfasting out 1859, Dowling’s first work
to receive critical acclaim at the Royal Academy, has only
just been correctly attributed to the artist after spending
almost 60 years in the Museum of London attributed to an
English artist.
Who, then, was Robert Dowling? Photographs and
self-portraits suggest that he was a tall slender man, with a
straight back, who was immaculately dressed. He seems to
have been good looking in his youth with dark brown hair
and neatly trimmed beard, brown eyes, rosy cheeks and
a firmly set mouth. From all accounts, he had a directness
of manner, which he probably inherited from his father, a
Baptist preacher, and a man of physical and moral strength.
Dowling likely had few inhibitions; he was a self-made
man—having started his career as a portrait painter by
Robert Dowling Breakfasting out 1859
oil on canvas 61 x 91.5 cm
Museum of London, Britain purchased 1953
Robert Dowling Self-portrait c 1852
oil on board 30 x 25 cm
private collection
artonview winter 2010 7
8 national gallery of australia
teaching himself how to paint. It would seem he believed
in himself and his abilities but was always ready to learn
from whomever he came across—artists Thomas Bock
and Henry Mundy, for instance. His family had a standing
in Tasmanian society, and this would have contributed to
his self-confidence. Moreover, he mixed with men who
played a crucial role in developing the young colony—
men such as the Reverend John West and WP Weston,
who were prominent figures in the anti-transportation
league, believing that the penal system was cruel.
From his father, and from such local dignitaries, Dowling
would have gained a sense of justice and integrity.
But mixing among such society also provided Dowling
with easy access to those who might commission portraits
or purchase paintings. He came from a close-knit family;
his brother Henry, particularly, was a staunch advocate
of his work and encouraged others to purchase or
commission it.
In the Western District of Victoria in the 1850s,
Dowling painted sympathetic portraits and portrait groups
of the local Aborigines. His Aboriginal subjects, such as
Weerat Kuyuut and the Mopor people, Spring Creek,
Victoria 1856, are unique historical documents. These
images reveal a real interest in and concern for the
Mopor people, in their way of life and their relationship
with their land. He talked with the Aboriginal people,
learned their names, closely observed the clothes they
wore and the tools they used when hunting, and depicted
this in his paintings.
From his Baptist family background Dowling would
have developed a concern for the wellbeing of other
people. We can see this in his social realist painting,
Breakfasting out. Painted in London in 1859, the year
that Charles Dickens wrote A tale of two cities, this work
shows the working class in the streets of London,
including a predatory toff attempting to seduce a young
woman. This Dickensian painting also suggests that
Dowling, like the great author and like some of the
Tasmanian dignitaries he portrayed in his youth, may
have been interested in social reform.
In London in the 1870s, Dowling painted the
watercolour Egyptian banana seller 1878, a carefully
Robert Dowling Weerat Kuyuut and the
Mopor people, Spring Creek, Victoria 1856 oil on canvas
52 x 108.5 cm The University of Queensland Art
Museum, Brisbane gift of Miss Marjorie Dowling, 1952
artonview winter 2010 9
worked image in which he conveyed the quiet beauty
and radiance of his subject and captured the softness
and exquisite detail of her shawl. In its large scale and
Orientalist subject, A sheikh and his son entering Cairo
1874, reflects Dowling’s ambition. Such subjects were
popular with successful academicians at the time such as
Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, who often portrayed the
Orient as exotic, colourful and sensual.
One of Dowling’s last paintings, Miss Robertson of
Colac (Dolly) 1885–86, was a portrait of a young Australian.
The painting is currently the subject of the National Gallery
of Australia’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2010
(see page 39). Dowling first painted Dolly dressed in
white at her home in the Western District of Victoria.
But Dolly, then aged 19, did not approve of the portrait
and persuaded the artist to repaint her wearing a dark
brown dress. Other successful portrait painters would not
have done so, but Dowling agreed, perhaps entranced
by the charms of young Dolly, but perhaps just out of a
genuine kindness of heart. As the art critic James Smith
commented in Dowling’s obituary in The Argus on
14 July 1886, the artist’s nature was ‘breezy, genial and
sympathetic. He took a cheerful view of life, looked on
the bright side of human nature, and was somewhat of a
laughing philosopher’.
Three years in the making, Robert Dowling: Tasmanian
son of Empire, the exhibition and book, curated and
written by John Jones, reveals the work of a remarkable
character and a fascinating and broad-ranging artist.
As the Director of the National Gallery of Australia,
Ron Radford, has said:
This exhibition aims to return Robert Dowling to his
proper place in Australian cultural history. He was the
first Australian to achieve success at the Royal Academy
in London and the most successful portrait painter in
Australia in the 1880s.
Robert Dowling truly holds a special place in the history of
Australian art, a place that this retrospective affirms.
Anne Gray Head of Australian art
Robert Dowling A sheikh and his son entering Cairo, on their return from a pilgrimage to Mecca 1874 oil on canvas 139.3 x 244.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne presented by a committee of gentlemen, 1878
10 national gallery of australia
exhibition
Life, death and magic 2000 years of Southeast Asian
ancestral art
13 August – 31 October 2010 | Exhibition Galleries
Throughout Southeast Asia, the deification of significant
forebears and the veneration of spirits of nature have long
provided the impetus for the creation of superb works of
art. Life, death and magic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian
ancestral art is the first major exhibition to focus on the art
of animism, the oldest of the Asian religions. For thousands
of years, objects have been made to give pleasure to the
living and the dead. Often their designs are simultaneously
appealing and frightening, created to encourage benign
spirits to join in village celebrations and yet providing
protection from dangerous beings and misfortunes. For
this exhibition, some of the finest works of Southeast
Asian animist art have been assembled from around the
world, with generous loans from collecting institutions in
Asia, Europe and America joining works from the national
collection.
Recent acquisitions of animist sculpture by the National
Gallery of Australia will be revealed for the first time and
provide the focus for the themes in the exhibition. A rare
painted Yami house post (see page 32) is pivotal to the
section exploring the majestic wooden architecture of
the region, while two monumental Nias stone effigies of
noblemen—one purchased 2009 (see page 33) and one
in 2008—are central to the selection of objects, textiles
and gold jewellery that proclaim wealth and power. Many
of the textiles from the Gallery’s internationally renowned
Asian collection will also be new to visitors. Here, the focus
is on bold fibre shrouds and delicate barkcloths brightly
painted with curving buffalo horns, widely used as symbols
of abundance. Heavily beaded and interlaced mats from
the collection depict the cosmic tree and the spirit ship
that, along with strange birds, symbolise changes in status
throughout life as well as transitions through the layers
of the universe, especially between this world and the
afterlife. Mats and fabrics are often hung at significant rites
of passage, especially funerals.
Life, death and magic presents a very broad geographic
and temporal vista of the region’s ancestral arts, from
ancient times to the twentieth century and encompassing
Ngaju people Kalimantan, Indonesia
Ceremonial mat (amak dare) early 20th century
bamboo, natural dyes 205.3 x 88.8 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased 1994
Toraja people Sulawesi, Indonesia
Ceremonial hanging and shroud (paporitonoling) 19th
century (detail) cotton, dyes
137 x 181 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra acquired through gift and purchase
from the Collection of Robert J Holmgren and Anita E Spertus,
New York, 2000
12 national gallery of australia
mainland and island Southeast Asia. The juxtaposition of
2000-year-old archaeological treasures with nineteenth-
century sculptures, gold ornaments and architectural
elements dramatically demonstrates the ancient and
enduring links between the arts of the Philippines,
Indonesia, Malaysia (especially Borneo), the indigenous
inhabitants of Taiwan and the mountain groups of
Vietnam and southern China. Significantly, the exhibition
reveals the richness of the arts of smaller and more
remote communities often overlooked in exhibitions and
publications in favour of the great stone monuments and
sculptures from the better-known classical Hindu-Buddhist
civilisations such as Angkor and Borobodur.
The exhibition features works in a wide range of media,
including fibre, stone, metal, wood and clay. Always
present at the many rites that celebrate agricultural and life
cycles—most notably harvests and funerals—are sculpture
and textiles, often symbolising the male–female dimensions
of the cosmos that underpin ancestral beliefs. This dualism
is powerfully represented, in ceremony, by the male arts
of woodcarving and smelting and the female arts of
textile, basketry and pottery. Works have been selected to
demonstrate recurring images in animist art such as human
and animal figures, real and mythical, shown seated,
standing and sometimes mounted on fantastic creatures.
Similarly the horns of sacrificial buffaloes, grains of rice
and stars in the night sky evoke fertility and fecundity.
These symbols are displayed at rites enacted to ensure the
prosperity and survival of small communities, while fanged
demonic masks and fierce reptilian forms such as serpents
and dragons serve to repel evil.
The central object in the exhibition is The Bronze
weaver, the Gallery’s superb 600-year-old seated maternity
figure. Found on one of the eastern islands of the
archipelago, The Bronze weaver will share the spotlight
in Life, death and magic with other remarkable rare and
ancient bronzes: a curving ceremonial axe from Roti from
the National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, an enigmatic
Yamdena, Maluku, Indonesia
Ancestral altar (tavu) 19th century
wood 138 x 188 x 3.5 cm
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam
Sa’dan Toraja people Tondon village, Sulawesi,
Indonesia Granary facade 19th century
wood, pigments 211 x 198 x 10 cm
Fowler Museum of Cultural History UCLA, Los Angeles
gift of Dr and Mrs Robert Kuhn
artonview winter 2010 13
bulbous flask with spiral ornamentation unearthed in
Borneo from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva, and
the splendid figure of a sturdy dog possibly discovered
in Sulawesi and now in the collection of the Honolulu
Academy of Arts.
Among the most beguiling, however, are the bronzes
from the early Dian Kingdom (500 BCE – 200 CE)
discovered in a series of archaeological excavations in the
province of Yunnan in southern China. Objects from the
Provincial Museum in Kunming and smaller local museums
include large drums with dramatic three-dimensional scenes
of weaving and hunting on their lids. The most detailed of
the scenes shows a village house and granaries teeming
with activity—a cameo of life in early Southeast Asia that
are still replicated today in remote hamlets in the Batak
regions of north Sumatra or the Toraja areas of Sulawesi.
The facade of a Toraja granary from the collection of the
Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of Los
Angeles comes from a structure very similar to but two
millennia younger than those of the Dian people of Yunnan.
Another fascinating aspect of the exhibition is the
variety of masks found across Southeast Asia. Frightening
wooden faces—in both anthropomorphic and animal
forms—are stark reminders of the need for powerful
protection from evil spirits and the wandering souls of the
dead. Some of the most striking are the gold burial masks.
Powerful but delicate examples from Indonesia and from
the pre-Hispanic period of Philippine art comprise only the
nose, eye and lip covers along with arching gold eyebrows.
Life, death and magic follows the life cycle from birth
to death and into the afterlife. A wooden baby carrier
from Borneo, borrowed from the Musée du quai Branly
in Paris, protects the child physically while its carvings of
large ferocious faces, with bared teeth and huge shell disc
eyes, provide a barrier to evil spirits. Given the uncertainties
of childhood, it is not surprising that some of the most
powerful art is created to celebrate the great achievements
of adulthood—success at hunting, including warfare and
head hunting, prowess in weaving and the promotion
to high rank and chiefdom. The exhibition will feature a
selection of large gold ornaments, ostentatiously displayed
by nobles from Nias at great communal feasts, from the
Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore.
Arguably the greatest works of art have been created
for funerals of prominent members of the community,
whose spirits may continue to be active in the affairs of the
living. Where the afterlife mirrors the human dimension,
no expense is spared on ensuring that the deceased moves
into the realm of the spirits and ancestors with an enviable
collection of fine grave goods at an elaborate ceremony
Sumbanese people west Sumba, Indonesia
Breast ornament or pectoral (marangga)
late 19th – early 20th century gold, cinnabar
16.5 x 24.2 x 0.8 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra purchased 2005
Sumbanese people Kanatang domain, Sumba,
Indonesia Ceremonial ear pendant
(mamuli ) 19th century gold alloy
10.2 x 9.6 x 1.4 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra purchased 1984
artonview winter 2010 15
with huge attendances. Beautiful objects—textiles, ivory,
jewellery and vessels of ceramic and bronze—are interred
with the dead during mortuary rites. In many communities,
the bones are later exhumed and the deceased is again
honoured in elaborate secondary burial rites that also
require fine objects and textiles. A number of large
and richly decorated coffins are the epitome of the arts
associated with death. A 2.4-metre-long house-shaped
bronze sarcophagus from the Dian culture of Yunnan
and an intricately decorated, buffalo-shaped nineteenth-
century Toraja ossuary from Sulawesi are among the most
spectacular items in Life, death and magic, demonstrating
the endurance of Southeast Asian art forms and practices
from ancient times into the modern era.
Unusually for a major Asian exhibition, works created
by both men and women are featured together in Life,
death and magic, since the veneration of nature spirits
and ancestral beings, who are themselves both male and
female, requires the creation of powerful works of art by
members of both sexes. Respect for ancestors, including
the mythical creators, the original mothers and fathers
of all things, often demands fine effigies to be placed in
sacred locations and altars in and around the family house
and village compound. Mindful of the role of the ancestors
in the existence of the living and the ongoing wellbeing
of the community, pairs of figures—male and female—are
conspicuous in animist art of Southeast Asia. Their human
form varies from full-bodied realism to stylised minimalism,
and their size from tiny to taller than life-size. Through
magnificent contributions from two great Dutch museums,
the National Museum for Ethnology in Leiden and the
Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the exhibition explores the
most powerful objects created to honour the dead. These
spectacular shrines and altars, often in the form of mythical
founding ancestors, were sites of offerings reverently laid
by generations of descendants.
Southeast Asian art has long been a major focus of
the National Gallery of Australia’s collections, displays and
curatorial research. Through the juxtaposition of works
drawn from the Gallery’s fine collection and the generous
loans of great works of Southeast Asian art from around
the world, visitors will be introduced to the little-known but
truly astounding art of the oldest religion in Southeast Asia.
Audiences will experience art forms and styles that have
endured sweeping changes over many thousands of years
until recent decades. The accompanying publication fully
illustrates this unique assemblage of the finest and rarest
works of ancestral art from Southeast Asia.
Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art
The book Life, death and magic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art, published in conjunction with the exhibition, will be available from 13 August at the Gallery Shop and selected bookstores nationally.
Indonesia Standing dog 4th–6th century bronze 43.2 x 15.9 x 37.5 cm Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii gift of the Christensen Fund 2001
16 national gallery of australia
exhibition
Hans Heysen
A grand vision: strong forms and bold light
14 May – 11 July 2010 | Exhibition Galleries
One of Australia’s best-known landscape painters,
Hans Heysen (1877–1968) was also one of the most
successful during his lifetime. He changed the way we
view the Australian landscape, with his distinctive gum
trees having now become a part of our national imagery.
This exhibition celebrates Heysen’s work.
Heysen painted the majesty of Australia. He did so
through his images of huge gum trees around Hahndorf
and the stark hills of the Flinders Ranges. Heysen’s largeness
of vision is evident in oil paintings such as Mystic morn
1904, Red gold 1913 and Droving into the light 1914–21.
In these works, Heysen observed nature acutely, portraying
individual species of gum trees in all their specificity—
a river red gum distinguished from a white gum or a
stringybark. But these images are not just descriptive;
they are triumphant portraits, with symbolic resonance.
Heysen ‘humanised’ his trees into dramatic self-conscious
poses, imbuing them with qualities of endurance,
resilience and grandeur. And he arranged his trees within
the landscape as if they were sculptural forms
or architectural columns.
Mystic morn, for instance, depicts two young cows
moving through a eucalyptus grove in the early morning
light. Heysen painted it soon after his return to Adelaide
after studying in Europe for four years, and it reflects his
new awareness of the character of the Australian bush. In
the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, visitors
will be able to see together for the first time four versions
of this image: two drawings, one watercolour and an
oil painting. They will be able to observe how the artist
explored the same subject in different media. In the first
drawing, Group of young trees c 1904, Heysen made a
tentative sketch, possibly outdoors, depicting sinuous trees
and their peeling bark. The second drawing, Study for
‘Mystic morn’ 1904, is a densely worked compositional
study for the oil painting, with very faint grid lines dividing
the image into 16 even rectangles in preparation for
transferring the design onto canvas—a method Heysen
used throughout his career. This compositional drawing
also includes a man beside the cow on the left, showing
that Heysen initially considered including a figure in the
painting. These changes demonstrate the way that Heysen
carefully composed his landscapes—after first having
made a sketch directly from nature. He worked on his
composition to make it more balanced and harmonious,
and sought to direct the viewer’s eye through the image.
The watercolour, Study for ‘Mystic morn’ 1904, may have
been painted before the finished oil, but it could possibly
have been painted after it. Unlike the carefully worked
drawing, it is a freer image, painted in rich strong colours
and using the watercolour medium to capture an intense
light. There are no cows in this image, and the trees are
more interwoven and intertwined. The trees almost seem to
come to life. The work is also related to another oil painting
by Heysen, Sunshine and shadow 1904–05.
Hans Heysen Droving into the light 1914–21
oil on canvas 121.9 x 152.4 cm
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
gift of Mr WH Vincent, 1922
Hans Heysen Mystic morn 1904
oil on canvas 122.8 x 184.3 cm
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Elder Bequest Fund, 1904
18 national gallery of australia
In 1926, in search of a change in his art, Heysen visited
the Flinders Ranges, more than 500 kilometres north
of Adelaide, and began to depict the ancient mountain
ranges there. Before this, he had been attracted to the
theme of nature laid bare, to scenes of quarries and cliff
faces, but from 1926 to 1933 the dry bare-boned terrain
of the Flinders Ranges became the focus of his art. He
admired the way in which the hills were defined by light.
He captured the sharp profiles of the hills, the clarity of the
light, and the intense colours. But, more significantly, he
saw this landscape as being dateless, frozen in time, and he
captured its haunting silence. Writing to Sydney Ure Smith,
Heysen observed that in the Flinders Ranges the scene was
ready-made, ‘fine big simple forms against clear transparent
skies—and a sense of spaciousness everywhere’.
Heysen was also interested in capturing the Australian
sunlight in all its variety—from a brilliant glare to a misty
haze. And through this he conveyed a sense of the
spiritual or sublime in nature. In Droving into the light
1914–21, for instance, Heysen expressed his love of light,
glowing through the monumental gums at the end of the
day. The massive foreground trees provide scale for
the picture as well as a frame directing the attention of
the viewer towards the centre of the composition.
It is a vision of nature as homely, secure and peaceful;
a promised land.
In addition to his evocative gum tree paintings and
the magnificent barren landscapes of the Flinders Ranges,
the exhibition includes a number of Heysen’s lesser-
known images, from his early student days and his time in
Europe from 1899 to 1903. There are portraits of Heysen’s
wife Sallie and still-lifes depicting the vegetables from
his garden. There are landscapes that reflect Heysen’s
experience of bushfires in the Adelaide Hills, in which
he captured the fierce blaze of the fire and the stifling
heat emanating from it. And there are images of sheep
Hans Heysen Bronzewings and saplings,
1921 1921 watercolour on paper
56.7 x 76.4 cm Art Gallery of South Australia,
Adelaide South Australian Government
Grant, 1937
artonview winter 2010 19
Hans Heysen Spring 1925 watercolour on paper 39.3 x 49.2 cm private collection
wandering on dusty roads during a drought, which conjure
up the smell of the hot, dry air.
Among Heysen’s intimate and domestic images is the
delightful watercolour of two cats in a tree, Spring 1925.
It is a simple snatch of life—with the cats stretching,
crouching, possibly waiting for coming prey, or maybe just
basking in the sun. Likewise, Bronzewings and saplings
1921 is a sparkling image and one of Heysen’s major
watercolours. Here, the artist depicted a group of albino
turkeys within a sapling glade. The Hahndorf postmistress
had given him a number of bronzewing turkey eggs and,
to his surprise, when the eggs hatched many of the chicks
turned out to be white. The combination of bronzewing
and white turkeys inspired this work. He took much care
in painting the scene, laying down each colour freshly
with a crisp edge and arranging the composition like a
mosaic. Heysen considered it one of his most complicated
pieces of design. Some years after he had painted this
watercolour, the Commonwealth Government commissioned
Heysen to paint a similar work in oil, which he called The
promenade 1953. In Canberra, both the watercolour and
the oil will be shown together for the first time.
There is much to see in this exhibition, which throws
a different light on Heysen. Ron Radford, Director of the
National Gallery of Australia, has summed up the artist’s
achievements:
Heysen made the Australian gum tree monumental and
the hero of his nationalistic pictures. His paintings of the
rocky, arid region of the Flinders Ranges from the late
1920s onward added a new dry and sculptural aesthetic,
emphasising the reds and ambers of inland Australia.
Comprising about 80 works, the exhibition Hans Heysen at
the National Gallery of Australia has been organised and
curated by the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Anne Gray
Head of Australian Art
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display
Portraits from India 1850s–1950s
The second display in the National Gallery of Australia’s Photography gallery turns to the important role India played in the development of portrait photography in Asia. The works on display present the vibrant and enigmatic world of Indian studio-based portraiture.
One highlight in the new display is the portrait of the
dashing Maharaja George Jivajirao Scindia of Gwalior—
prominently wearing his sash and medal of the Knight
Grand Commander of the Star of India, awarded to
him in 1946. I first saw him looking down at me in a
dealer’s premises in Jaipur in Rajasthan. He was with
other elaborately framed, hand-coloured photographs
and paintings hanging at rakish angles high on the walls.
Piles of studio shots of children, family portraits, glamour
shots of women and albums by Raja Deen Dayal wrapped
in cloth jostled in the semi-dark with embroideries, softly
shimmering silver jewellery and knick-knacks.
A selection of the photographs I saw that day were
acquired by the Gallery, and they, along with others
bought in recent years, comprise this new display of
photography from the collection. Images on show date
from early in the history of Indian photography, from the
1850s, with the inclusion of plates from William Henderson
and William J Johnson’s The Oriental races and tribes,
residents and visitors of Bombay, the first photographically
illustrated ethnographic publication on India. These
photographs show a high degree of manipulation—their
strangeness attributed to Johnson bleaching out the studio
backgrounds, overprinting them with Bombay scenes from
separate negatives and drawing in features such as foliage.
Also in the display is a splendid array of nineteenth-
century rulers with their inventive blending of traditional
Indian clothing mixed with Western imports such as patent
leather shoes and umbrellas—ensembles that demonstrate
resourceful adjustments to shifting political and social
climates under the British Raj.
Invented in the late 1830s, photography is distinctive
as an art form in the history of many countries because
it was introduced very soon after its appearance in
Europe—arriving without the burden of a pre-existing
tradition. Brought into India by a variety of means—
visiting photographers, missionaries, anthropologists,
ethnographers—locals were quick to pick up cameras,
build up their skills and develop successful businesses. As in
other parts of Asia, Indian royals were particularly astute in
seeing the political potential of the new medium and were
passionate patrons and practitioners.
One drawback of the new medium—particularly in
India, where colour, symbolically and for its own beauty,
permeates every aspect of life—was that it rendered a
highly colourful world in monochrome. The solution was a
truly hybrid form of photography and painting. Techniques
used for hundreds of years by painters of miniatures found
a new application in painting over photographs, particularly
portraits—with the over-painting often almost completely
obscuring the photograph beneath. Photography
developed a distinctive local flavour with regional styles
and essentially a home-grown clientele—as opposed to the
hand-coloured views and portraits from Japan, for example,
which were produced for the tourist trade.
The history of the professional studio photographer is
longer in India than in other more-industrialised countries
where amateur home photography took over by the late
nineteenth century. In India, elderly hand-colourists are still
working today, and long-established studios continue to
do business or have only recently closed. Contemporary
photographers also draw on their predecessors’ studio
work as inspiration. This display of a century of Indian
portrait photography presents examples of a wonderfully
rich and varied art form, one with a long history. Like many
things brought in by the colonising foreigner, photography
was embraced and made unmistakably Indian, in style and
in spirit.
Anne O’Hehir Assistant Curator, Photography
Dias Studio Maharaja Jivajirao Scindia,
Gwalior c 1937 gelatin silver photograph,
watercolour image 29 x 24 cm card 51.5 x 41 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased 2009
artonview winter 2010 21
22 national gallery of australia
travelling exhibition
In the Japanese manner Australian prints 1900–1940
During Margaret Preston’s second visit to Paris in 1912,
her Australian contact, artist Rupert Bunny, advised her to
look at the Japanese prints at the Musée Guimet. She was
immediately impressed by the asymmetry of the images
and the use of pattern as a key element of design. After
trade with Japan resumed in the 1850s, the rediscovery
of Japanese art and design had a profound influence
on European art. From the 1860s, traditional Japanese
woodblock prints became a source of inspiration for artists
who were receptive to the unique compositions enlivened
by silhouettes, high horizon lines and unusual viewpoints.
Elongated pictorial formats, decorative motifs and spaces
with abstract elements of colour and line superseded
perspective and shadow as the focus of the design.
Arriving in London in 1913, Preston viewed the
important exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world)
printmaking at the Victoria and Albert Museum and later
described four woodblock prints completed during this
period as having been printed ‘in the Japanese manner’.
The recently acquired Frenchman’s Beach (Neutral Bay)
c 1920 is one of six woodcuts printed by Preston using
Japanese techniques following her return to Australia in
late 1919. Produced to decorate her new flat in Mosman,
on Sydney’s North Shore, this delicate hand-coloured print
with its glowing colours and strong lyrical design is a testament
to Preston’s connection with the formal qualities and
techniques associated with Japanese woodblock printing.
Frenchman’s Beach (Neutral Bay) is included in the
National Gallery of Australia exhibition In the Japanese
manner: Australian prints 1900–1940, which will tour
across regional New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland
and Western Australia from 18 June 2010 to 21 November
2011. The exhibition showcases the work of Australian
artists inspired by the traditional Japanese woodblock
printing art of ukiyo-e. By the turn of the nineteenth
century, Japanese prints were all the rage in England
and France. Australian artists, like their contemporaries
worldwide, were also drawn to the nuanced aesthetic of
Japonisme. Printmakers working in Sydney, Melbourne,
Perth and Adelaide adapted the radical forms, cropped
figures and flat areas of colour that characterised Japanese
woodblock printing to form a distinctly Australian aesthetic.
Some artists experimented with the colour woodblock
method, which involved brushing ink directly onto wood or
Paul Haefliger Sublime Point above Bulli 1936
woodcut, printed in colour in the Japanese manner from one
cherry woodblock on paper printed image 26.5 x 36.6 cm
sheet 26.5 x 36.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
gift of the artist, 1978
Margaret Preston Frenchman’s Beach (Neutral Bay)
1920 woodcut, printed in black ink from one woodblock, hand-
coloured, on thin smooth off-white Japanese-style paper
21 x 26.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased 2009 © Margaret Rose Preston Estate.
Represented by VISCOPY, Australia
Lionel Lindsay Beach scene with figures c 1917
etching, printed in black ink from one plate; woodcut, printed in
colour from one block on paper printed image 22.1 x 16 cm
sheet 28.2 x 20.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased 1989 © National Library of Australia
24 national gallery of australia
lino blocks, while others applied Japanese aesthetics and
style to various print forms.
Featured in the exhibition is the earliest print created
in the Japanese manner by an Australian artist. Ambrose
Patterson’s woodcut View over the Thames, evening
1904 displays a soft, tonal view of twilight over the River
Thames, with St Paul’s cathedral silhouetted against the
sky. Another rare inclusion is a Japanese-style bound book
of verse written and illustrated in 1905 by Melbourne artist
Violet Teague. This small childrens book contains the very
first colour woodcuts printed in Australia. The book was
exhibited widely, winning an award at the first Australian
exhibition of women’s work in Melbourne in 1907. Night
fall in the ti-tree is a cautionary tale set out through a series
of brief verses reminiscent of Japanese haiku. The rabbits
who live among the tea trees are urged to run, ‘Flirt tails
and away!’, from ‘Man’s merciless traps’.
Working with fellow artist Geraldine Rede, Teague
made the book entirely by hand, using Japanese methods
at every stage of production. The book is bound with the
pages folded at the fore-edge (the edge opposite the
spine) and stitched through the spine with ribbon. The
images are printed from woodblocks with the buff coloured
paper reminiscent of the mulberry paper used by Japanese
printmakers. Coming from a wealthy family, Teague had
the opportunity to travel extensively, and developed
a sustained interest in the aesthetic conventions and
techniques of Japanese woodblock printing. Like Teague,
many Australian artists in this exhibition studied and
worked in Europe. In Paris and London, they were exposed
to exhibitions of Japanese works of art as well as new ideas
in Modern art. After travelling to Japan, artists such as
Margaret Preston and Paul Haefliger achieved a convincing
synthesis of Western and Japanese traditions.
It was Margaret Preston who taught woodblock
printing to Thea Proctor, who in turn instructed the
German-born Haefliger. Haefliger continued his study of
traditional printmaking techniques in Japan, following a
process where the image is cut along the grain of the wood
rather than across the end grain. The hard, slow-growing
cherry wood used by Haefliger was favoured by Japanese
artists. Rice paste mixed with watercolour was brushed
onto the block, which was then hand-printed onto fine,
soft paper using pressure from a bamboo-covered pad
known as a baren. With this method, the printer could
manipulate the ink to produce bold areas of colour, subtle
gradations of tone and fine line work.
Haefliger’s Sublime Point above Bulli 1936 is a
Ambrose Patterson View over the Thames, evening
c 1904 woodcut, printed in colour in
the Japanese manner from two blocks, with additional hand-colouring in gouache on thin
cream paper printed image 21.8 x 30.6 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
purchased 2000
artonview winter 2010 25
woodcut, printed in colour in the Japanese manner from
a cherry-wood block. The Sublime Point lookout is on
the escarpment above the Illawarra coast in New South
Wales, with a view south past the town of Bulli towards
Wollongong. In this print, Haefliger depicts a group of virile
young men clambering up the cliff face, looking across
a vast expanse of blue water dotted with the white sails
of yachts and the pattern of undulating sandy bays. He
successfully blends Eastern and Western elements, creating
a uniquely Australian image while using the Japanese
method of colour printing.
Like Haefliger, Lionel Lindsay drew inspiration from
serene depictions of populated Japanese landscapes.
Though focused on traditional values in art, Lindsay was
highly experimental in his use of different artistic practices
to express his poetic vision. A prolific printmaker and
passionate collector of Japanese prints and artefacts, he
enthusiastically explored the possibilities of combining
printmaking methods in works such as Beach scene
with figures c 1917. Here, the Japanese compositional
techniques of cropping tall trees with the border of the
print and the gradual fading of the blue sky into the sea
have been overprinted with an etching to define the finer
outlines of the trees and figures.
Another artist who experimented with Japanese
aesthetics was Murray Griffin. In Cannas 1935, he used lino
rather than wood as the base for his matrix, as the material
was easier to cut and more readily available. The strong
geometric shapes and vibrant colours of the Cannas were
closely aligned to Modernist design. The brushy lines give a
sense of the texture of a woodblock print, with the striking
cropped design recalling the print of irises by the Japanese
artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).
In the Japanese manner builds on the successes of the
landmark exhibition The story of Australian printmaking
1801–2005 at the National Gallery Australia in 2007.
This exhibition presented the calibre and depth of the
Gallery’s Australian print holdings and was regarded as
the most comprehensive gathering of works on paper
by artists from Australia and the region. In the Japanese
manner will provide audiences across Australia with a fresh
and inspiring glimpse of some of the National Gallery of
Australia’s most delightful treasures.
Emma Colton Assistant Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings
In the Japanese manner begins its tour of regional venues at Lake Macquarie Art Gallery, NSW, from 18 June to 1 August 2010. Go to nga.gov.au/japanesemanner for a full list of venues and dates.
Murray Griffin Cannas 1935 linocut, printed in colour from multiple blocks on cream lithographic wove paper printed image 28 x 35.4 cm sheet 32.8 x 43.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1978
26 national gallery of australia
James Turrell Skyspace
A major new Skyspace by American artist James Turrell nears completion at the National Gallery of Australia.
A Skyspace is a work of art that we enter—and then
we stay to look at light, to ponder and to be moved.
Contrasts between artificial light within the installation
and the changing external atmosphere affect the
appearance of the sky. Colours change and seem more
painterly. Movement is intensified. The sky shimmers and
pulsates and, at times, descends into the space to meet
us. By asking the viewer to take the time to notice these
subtleties, James Turrell reveals the immensity of the
natural world and the sheer beauty of ‘divine’ architecture.
A Skyspace marks the transition between night and day,
and the work is at its most dramatic and most complex at
dawn and dusk.
The Skyspace at the National Gallery of Australia is
a site-specific work, its location chosen by the artist to
complement and accord with the Gallery’s southern
garden. On approach, visitors see a mound surrounded
by water. Only a small portion of the structure is visible
from outside. Being partially subterranean, the sculpture
is established as an integral part of the garden; this also
muffles extraneous sound and reduces light pollution.
Via a long sloping walkway, the visitor encounters a large
square-based pyramid with coloured interior walls. In the
middle of this room, a huge basalt stupa rises, highlighted
by the turquoise water that surrounds it. Two ramps, set at
right angles around the perimeter of the room, converge
on a single entrance on the opposite side of the stupa.
Crossing a small bridge, we enter the stupa, the
Skyspace proper. We find ourselves within a simple domed
space, sparsely furnished with a concrete bench around
the edge. The roof is open, the sky framed in an oculus.
A moonstone, set into the centre of the floor, echoes the
opening above. A bank of lights is located around the base
of the dome, discreetly fixed into the wall of the bench.
This inner sanctum is austere, even church-like. Within the
space, we look up. Even during the day, changing light
conditions, shifting weather patterns and variations in the
seasons, ensure the experience is always different. We
are offered artlessness, simplicity, unhurried perception—
perhaps even the chance of epiphany.
Turrell has made a small number of permanent Skyspaces
in the United States of America, Europe, Britain, Japan and
Israel. To date only two others use the stupa form: Three
gems 2005 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and
Second wind 2005 2009 at the NMAC Foundation in Cadiz,
Spain. The Skyspace in Canberra will open with a series
of special viewings later this year, when the landscaping is
complete. Visitors will then experience this wonderful work
of art, Turrell’s new Skyspace under southern skies.
Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
James Turrell Skyspace 2010
installation: lighting installation, concrete and
basalt stupa, water, earth, landscaping
800 x 2800 x 2800 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra photographs: John Gollings
acquisition
28 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Theo van Doesburg Space-time construction #3
Space-time construction #3 is a 1923 painting in gouache
on paper by the renowned leader of De Stijl, Theo van
Doesburg. It remained a constant inspiration for the
extraordinarily gifted architect the late Harry Seidler AC during
his years of practice. Seidler’s work, in turn, has had a
great influence on architectural developments in Australia.
Penelope Seidler has now generously donated Space-time
construction #3 to the Gallery in memory of her husband.
Harry Seidler first saw the work at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York in the 1940s, when it was owned
by American collectors Mr and Mrs Burton Tremaine.
The impact of the van Doesburg work on Seidler was
profound—something he outlined on numerous occasions
in lectures and interviews. Its influence was evident in his
designs for the Rose Seidler House in 1949–50. Seidler also
mentioned van Doesburg’s importance for his Rushcutters
Bay apartments of 1963–65 and the family home in Killara
of 1966–67. In a lecture to the Royal Australian Institute
of Architects on 8 October 1980, copies of which are
held at the universities of Melbourne and South Australia,
Seidler noted:
[Concerning] the space that is implicit in this arrangement
of divorced structural trays that carry floors, one can only
recall the paintings of the 1920s such as this one [Space-
time construction #3] by Theo van Doesburg, a remarkable
man who seemed to have predicted what would/will
concern twentieth-century man’s eyes about what he feels
to express this spaciousness, this continuum [of space].
His painting reflects this continuum of being able to look
down and being able to look above from any one space,
sensing that there is something beyond, having an illusion
of something more, that the space keeps on going. It is
not ever restricted or confined. And this is particularly
exploited later in my work of the 1960s in multistorey
buildings. It makes sense both in terms of planning and
expresses a visual quality that underlies my interpretation
of modern architecture.
The significance of the van Doesburg is outlined by Peter
Blake and brilliantly captured in Max Dupain’s photographs
in the 1973 publication Architecture for the new world: the
work of Harry Seidler, which included an illustration and
analysis of the van Doesburg. Seidler generously gave a
group of Dupain’s photographs of his work to the National
Gallery of Australia in 2001.
Space-time construction #3 became a valued possession
of the Seidlers after they acquired it from Berlin dealer
Jürgen Holstein. Holstein had bought the van Doesburg at
an auction of the Tremaine collection and had contacted
Harry Seidler, having seen its importance to the architect in
Blake’s book. The work was also coincidently created in the
year of Seidler’s birth, 1923. As Penelope Seidler recently
recalled, Harry was ‘thrilled’ to own ‘his most favourite
artwork’. In turn, this most influential work in the recent
history of architecture in Australia is now in the national
collection for all Australians to own.
Along with this van Doesburg gouache, Penelope
Seidler has also generously donated a group of early
European Modernist works on paper by artists associated
with the Bauhaus. The gift includes postcards by Paul Klee,
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, which
were created to promote the Bauhaus exhibition in 1923
(again coinciding with the year of Harry Seidler’s birth).
Penelope Seidler gave these to her husband on his birthday.
They provide wonderful examples of the aesthetic and the
passion the Seidlers shared as collectors over the years.
Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
Harry and Penelope Seidler (architects)
Interior view, Harry & Penelope Seidler House, Killara, NSW,
1966–67 photograph: Max Dupain
© Harry Seidler & Associates
Theo van Doesburg Space-time construction #3
1923 gouache, graphite, ink
44 x 31 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra donated through the Australian
Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Penelope Seidler AM in memory of Harry Seidler AC,
2010
30 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Eldorado
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec became renowned for his
portrayal of subjects drawn from the Parisian demimonde in
the late nineteenth century, producing astonishing images
executed with an unerring and penetrating eye.
The subject of this famous poster is the singer Aristide
Bruant. Bruant was a notorious character as renowned
for his rich baritone voice as he was for insulting his
audiences. Despite this, his patrons kept coming back
for more, attracted not only to the outrageousness of
his performances but also because he sang lyrics in a
Parisian argot.
Toulouse-Lautrec was a master draughtsman and we
can see this in the seemingly effortless way he has captured
Bruant’s physical presence and character. As one critic of
the day said of Bruant, he was ‘Tall, with a broad barrel
chest and a Napoleonic profile: but his eye is sly and his
lip sardonic’.
Bruant commissioned this poster for his debut in 1892
at the Parisian café-concert Eldorado, which was more
luxurious than some of the seedier café-concerts found
in Montmartre. The poster brilliantly captures Bruant’s
character; his larger than life presence, his signature scarf
and black fedora almost burst from the picture frame.
Behind Bruant is the ominous silhouette of a city ruffian
suggesting the singer’s links with the Parisian underworld.
Bruant was keen to promote such an association to
provide him with the streetwise credentials that attracted
his wealthier patrons, who enjoyed slumming it.
This is an iconic work by Toulouse-Lautrec, who applied
fine-art qualities to low-art subjects. Eldorado with its
sinuous lines, bold colouring and simplified forms also
reveals the artist’s enthusiasm for Japanese ukiyo-e prints.
Now, through the generosity of the National Gallery of
Australia Foundation, this justifiably famous poster will
become one of the highlights of the collection.
Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Book
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Eldorado 1892
colour lithograph on two sheets 150 x 99 cm (overall)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra acquired through the National Gallery of Australia
Foundation, 2010
artonview winter 2010 31
It is rare that a Melanesian work of art from the nineteenth
century can be attributed to an artist with any certainty,
so the artist known as Mutuaga is a phenomenon. He is
the only named New Guinean artist who was active during
this period and who is responsible for a known body of
outstanding work characterised by small yet monumental
figurative sculpture.
The artist was known to be of positive and cheerful
disposition and, as a carver of great standing, Mutuaga was
nicknamed Oitau (carved man) by his peers. His ability to
transform the utilitarian object—in this case, a lime spatula
(known as enale or gem in the Suau area)—and to make
it into something attractive and covetous was exceptional.
While all lime spatulas from the Milne Bay Province are
decorated to some extent, and many also include a small
figure as the handle, Mutuaga’s works are usually far larger
and show a greater level of sculptural strength.
Little was known about the artist’s identity until
1996, when art historian Dr Harry Beran published
groundbreaking research. Beran identified Mutuaga and his
body of work through some hundred sculptures that had
been mainly sitting unrecognised in museum collections.
We now know Mutuaga was born around 1860 in
Dagodagisu Village in the Milne Bay province of Papua New
Guinea. He died around 1920.
Mutuaga, although he did not adopt Christianity,
gained the friendship and patronage of the missionary
Charles Abel at the nearby Kwato Island Mission.
Mutuaga’s relationship with Abel provided a conduit for
his art beyond the traditional exchange practices of his
community. Missionaries, commodores and even two of
Papua’s first governors acquired Mutuaga’s sculptures.
Unsurprisingly, many of these works later found their way
into galleries and museums across the world.
The National Gallery of Australia’s The drummer—like
the Gallery’s Double figure from Lake Sentani—was
once part of sculptor Jacob Epstein’s collection on non-
Western art. Epstein was known to spend hours silently
contemplating objects in his collection. One can almost
see Epstein sitting in silence with this work in his hands,
enjoying its superb tactile qualities and reflecting on the
work of another great artist obscured by time and distance.
Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Art
Mutuaga The drummer
Mutuaga The drummer 1880–90 ebony, lime 36.5 x 4 x 5.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009
acquisition
32 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Nias Anthropomorphic stone monument
Situated off Sumatra’s west coast, the island of Nias is
home to an ancient yet enduring tradition of monumental
statuary in stone and wood. Ancestral and aristocratic
effigies, pillars and seats of honour are still found today in
Nias villages. The layout of traditional villages is dramatic,
with immense wooden houses erected around central
terraces and stone-paved plazas, the venue for important
feasts and gatherings. A striking Anthropomorphic stone
monument (gowe salawa) from Nias is a major acquisition
of Indonesian animist sculpture.
The impressive figure of a nobleman would have been
commissioned as a portrait to preside over a feast of rank
celebrating the patron’s elevation in social and political
standing. While abstract depictions of great chiefs in the
forms of shafts and steles are found across the entire
island, this example is carved in a more realistic style found
especially in the northern villages of Nias.
The squatting or seated human figure is an ancient
feature of animist sculpture throughout Southeast Asia
and this gowe salawa is one of the most striking known
examples of this form. A slightly more eroded partner
to this monument, most likely by the same artist, is on
permanent display in the Louvre in Paris.
On Nias, distinct hierarchical divisions exist between
lower and upper classes. In former times, slaves and
commoners were governed by noble chiefs who traced
their lineage back to mythical founding ancestors. Even
today, status is reinforced by the display of attributes
associated with wealth and power. The Gallery’s gowe
salawa exhibits many markers of high status, including a
gold studded headdress, necklace, bangles and long ear
ornament—typical ceremonial regalia of a Nias nobleman.
The patron’s qualities of bravery and strength are confirmed
by the emphasis of his masculine physical traits, namely his
prominent genitalia, and by his sword and scabbard.
This figure joins another more abstract Nias stone
monument in the collection, and both will be on display
in the exhibition Life, death and magic: 2000 years of
Southeast Asian ancestral art.
Niki van den Heuvel Exhibition Assistant, Asian Art
Nias people Nias, Indonesia
Anthropomorphic stone monument (gowe salawa) 19th century or earlier
stone 160 x 30 x 41 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009
artonview winter 2010 33
Yami House post
This large and strikingly painted panel is an important new
addition to the Gallery’s collection of Asian sculpture. It was
created by Taiwan’s Yami people, an indigenous group who
live on Botel Tobago (also known as Lanyu or Orchid Island),
a small mountainous isolated island off the south-east coast
of Taiwan. Along with distinctively decorated canoes, the
tomok—the main house post of a traditional dwelling—is
the most culturally valuable art form of the Yami people.
Worldwide, only a small number of significant Yami objects
are held by public museums.
Yami culture shares ethnographic and linguistic
similarities with communities of the northern islands of
the Philippines. Fishing is still central to traditional life and
the flying fish that annually migrate past the island are
considered sacred. The Yami ritual calendar centres on
the flying fish season when ceremonies are performed to
summon, store and prepare the fish.
A typical Yami dwelling consists of a main house built
below ground to withstand frequent typhoons, a separate
work house, and a platform for eating and socialising.
Painted with very similar imagery to the ceremonial canoes,
tomok support the roof apex at the centre of the main
house. Symbolising the connection between sea and
mountain, the tomok is the first element to be erected
after a house site is excavated, and is carefully positioned in
accordance with local lore. Highly valued, tomok are passed
down from one generation to the next and are moved if a
family relocates or reconstructs a house.
One face of this post is decorated with red, black and
white motifs intended to protect the household from
malevolent spirits of the dead (anito). The circular motif,
which typically appears on Yami canoe prows, is called
mata no tatara (eye of the canoe). The figure with spiral
arms and headdress represents Magamoag, the ancestor
who imparted boat-building and agricultural skills to the
Yami, while the goat’s horn motif symbolises longevity.
This tomok will go on display alongside other rare
and fascinating works of art in the Gallery’s forthcoming
exhibition Life, death and magic: 2000 years of Southeast
Asian ancestral art.
Lucie Folan Curator, Asian Art
Yami people Botel Tobago, Taiwan House post (tomok) 19th century wood, pigments 216.6 x 108.8 x 8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2009
acquisition
34 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Fred and Lyn Williams gift
The prints and artists books in the Fred and Lyn Williams
gift capture the milieu of the Melbourne art scene, with
important examples from well-known printmakers including
Tate Adams, Jan Senbergs, Franz Kempf, Noel Counihan
and John Brack. There are also prints by significant artists
not generally recognised for their printmaking, including a
wonderful group of early screenprints by Leonard French
and experimental works by Asher Bilu.
One of Australia’s most significant painters and
printmakers, Fred Williams played a pivotal role in the
development of contemporary art in Australia. Williams
lived in London from 1952 to 1956, undertaking study
at the Chelsea Art School and the Central School of Arts
and Crafts. It was during this period that he learnt the
technique of etching, with works populated by the vivid
characters of music halls and London streets.
Following his return to Melbourne, Williams began
developing new works, while editioning his London prints
at the print workshop at Melbourne Technical College,
renamed the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
(RMIT) in 1960. From 1961 to 1963, Williams used the
workshop on Fridays in the company of Gil Jamieson,
Don Laycock, Tate Adams and Leonard French. He also
established links with a number of RMIT students, including
Guy Stuart, Robert Jacks, Paul Partos and George Baldessin.
Baldessin studied painting at RMIT, adding sculpture
and printmaking in his third and fourth years. The
printmaking course at the college was revolutionised by
Tate Adams, who took over evening classes and established
the first Diploma of Printmaking in Australia in 1960. The
print workshop at RMIT had been opened up to interested
artists in the late 1950s by Adams’s predecessor, Roy Bisley.
It brought students together with painters and sculptors
who wished to experiment with the printed medium.
Williams developed a firm friendship with the much
younger Baldessin, and a strong connection emerged
George Baldessin Walkers II 1966
etching and aquatint, printed in black ink, from one plate,
on thick off-white wove paper plate-mark 20.2 x 30.2 cm
sheet 56 x 69.4 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra gift of Lyn and the late Fred
Williams, celebrating the National Gallery of Australia’s 25th
anniversary, 2009
artonview winter 2010 35
between the two artists in terms of both subject matter
and technique. Baldessin’s early work was influenced by the
images of music halls and trapeze artists that Williams had
created in London. In particular, Baldessin was intrigued by
the suspended figure and Williams’s ability to capture the
isolation of performance. Such links are clearly seen in the
etchings by Baldessin that form part of the Fred and Lyn
Williams gift.
A recurring day in the life of MM II 1966 is from
Baldessin’s seminal circus narrative series, with the top-
hatted observer of life as protagonist. In this work, as
in Walkers II 1966, Baldessin negotiates his developing
iconography focused around the detached figure.
Baldessin learnt the process for aquatint from Williams,
using it as an atmospheric device to create texture across
the plate. In Walkers II, the silhouetted figures drift across
a velvety black stretch of barren landscape, an empty
backdrop reminiscent of Williams’s 1950s music-hall
etchings. Influenced by the uninhibited line that Williams
also often employed, Baldessin adopts a loose, edgy
drypoint style to articulate form.
Before his premature death in 1978, at the age of 39,
Baldessin created a significant body of prints marked by
his distinctive use of line and shadow, sexual ambiguity,
theatricality and mystery. The recent exhibition showcasing
George Baldessin’s paintings, drawings, etchings and
sculptures at TarraWarra Museum of Art in Victoria
provided an opportunity to view rarely seen works from
public galleries, private collections and the artist’s estate. To
celebrate the success of this exhibition a selection of prints
and drawings is currently being shown in the National
Gallery of Australia’s Australian art display, including four
etchings from the Fred and Lyn Williams gift.
Emma Colton Assistant Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings
George Baldessin A recurring day in the life of MM II 1966 etching and aquatint, printed in black ink, from one plate, on thick off-white wove paper plate-mark 26.4 x 25.8 cm sheet 72.2 x 49.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of Lyn and the late Fred Williams, celebrating the National Gallery of Australia’s 25th anniversary, 2009
36 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Walangkura Napanangka Untitled
When we contemplate the wonderful acrylic paintings
from the Western Desert region of Central Australia, we
immediately think of the small Aboriginal community of
Papunya, the birthplace of the contemporary Indigenous
art movement. We imagine a time, some 40 years ago,
when the senior Aboriginal men of the region unreservedly
depicted their sacred ancestral stories in vivid, culturally
rich iconography on any available flat surface. The artists of
this period were Aboriginal men, cultural lawmakers and
ceremonial leaders within the community. They depicted
their sacred Tjukurpa (Dreamings), retelling the stories of
the ancestors.
The history of the Aboriginal art movement has
changed remarkably within this short period. There are
many factors that have contributed to the meteoric rise
of this exciting industry: the land rights and outstation
movement whereby Aboriginal people began to move
back to their homelands from missions and reserves and
hence paint their country; the creation of the Aboriginal
Art Board in 1973, which assisted in establishing and
promoting Indigenous art to a wider commercial art
audience; and the development of government-funded
Aboriginal Art Centres whose sole purpose was to support
encourage and facilitate the development of Aboriginal art
in remote regions. These combined mechanisms ensured
that Australian Indigenous art would no longer sit within
the confines of the ethnographic museums, but would be
launched and catapulted into the fine arts arena.
Today, Aboriginal women also play a major role as
producers of Western Desert paintings, often following in
the footsteps of their fathers, brothers and husbands.
Walangkura (Jackson) Napanangka is a Pintupi woman
originally from the Tjukurla region in Central Australia.
Born around 1940, Napanangka spent the early part of
her life travelling through her families’ country, between
Punkilpirri near Docker River and Walukirritji rock hole on
the south-west side of Lake MacDonald. In the 1960s,
many Pintupi people were leaving their homelands due to
an extensive drought in the region. Walangkura travelled
with her family into the government settlement of Haasts
Bluff and was exposed for the first time to western culture.
She later moved with her husband, Uta Uta Tjangala, to the
Aboriginal community of Papunya, roughly 250 kilometres
west of Alice Springs. It was here in this small Indigenous
community that the germination of the Western Desert
acrylic painting movement began. Tjangala was one of a
small handful of Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri and Anmatyerre
ceremonial leaders who initiated, with Geoffrey Bardon,
this new and innovative art movement. From July 1971
to August 1972, some 620 paintings were produced for
the market and later sold at the Stuart Art Centre in
Alice Springs.
Napanangka was exposed to and surrounded by this
proliferation of art; however, she did not begin painting
until 1997 and, even then, not regularly until 2002.
The National Gallery of Australia was fortunate to
acquire a beautiful work, Untitled 2009, by Napanangka
in 2010. This significant painting is a very considered
work, and relates to an important Aboriginal site called
Yanawarri, near Tjukurla, north-west of Docker River in the
Gibson Desert region in Western Australia.
Napanangka’s style is strongly influenced by her late
husband; both artists depict the physical and spiritual
Central Australian landscape in bold and powerful ways.
Unlike Tjangala’s work, however, there is more freedom,
flow and rhythm to Walangkura’s work. It is both forthright
and feminine.
The choice of colours and the nature of the
composition are confident, intricate and intense and
reference the power and heat of the desert. It is imposing
and intimidating to the viewer.
It is a topographical map of the artist’s country,
although painted according to a spiritual scale rather
than a geographic scale: significant cultural sites are large
and dominate the canvas, while discrete locations and
tracks are small and disappear into the work. Australia is
fortunate to have this work in the national collection.
It was acquired in acknowledgment of the National
Apology to the Stolen Generations with generous support
from The Myer Foundation.
Franchesca Cubillo Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Walangkura Napanangka Untitled 2009
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
180 x 244 cm National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra acquired in acknowledgment of
the National Apology to the Stolen Generations with generous support
from The Myer Foundation, 2010
38 national gallery of australia
acquisition
Shapoor N Bhedwar The Naver—invocation
Between the 1890s and 1910s, Indian photographer
Shapoor N Bhedwar was prominent in the art photography
salons of Europe and America. Bhedwar (Shapurjee
Nusserwanjee Bhedwar) came from a wealthy Parsi
family in Bombay and in his youth developed passionate
interests in art and Eastern and Western literature. He was
deeply attracted to the Zoroastrian religion of the Parsi
and its origins in ancient Persia from where his people
emigrated to India in the tenth century. Bhedwar was also
an enthusiastic theatregoer and wrote poems and plays
although apparently none were published. He was initially
more successful in sport than the arts, becoming a member
of the first Parsi cricket team to tour England in 1886.
Bhedwar took up photography in 1888 in India to
illustrate one of his own literary efforts and soon became
obsessed with the medium as an art form. Leaving his wife
and son behind, Bhedwar travelled to England to study at
the Polytechnic School in London in 1889. He also learnt
from prominent art photographer Ralph W Robinson
in Redhill, Surrey. He was soon winning medals in the
Photographic Salon (later the Royal Photographic Society).
One reviewer at the time said of Bhedwar: ‘he came, he
saw, he conquered’. One of the artist’s most successful
projects was the series of six tableaux photographs The
feast of roses, which illustrates the hugely popular poem
Lallah Rookh. Written by Irish balladeer Thomas Moore
and first published in 1817, the poem is a romance set in
ancient India.
His most distinctive work is a series of images
illustrating Zoroastrian religious life. Very few photographs
of their religious ceremonies had ever been made public
before this series as only Parsis would have been allowed to
participate. The Naver—invocation is the first in the series
and shows the initiation of a young Zoroastrian priest, the
old priest calling on the Almighty to aid the young initiate
in his work.
By the early 1920s, Bhedwar had apparently ceased
exhibiting and sold his studio in Bombay. He slipped into
relative anonymity. That is until interest in his work piqued
again among Modernist photographers in India in the
1930s before once more fading in the 1960s. Bhedwar
has been largely forgotten for the past 50 years. The fate
of his archive is not currently known but his surviving
prints have begun to be re-evaluated. What is apparent
now is that rather than merely copying European-style
art photography, Bhedwar adapted it to express his own
cultural background. His process as well as the charm and
skill of his work earn him a distinguished place among
pioneering Asian photographers.
Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography
Shapoor N Bhedwar The Naver—invocation
from the series on the initiation of a young Zoroastrian priest
1892 platinum photograph
32.4 x 26.6 cm National Gallery of Australia
purchased 2009
artonview winter 2010 39
Foundation
National Gallery of Australia Foundation Gala Dinner and Weekend 2010
The 21st Anniversary of the Foundation was celebrated with a
fund-raising Gala Dinner and weekend of events at the National
Gallery of Australia on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 March.
The event raised over $200 000, which provided
funds to acquire the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph
Eldorado 1892 (see page 30). It is a rare and exceptional
lithograph, which complements the National Gallery of
Australia’s small but important collection of Toulouse-
Lautrec’s works on paper. The Gallery was thrilled at the
opportunity to secure this work for the national collection.
The weekend was a great success. Guests travelled from
across Australia to celebrate. A luncheon in the Sculpture
Garden Restaurant launched the weekend, followed by a
tour of the Conservation and Registration departments.
Saturday afternoon then concluded with a talk on the
exhibition Emerging Elders by Franchesca Cubillo, Senior
Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.
The highlight of the weekend was, of course, the Gala
Dinner on Saturday night. Guests attended a champagne
reception in the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery,
followed by a private viewing of Masterpieces from Paris.
The sumptuous five-course dinner, prepared by Ten and
a Half’s Executive Chef James Kidman, was exquisite. The
weekend came to a close as guests enjoyed an elegant
Sunday brunch at the French Embassy, generously hosted
by His Excellency Michel Filhol, French Ambassador in
Australia, and Madame Catherine Filhol.
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund
The work of art selected this year for the Masterpieces for
the Nation Fund is Robert Dowling’s Miss Robertson of
Colac (Dolly) 1885–86. This is a large and impressive portrait
and is included in the touring exhibition Robert Dowling:
Tasmanian son of Empire. Enclosed with this issue of
artonview is a brochure that provides further information on
the work and the fund. All donors to the fund will be invited
to a function hosted by the Director to celebrate the new
acquisition. For further information or to make a donation,
please contact the Foundation Office on (02) 6240 6454.
Founding Donors 2010
The Founding Donors 2010 program aims to raise
$1 million to assist with acquisitions for the galleries to be
opened later this year. The Foundation is delighted with
the support received so far. Donors are asked to contribute
$10 000, which can be paid over two financial years. All
donors will be acknowledged on the Founding Donors
honour board that will be placed in the entry foyer. For
more information or to receive a brochure, please contact
the Executive Director of the Foundation on (02) 6240 6691.
National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle
The Foundation is delighted to welcome Gunther Mau and
Cream Gilda Mau as new members to the National Gallery
of Australia Bequest Circle. Gunther and Cream Mau have
been supporters of the Gallery for a number of years and
their generous benefaction is greatly appreciated.
If you have included the National Gallery of Australia
in your will, please let us know so that we can thank you.
If you are interested in joining the Bequest Circle or would
like more information about making a significant and
lasting contribution to the future of the national collection
through a bequest, please contact Liz Wilson, Development
Officer, on (02) 6240 6781.
Further information on this program is available at nga.
gov.au/aboutus/development/bequests.cfm.
Dr TT Tsui
The National Gallery of Australia and the Foundation
were saddened to hear of the death on 2 April 2010 of
Dr TT Tsui. He was one of the Gallery’s most generous
benefactors and a champion of Chinese art.
Dr Bennett Macdonald, Ita Buttrose and Charles Curran at the 21st Anniversary Foundation Gala Dinner, 9 February 2010.
40 national gallery of australia
Sponsorship and Development
Ballets Russes: the art of costume
The Gallery is delighted to announce that long-term
supporters, ActewAGL will be a Presenting Partner for the
2010–11 summer blockbuster Ballets Russes. The Gallery
is grateful to ActewAGL for their ongoing and enthusiastic
support, which is testimony to their commitment to the
community and to the arts.
Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire
Manteena Construction is welcomed as an Exhibition
Partner for Robert Dowling, which opened at the Queen
Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston, on 5 March.
This travelling exhibition is currently at Geelong Gallery and
will be at the National Gallery of Australia from 24 July to
3 October 2010.
This is the first time that Canberra-based construction
company Manteena has sponsored an exhibition at the National
Gallery of Australia. The Gallery is grateful for their support.
McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17
R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter, is generously partnering
with the Gallery for McCubbin. This travelling exhibition
is at Bendigo Art Gallery until 25 July 2010. The Gallery is
grateful for the success of this ongoing partnership.
The Gallery extends its heartfelt gratitude to long-term
supporter of the Gallery the Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-
Damer as Exhibition Benefactor for McCubbin.
Life, death and magic: 2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art
The Australian International Cultural Foundation and
the Gordon Darling Foundation have awarded grants to
support Life, death and magic, an important exhibition
that demonstrates the Gallery’s commitment to original
research, innovative curatorship and scholarly publications.
The support of these grants is essential in making this
exhibition possible. The Gallery is very grateful to the
trustees of both foundations for their insight, leadership
and generosity.
Australian Government
The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and
the Arts (DEWHA) generously support the Gallery through
the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach
Program, an Australian Government program aiming
to improve access to the national collections for all
Australians, in particular for the exhibitions Robert Dowling,
Face: Australian portraits 1880–1960 and Roy Lichtenstein.
(left to right) The winners and supporters of the ‘National
Australia Bank Online Masterpieces from Paris
Promotion’, Bree Creaser. Novotel Canberra, Monica Davis and Christine Smith
(Qld), Judith White (WA), Andy and Cherrie Kirk (SA), Avi
Rebera, Senior Partner, NAB Government Business, Gillian and Bill Taylor (Tas), Natasha
Furiosi and Brett Bissett (ACT), Sophie and Wendy Kleeman
(NT), Isabel Hohnen (WA), Venetia and Jeremy Blackman
(Vic), Lesley Hurwood and Peter Donnelly (NSW).
artonview winter 2010 41
DEWHA also provides welcome support through
Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program
supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding
assistance for the development and touring of Australian
cultural material across Australia, and through the Visual
Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian
Government and state and territory governments, which
has provided funding for the Gallery’s travelling exhibitions
Robert Dowling, In the Japanese manner: Australian prints
1900–1940 and Space invaders: Australian street stencils
and posters.
Sidney Myer Fund
The Sidney Myer Fund and its Trustees for this very
generous grant towards the acquisition of Untitled
2009 by Walangkura Napanangka (see page 36) in the
commemoration of the Australian Government’s National
Apology to the Stolen Generations (Australian Indigenous).
Council Circle and the Corporate Members Program
Rupert Myer AM, Chairman of the National Gallery of
Australia Council, and other members of the Council
hosted the annual Council Circle dinner at the Gallery on
28 April. The evening included current sponsors along with
special invited guests.
On 19 May, the Corporate Members Program and
Yalumba Wines held a dinner in conjunction with Hans
Heysen. The evening was hosted by raconteur and
international spokesperson for Yalumba, Jane Ferrari, and
will be the forth such event at the Gallery as part of the
ongoing partnership with Yalumba. The Gallery welcome
Barlens to the Corporate Members Program. Barlens
generously supported the 2010 Sculpture Garden Sunday,
which attracted over 1800 people to participate in the
many activities. We thank them for their contribution in
making the day such a success.
National Australia Bank Art Education and Access Partnership
The National Australia Bank (NAB) supports the National
Summer Art Scholarship and the annual Sculpture Garden
Sunday. Like the National Gallery of Australia, National
Australia Bank is passionate about supporting Australian
communities and helping young people reach their creative
potential. The success of these two programs have been
hallmarks of that commitment. The Gallery is grateful to
NAB and their staff for their support and involvement in
these annual art education and access programs.
Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship
The Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship continues
to develop. The Gallery is grateful to Wesfarmers for its
keen interest and generous investment, of both time
and resources, to see this important phase of the project
complete. Thanks also to the consultants Aden Ridgeway
and Fiona Dewar from Cox Inall Ridgeway for their
professional management of the consultation project.
American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia
The American Friends generous grant of US$200 000 was
made possible with the very generous support of Kenneth Tyler
and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler. The grant will support the Gallery’s
department of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated
Books to provide access to the Tyler collection through the
Gallery’s Kenneth Tyler collection website and publications.
Thanks go to Judith Ogden Thompson, who recently
resigned as Director from the Board of Directors, for her
longstanding contribution to the American Friends.
The Gallery looks forward to her continuing friendship and
advice as a member of its Advisory Board.
Senior Curator of Pacific Art Michael Gunn’s compelling
talk about the major exhibition he is currently developing
on Polynesian art was warmly received by American Friends
at the Australian Consulate-General, New York. The Gallery
greatly appreciates the support of the American Friends and
the Australian Consulate-General in hosting this event.
The Gallery is very grateful to the American Friends
for their continued and unwavering support and has
been delighted to see them visit the National Gallery of
Australia this year. In particular, Susan Talbot, President of
the American Friends; Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards and her
partner Michael Crane; Judith Ogden Thompson and her
son Edward Cabot.
The Gallery would like to thank all its partners. If you
would like more information about Sponsorship and
Development at the National Gallery of Australia,
please contact Frances Corkhill on +61 2 6240 6740 or
[email protected] and Belinda Cotton on
+61 2 6240 6556 or [email protected].
Neilma Gantner and Lady Marigold Southey AC in the Masterpieces from Paris Family Activity Room, which was generously supported by The Yulgilbar Foundation.
42 national gallery of australia
development program
Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship
A partnership between the National Gallery of Australia and Wesfarmers
In 2007, Wesfarmers Limited partnered with the National
Gallery of Australia to develop an Indigenous Fellowship to
support Indigenous leadership within the visual arts sector.
The Indigenous arts industry is recognised as one of
Australia’s most dynamic and successful contributors on the
international stage—culturally and economically. However,
the number of Indigenous Australians currently employed
in the arts is relatively small. According to the 2006 census,
approximately 2538 Indigenous Australians work in cultural
industries as their main area of employment—representing
about 2.1% of all employed Indigenous Australians.
Of these, 182 work in the creative arts as practitioners
and 652 work as visual arts and craft professionals. In
an industry where Australian Indigenous art and culture
contributes over $400 million to the Australian economy,
these statistics reveal significant imbalances.
This situation is what the Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous
Fellowship aims to address by increasing the number of
Indigenous visual arts professionals.
In Wesfarmers’s Reconciliation Action Plan, Managing
Director Richard Goyder provides valuable insight into the
organisation’s philosophy and priorities, which are strongly
reflected in the partnership between Wesfarmers and the
Gallery and in the fellowship:
This Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) is a commitment
by Wesfarmers to ensure our businesses are places
where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples feel
welcome and valued, as employees, customers and
citizens. In particular … to provide Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples with greater opportunities to
participate in our country’s economic prosperity, through
sustainable employment.
By creating opportunities, by showing respect and by
developing relationships, we can play a part in wiping
out the unacceptable gap that exists between Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider
Australian community.
Both Wesfarmers and the National Gallery of Australia
recognise the importance of creating opportunities through
Katie Maguire, Daisy Andrews and Rosie Goodjie in Broome.
© AAANKA
artonview winter 2010 43
the fellowship that encourage the exchange of knowledge
between individuals, communities and cultural institutions.
The first phase of the project has been an extensive
national consultation process completed in February this
year. Over 220 visual arts professionals (Indigenous and
non-Indigenous), community members, government and
private organisations, artists, art centre workers and others
from across Australia contributed their views, advice,
evaluation and experience towards refining the goals and
structure of the fellowship.
This extensive consultation process has been invaluable
in shaping the Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship,
which will initially run over four years as a professional
program for long-term development, networking, exchange
and mentorship. During those four years, four Fellows
will undertake a high-level, project-based fellowship
program for up to two years in their field of interest. In
addition to the principal fellowship, a further 20 candidates
will participate in a shorter accredited Indigenous arts
leadership program.
Stephen Gilchrist, from the Inggarda language group,
who is currently the Curator of Indigenous Art at the
National Gallery of Victoria is one of the new generation
of Indigenous visual arts professionals. Stephen’s career
demonstrates the critical role that mentorship and
professional development play in creating a viable career
path for Indigenous Australians in the visual arts. For
Stephen, it also began at the National Gallery of Australia,
where he worked as a Trainee Assistant Curator in the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art department.
Throughout the traineeship, I gained invaluable curatorial
experience and learned much about the Indigenous
visual arts industry, how it is critically interrogated
and received in Australia and internationally and its
contribution to a national visual identity. The traineeship
helped to accelerate my career trajectory and led to my
appointment as Curator of Indigenous Art at the National
Gallery of Victoria … viewed cumulatively, it was an
incredibly exciting and inspiring time in my formative
career … I had also never worked in an institution where
Aboriginal ways of doing things were seen to enhance
rather than undermine the institution. Part of my long-
term personal and career goals is to contribute to the
advancement of Aboriginal people, and I feel strongly
that Aboriginal Art has the capacity to increase a greater
level of understanding of Aboriginal culture to the wider
community. That idealistic seed was planted and nurtured
at the National Gallery of Australia, and the core value that
was shared by me and many others was that art matters.
Person to person, organisation to organisation, community
to community—the Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship
program is an initiative of promise, encouragement,
excellence and engagement.
The Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous Fellowship will be
launched and open for applications in June 2010. The
Gallery is grateful to Wesfarmers for its keen interest and
generous investment, both in time and resources, and
acknowledges the work carried out by Cox Inall Ridgeway
as well as principal consultants Aden Ridgeway and Fiona
Dewar for their management of the consultation project.
Belinda Cotton Head of Development
Benson Saulo, Brian Stevens, Franchesca Cubillo and Elizabeth Liddle in Melbourne.
Nada Rawlins and Aden Ridgeway, Cox Inall Ridgeway, in Broome. © AAANKA
44 national gallery of australia
credit lines
Includes donations received from
22 January to 22 April 2010.
GrantsThe American Friends of the National
Gallery of Australia Inc, New York, made
possible with the very generous support
of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-
Tyler.
Australian Government:
Department of Health and Ageing’s
Dementia Community Grants Program
Department of the Environment, Water,
Heritage and the Arts through:
The National Collecting Institutions
Touring and Outreach Program, an
Australian Government program
aiming to improve access to
the national collections for all
Australians
Visions of Australia, an Australian
Government program supporting
touring exhibitions by providing
funding assistance for the
development and touring of
Australian cultural material across
Australia, and through Art Indemnity
Australia.
Australian International Cultural Foundation
The Gordon Darling Foundation
The Sidney Myer Fund
SponsorshipABC Radio
Accor Hospitality (Novotel Canberra)
ACT Government (through Australian
Capital Tourism)
ActewAGL
The Age
Barlens
The Brassey of Canberra
The Canberra Times
Casella Wines
Champagne Pol Roger
Eckersley’s Art & Craft
Forrest Hotel and Apartments
JCDecaux
Manteena
Mantra on Northbourne
National Australia Bank
National Gallery of Australia Council
Exhibitions Fund
Nine Network Australia
Qantas
R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter
The Sydney Morning Herald
Wesfarmers Limited
WIN Television
Yalumba Wines
Yulgilbar Foundation
GiftsAranday Foundation
Ben Frankel
Gordon Darling Foundation
Heather Green and Jock Smibert
Emmanuel Hirsh
Sue Lovegrove
Rupert Myer AM and Annabel Myer
Betty Nathan
Penelope Seidler AM
The estate of Leslie John Wright
Jason Yeap
Founding Donors 2010Dr Michael Armitage and Susan M Armitage
Lauraine Diggins
John Grant AM and Inge Grant
Richard Griffin AM and Jay Griffin
Peter Hack
Brand Hoff and Peta Hoff
Dr Colin Laverty OAM and Elizabeth Laverty
Ann Lewis AO
Macquarie Group Foundation
Graham Mapp AM and Sue Mapp
Dr David E Pfanner
David Shannon and Daniela Shannon
Lady Marigold Southey AC
Gala DinnerActewAGL
Rick Amor
Dr Michael Armitage and Susan M Armitage
Charles Baillieu and Samantha Baillieu
Betty Beaver AM
Jane Bradhurst
Sir Ronald Brierley
Ann Burge
Christopher Burgess and Christine Burgess
Julian Burt
Nick Burton Taylor and Julia Burton Taylor
John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-
Jones AO
Terrence Campbell AO and Christine
Campbell
Campbell Campbell-Pretty and Krystyna
Campbell-Pretty
Maurice Cashmere
Santo Cilauro and Morena Buffon
Laurie Cox AO and Julie Ann Cox
The Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer
Warwick Flecknoe and Jane Flecknoe
June Gordon
John Grant AM
Maurice Green and Christina Green
Andrew Gwinnett and Hiroko Gwinnett
Michael Hamson and Susie Hamson
The Hon Justice Kenneth Handley AO and
Diana Handley
Meredith Hinchliffe
John Hindmarsh and Rosanna Hindmarsh
Michael Hobbs and Doris Hobbs
The Hon Robert Hunter QC and Pauline
Hunter
John Ingham and Frances Ingham
Peter J Jopling QC
Nick Kelly and Susie Kelly
Sir Richard Kingsland AO, CBE, DFC, and
Lady Kingsland
Lou Klepac OAM and Brenda Klepac
Richard Longes and Elizabeth Longes
Alasdair MacLeod and Prue MacLeod
Rupert Myer AM and Annabel Myer
Baillieu Myer AC and Sarah Myer
Dr Margaret Olley AC
Roslyn Packer AO
Bruce Parncutt and Robin Campbell
Ralph Renard and Ruth Renard
John Schaeffer AO and Bettina Dalton
Peter Scott and Ofelia Scott
Penelope Seidler AM
Paul Selzer and Linda Selzer
Rosemary Simpson
Zeke Soloman AM
Simon Swaney and Carolyn Kay
Aida Tomescu
Lang Walker and Sue Walker
Ray Wilson OAM
Jim Windeyer and Peronelle Windeyer
Mark Young
Melody Gough Memorial FundCharles Curran AC and Eva Curran
Simon Elliott
Margie Kevin
Denise Officer
Liz Wilson
Masterpieces for the Nation 2010Michael Bartlett
Suzanne Elshoufi
Brian Jones
Robert Logie-Smith and Sue Logie-Smith
Alistair McLean
Graham Reeve
Members Acquisition 2009George Alexander and Dydy Alexander
Robert Allmark
Robin Amm AM
Cynthia Anderson
Ian Anderson
Susan Arnott
Margaret Aston
John Austin and Helen Austin
Jim Bain AM
Ronald Bannerman
Berenice Bannister
Betty Beaver AM
Peter Belling
Dora Berman
artonview winter 2010 45
Beryl Bevis
Richard Bialkowski and Robyn Bialkowski
Alan Bishop
Michele Black and Rodney Black (Creations
Jewellers)
Catherine Bosser
Stephen Box and Deirdre Box
Adrienne Bradney-Smith
Geoffrey Brennan and Margaret Brennan
Mary E Brennan
Bill Brisbane and Joan Brisbane
Diana Brookes
John Bruce and Barbara Bruce
John Buckingham
Marion Helena Burden
Billie Burke OAM
Robert Cadona
Robyn Cairns and Alex Cairns
Dr Berenice-Eve Calf
Debbie Cameron
John Campbell and Yvonne Campbell
Katrina Chapman
Vikki Clingan
Michael Cockburn and Margaret Cockburn
Graham Cocks and Elizabeth Cocks
Mrs Compton
Edith Gwen Cooper
Hunter Cordaiy
Kerry-Anne Cousins
Anne Coventry
Barry G Cowdell
Michael Creswick
In memory of Philippa Crossley
Jean Cruickshank
Marlene Danza
Rowena Danziger AM and Ken Coles
Dianne Davies
Anne De Salis
Angela Delaney
Peter Di Sciascio
Sue Dobbyns
Susan Doenau
Rosemary Dupont
Desley M Eaton
Peter Eddington and Joy Williams
Dr Murray Elliott AO and Gillian Elliott
Annette Ellis MP
Pauline Everson
Ian Falconer and Mary Falconer
Ilma Ferguson
Gillian Foley
Roslyn Francis
Henry Thomas French
Helen Fyfe
Neilma Gantner
Michael Gillespie and Nicole Gillespie
Marya Glyn-Daniel and Charles Glyn-Daniel
Robert Gnezdiloff and Moya Gnezdiloff
June Gordon
Eileen Gorst
Pauline M Griffin AM
In memory of Marjory Hackworth
Rosemary Halford
Aileen Hall
Natasha Hardy
David Harper and Jenny Harper
John Harrison and Danielle Kluth
Sue Hearn and Alex Byrne
Suzanne Hecker
Bruce Heiser
Marian Hill
Rachel Hilton and James McKenzie
L Holcombe
Yvonne Honnery
Jim Humphreys and Clare Humphreys
Tom Humphreys and Barbara Humphreys
Dr Joseph Johnson CSC, AAM, and
Madelaine Johnson
Brian Jones
Pamela Jupp and David Jupp
Margaret Keogh
Ilse King
Ron Kirkland and Christobel Kirkland
Reg Kitchin and Joan Kitchin
Grace Koch
Betty Konta
Ted Kruger and Gerry Kruger
Brian Lamb and Lynette Lamb
Ruth I Langley OAM
Hendricka Lussick
Liz and Mike Lynch
Steensen Varming (Australia) Pty Ltd
Bronwen Macnamara and Michael
Macnamara
Gwenyth D Macnamara
Tamara Makeev OAM
John Malone
Deborah Malor and Ron Malor
Bruce Marshall and Robin Coombes
Ernie Marton
Margaret J Mashford
Stewart May and Wendy May
Fleur McAlister and Douglas McAlister
EA McCarthy and MJ McCarthy
Tony McCormick
Ruth McKay
Dr Stephen G McNamara
Trish McPherson
Tina Merriman
Joan Miskin and Barry Miskin
Beth Monk and Ross Monk
Meg Mooney
Margaret Morrow
Alan Morschel and Ruth Morschel
Janet Munro
Peter Murphy
Pauline Murray
Robert Nairn
Colin Neave AM
Prof and Mrs Barry W Ninham
Barbara Noden
Linda Notley
Janet Oakley
Brian O’Keeffe AO and Bridget O’Keeffe AM
Robert Oser
John Parker and Joss Righton
Mervyn Paterson and Katalin Paterson
Tom Pauling and Tessa Pauling
Vladimir Pavlovic
David Pearse and Elizabeth Pearse
John Playoust and Therese Playoust
Patricia Porcheron and Robyn Porcheron
Preventative Medicine and Rehabilitation
Centre
Helen Rankin
Gavin Roberts
Dr Pamela Rothwell
Jennifer J Rowland
John Salmons and Leonie Salmons
Annette Searle
Fabia Shah
Richard Shand and Tonia Shand
Roy Smalley
Vivian Spilva and Andrew Spilva
Christopher Haddon Spurgeon
Dr Richard Stanton
Keith F Steward
Gay Stuart and Charles Stuart
Judith Sutton
Elinor Swan
Robert Swift and Lynette Swift
Alan Taylor
Claudette Taylor (for Dunstan)
Sue Telford
Dr DA Thomas
Jacqueline Thomson
Helen Todd
Sylvia Tracey
Norma Uhlmann
Brenton Warren
Ray Watt and Jenny Watt
Mo Wedd-Buchholz
Christine Wellham
Helen White
Dr Stephen Wild
Yvonne Wildash
Muriel Wilkinson
Dr Elizabeth Williams
Forreste Williams
Andrew L Williamson
David Williamson and Angela Williamson
Gratton Wilson
Alison Witter
Bill Wood
Prof Robin Woods AM
Ellen M Woodward
Diane Wright
46 national gallery of australia
1 2
4
5 6
3
artonview winter 2010 47
faces in viewFor more images of programs and events held by
the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, visit
flickr.com/photos/nationalgalleryofaustralia.
1 Adam Hill with his work Not
everyone’s cup of tea 2009 at the
National Gallery of Australia.
2 Tarek El-Ansary with his family
during the all-night opening
of Masterpieces from Paris,
17 April.
3 Director Ron Radford with
ABC Radio National’s Rod Quinn
during the 36-hour opening
period for the final weekend
of Masterpieces from Paris,
18 April.
4 Tanya Hird, Morena Buffon and
Prue Macleod at the National
Gallery of Australia Foundation’s
21st Anniversary Gala Dinner,
20 March.
5 Local entertainers tickle the funny
bones of security on the final
Saturday of Masterpieces from
Paris, 17 April.
6 Christopher Pease speaks about
the process behind his Cow with
Body Paint 2007 at the Gallery, 28
January.
7 Ani Bambang Yudhoyono, first
lady of Indonesia, Thérèse Rein
and Ron Radford on tour in
the exhibition Emerging Elders
with Franchesca Cubillo, Senior
Curator, Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Art, 10 March.
8 Will Minchin, the 250 000th
visitor to Masterpieces from Paris,
with his wife Miriam and their
daughter Mathilda, 26 February.
9 Activities to keep visitors
entertainted while queuing for
Masterpieces from Paris at the
National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra, 3 April.
10 Children get their hands dirty and
test their creativity at Sculpture
Garden Sunday in the National
Gallery of Australia’s Sculpture
Garden, 14 March.
7
9
10
2
4
6
8
Starry Nights‘It’s nice to do gigs like this, it reminds you why you do
these things in the first place.’
Tim Rogers, musician
Held over four nights in March, Starry Nights—a National Gallery initiative in
association with ACT Tourism—was conceived as a unique way for audiences to
experience the exhibition Masterpieces from Paris. The event combined late-night
viewings, live entertainment, shopping, food and wine.
The night was designed to appeal to a broad demographic seeking to extend their
exhibition experience into a fulsome night’s entertainment, the line-up of live acts—
Joe Camilleri, Clare Bowditch and Tim Rogers—did not disappoint.
The Gallery’s beautiful Sculpture Garden was the venue for the evening’s Starry
Nights action with headline acts commencing at 9.00 pm, preceded by music from
local DJs and the ANU School of Music. Before the concert, Starry Nights ticket holders
could view the exhibition at their leisure. Then, as the sun set over the Gallery building,
its concrete facade came alive with projections of exhibition images above the stage
and superb performances by leading Australian musicians.
Starry Nights drew on the Gallery’s history of staging live music in the oasis of
the Sculpture Garden. May well it continue …
(top) Clare Bowditch Trio and (centre) their audience. (bottom and opposite) Tim Rogers Band. photographs: Murray Foote
artonview winter 2010 49
artonview winter 2010 51
At play in van Gogh’s bedroomThe Masterpieces from Paris Family Activity Room
‘I liked the children’s room. And I love art. It was fun’.
Rebecca, aged 6
A spectacularly successful aspect of the recent Masterpieces from Paris exhibition
was the fun and educational Family Activity Room. Located midway through the
exhibition, it provided children with a stimulating and safe place to consider and
creatively respond to the works of art they were seeing. Families returned to viewing
the exhibition refreshed and with new insights. A family visit to the exhibition was also
enriched by a childrens trail and childrens audio tour.
The Masterpieces from Paris Family Activity Room was a collaboration between
the Gallery’s Education and Exhibition Design departments. Recreated as a three-
dimensional play space, Van Gogh’s bedroom at Arles provided the concept and the
setting for the room. One parent said it was ‘like being inside van Gogh’s head, being
in his picture’.
Children could enter the painting and recreate puzzles of works of art printed
on each side of cubes on van Gogh’s large bed. Along the opposite wall, children
created origami stars to add to an interactive mural of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry night.
Portraits and still-lifes from the exhibition became the inspiration for self-portraiture
and still-life drawing. Visitors enjoyed sharing time reading childrens stories and
reference books about the art and artists in the exhibition.
Activities were plentiful and were designed to be adapted for children of all ages
and interests. The approach was one of kinaesthetic learning—learning through
hands-on experience and direct physical engagement, making the experiences more
concrete and lasting, more enjoyable and meaningful.
Over the four-and-a-half months of the exhibition, over 61 000 people visited the
Family Activity Room and 13 407 children registered for activities. Given its spectacular
success, the Family Activity Room concept is set to be taken up in Ballets Russes: the
art of costume in December.
Peter Naumann Head of Education and Public Programs
Self-portrait by Ellin, made in the Family Activity Room.
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The Qantas A380 by Airbus. Comfort that comes from over 89 years of continuous flying experience.
Qantas is proud to sponsor the National Gallery of Australia.
Diamant Hotel CanberraDISCOVER CANBERRA’S CULTURAL SECRETS Warm up with a glass of port in front of the fi replace of this heritage-listed building close to the city’s fi nest restaurants and bars. Includes a Deluxe Room, continental breakfast, Ferrero Rondnoir chocolates and cultural map with discount vouchers.
Hyatt Hotel CanberraDELUXE HERITAGE EXPERIENCEStay in a 1920s heritage-inspired Park Deluxe Room featuring an iPod docking station, Nespresso coffee machine and DVD player. Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the Promenade Cafe and a 2pm checkout. Tourist information is available from the concierge desk.
The Brassey of CanberraHERITAGE WINTER PACKAGEStay in a Heritage Room and walk to some of the nation’s most iconic cultural attractions. Included in your package is full buffet breakfast, entry to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, daily newspaper and free parking.
Hyatt Hotel Canberra LUXURIOUS RETREATExclusive use of the Ambassador Lounge awaits Club Room guests. Price includes an extensive continental breakfast, along with pre-dinner drinks and canapés served daily plus a complimentary bottle of Domain Chandon NV and 2pm checkout.
Canberra City YHAWEEKEND RETREATEnjoy 2 nights in this central location featuring a cafe, funky bar, indoor pool, spa, sauna, kitchen and rooftop BBQ. Includes a cooked or continental breakfast plus a welcome pack of cheese, chocolate and champagne.*2 nights in a twin or double
Country Guesthouse Schönegg2-DAY WINTERFEST INDULGENCEBegin your 2 night Winterfest with a 5-course degustation dinner. On Friday indulge in a hot rock massage for 2 at Geranium House Sustainable Day Spa and a 2-course lunch at Poachers Pantry’s Smokehouse Cafe. Includes continental and cooked breakfast.
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*PERCOUPLE$230
Diamant Hotel CanberraDISCOVER CANBERRA’S
Hyatt Hotel Canberra
with pre-dinner drinks and canapés served daily plus a complimentary
massage for 2 at Geranium House Sustainable Day Spa and a 2-course lunch and a 2-course lunch at Poachers Pantry’s Smokehouse Cafe. Includes continental and cooked breakfast.
and a 2-course lunch at Poachers Pantry’s Smokehouse Cafe. Includes continental and cooked breakfast.
*PERCOUPLE$395
buffet breakfast, entry to the Museum of Australian
Includes a cooked or continental breakfast plus a welcome pack of welcome pack of cheese, chocolate and champagne.*2 nights in a twin or double
welcome pack of cheese, chocolate and champagne.*2 nights in a twin or double
*PERCOUPLE$197
Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the Promenade Cafe and
is available from the
*PERCOUPLE$355
Canberra City YHA SNOW STOPPERRecover from your ski trip with a 1 night city stopover in a quad-share room. Soothe aching muscles in the indoor pool, spa, sauna and enjoy a cooked breakfast. Other facilities include a funky bar and cafe. Single and twin shares also available.
Forrest Hotel & ApartmentsENJOY THE ARTS THIS WINTER Forrest Hotel celebrates HansHeysen, one of the most infl uential artists of the 20th century. Package includes accommodation, hot buffet breakfast, a ticket to the exhibition and a bottle of wine per room.*Per person twin share
century. Package includes accommodation, hot buffet breakfast, a ticket to
*PERPERSON$108
sauna and enjoy a cooked
shares also available.
century. Package includes accommodation, hot buffet breakfast, a ticket to the exhibition and a the exhibition and a bottle of wine per
*Per person twin share
the exhibition and a bottle of wine per room.*Per person twin share
*PERPERSON$46
Book now at wraptinwinter.com or call 1300 889 026*TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY. VALID FROM 1 JUNE – 31 AUGUST 2010. SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY.
the city’s fi nest restaurants and bars. Includes a Deluxe
Rondnoir chocolates and cultural map with
Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the Promenade Cafe and a 2pm checkout.
Book now at
a 2pm checkout. Tourist information is available from the concierge desk.
a 2pm checkout. Tourist information is available from the concierge desk.
*PERCOUPLE$240
Shake up your Canberra winter
experience with a snow stopover,
the Fireside Festival or the
Capital Country Truffl e Festival
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Our Indulgence Package for 2 includes:
• Accommodation in an Executive King Room• Full buffet breakfast daily in the hotel restaurant• A Poachers Farmhouse Hamper from Poachers Pantry (including gourmet meats, jam and a cooler bag valued at $100)
Accor Advantage Plus members receive their 10% discount and A|Club members will earn points on each stay.
Designed for natural l iving
*Valid 1 June 2010 to 28 December 2010. Conditions apply. Bookings are payable at time of reservation and are non-exchangeable, non-refundable and non-transferable. All rates are per night for single, twin or double occupancy in an Executive King Room. Rates are subject to change and are based on a limited allocation of rooms and subject to availability. Maximum of one Poachers Farmhouse Hamper from Poachers Pantry per room reservation, per stay.
65 Northbourne Ave, CanberraReservations 1300 65 65 65
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The National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach (NCITO) program is an Australian Government initiative providing $1 million annually to improve access for all Australians to our national collections.
NCITO supports exhibitions from Australia’s national collecting institutions to tour within Australia and overseas, with particular emphasis on increasing regional access to the collections.
The following NCITO-supported exhibitions are currently touring metropolitan and regional Australia:
•RobertDowling:TasmaniansonofEmpire(National Gallery of Australia)
•TheNationalPhotographicPortraitPrize2010(National Portrait Gallery)
•SymbolsofAustralia(National Museum of Australia)
•Littleshipmates–seafaringpets (Australian National Maritime Museum)
Other approved exhibitions will commence touring later in 2010 with a further funding round expected to be announced in June-July.
For more information on NCITO and current NCITO-supported exhibitions visit: www.arts.gov.au/collection/ncito_program.
National Collecting Institutions Touring & Outreach Program
arts.gov.au
Want to know what’s on out there?
Offer valid until August 31, 2010 for new Herald subscribers only in NSW and the ACT where normal Herald home delivery exists. Prices are GST-inclusive. A deduction of $109 will be made upfront for a delivery period of 26 weeks. Minimum subscription term for this offer is 26 weeks. Cancellation fees may apply for subscriptions paid upfront and terminated prior to expiry. Subscriptions are for individual use only and cannot be sold. Delivery to addresses in security apartment or office buildings is subject to delivery capability. For alternative subscription packages call us on 13 66 66
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expertise • integrity • results
important australian and international fine art auction melbourne • august 2010
call for entriesJeffrey SmartSunbathers at Construction Site, 2003
67.0 x 100.0 cm
SOLD November 2007 • $600,000
Price includes buyer’s premium, excludes gst
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