Art and design are windows to the worlds of their creators, times and places. They can pull the past into our present, providing glimpses into different societies, values, and innovations.
The NGV Observations series positions the NGV Collection as such a window – offering perspectives on art and design, of the past and the present, to explore how creativity impacts our understanding and experience of the world.
Launched in 2022, the NGV Observations series was named after the first instructional text on painting believed to have been written by a woman artist, a 1633 manuscript by English artist Mary Beale. Observations invites close examination of works and periods in the NGV Collection, through the eyes of international researchers, curators, and writers.
Spanning in person and live-streamed events, as well as publications and online videos, we can not only learn about how art and design is made, but also how it chronicles, reflects and responds to its social and cultural context – and what this might illuminate about life today.
See the NGV Collection in a new light through Observations.
Édouard Manet’s The house at Rueil, 1882
Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic and author Sebastian Smee reflects on Édouard Manet’s The house at Rueil, 1882. Painted at the end of Manet’s life, the painting’s lightness and serenity become, in Smee’s view, a final act of defiance and a gesture of hope in the face of despair.
The NGV Observations series is generously supported by an anonymous donor.