Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the wide-ranging photographic practices of more than eighty women artists working between 1900 and 1975. Featuring prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines, the exhibition explores the role of photographers as image-makers, and the ways in which women artists create an image of themselves, of others, of the times – from images of the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond.

From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition showcases the works of trailblazing artists such as Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many more.

The exhibition reflects a recent collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography Collection. Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, photomontage, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light presents the diverse work of women photographers against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events.

Opening in November 2025, the exhibition coincides with the fifty-year anniversary of International Women’s Year 1975, which established the United Nations’ annual celebration of International Women’s Day.

Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light
28 November 2025 – 3 May 2026
National Gallery of Victoria
www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/women-photographers-1900-1975

Explore traditional Noh and Kogen costume, intricately decorated kimono worn by samurai and merchants during the Edo period, early examples of Western influence in the styles of the late nineteenth-century, and Japanese modernist fashion from the early twentieth-century. Additionally, the exhibition features key pieces by fashion innovators Issey Miyake and John Galliano, contemporary creative Hiroko Takahashi and bold Harajuku street fashions.

Alongside unique examples of kimono and kimono inspired costume the exhibition features paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts that contextualise the themes of the kimono story. It presents the diverse skills mastered by traditional artisans including shibori tie dye, rice paste resist designs and indigo blue dyeing, and highlights the numerous materials used for textile production throughout Japanese history, including silk, cotton, metallic thread, paper, elm bark, banana tree fibre and deer leather.

Kimono Exhibition
Until 5 October 2025
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

The exhibition follows the evolution of Rembrandt’s work from his early years in Leiden in the 1620s through to his final years in Amsterdam in the 1660s. This significant breadth of work allows audiences to appreciate the inventive ways in which Rembrandt approached his subject matter, his brilliant re-imagining of biblical subjects, his profoundly expressive style, and the development of psychological complexity in narrative scenes and portraits.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is Rembrandt’s printmaking. Rembrandt was the first artist to comprehensively explore the possibilities of etching and it is through his prints that audiences can fully appreciate the breadth and depth of his work.

The exhibition contextualises Rembrandt’s prints through important loans from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Displayed in thematic groups of portraits, religious motifs, landscapes, nudes, and scenes of everyday life, the prints and paintings tell the story of a remarkable artist and his creative skills.

One of the highlights is the iconic painting, Self-Portrait, 1659, which comes exclusively to Melbourne from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Painted three years after Rembrandt declared bankruptcy, the painting shows the artist at the age of fifty-three. At this difficult time in Rembrandt’s life, he depicts himself with unrelenting honesty and profound psychological insight. Throughout his life Rembrandt made around eighty self-portraits, and ten of his etched self-portraits are shown throughout the exhibition, tracing the artist’s self-image over a thirty-year period, culminating in this masterpiece of Rembrandt’s expressive late painting style.

Another section of the exhibition examines the nude, the study of which was part of every artist’s training during the period. Rembrandt did not idealise figures according to classical proportions; instead, he placed primary importance on working naer het leven (from life). In the etching Diana at the bath, c. 1631, he challenges the conventional representation of mythological goddesses. In this work, Diana, goddess of the hunt, is not a distant classical beauty, but an unidealised figure drawn from everyday life. A later critic described Rembrandt as ‘the first heretic of art’ because of his uncompromising realism.

The exhibition also features Rembrandt’s landscapes. His ability to capture the transitory qualities of light and air is unprecedented in the medium of etching. The three trees, 1643, is Rembrandt’s largest and most evocative landscape etching. The sky, with its massed clouds, diagonal passages of rain and bursts of light, creates a sense of drama. The heroic presence of the three trees carries moral overtones, and an analogy has been drawn with the three crosses of Calvary, where Christ was crucified between the two thieves.

The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1648, is one of Rembrandt’s best known and most ambitious etchings. It combines several passages from the Gospel of St Matthew, bringing together a diverse group of people who gather around Christ, including the rich and the poor, young and old. The work is a technical masterpiece in its detailed rendering of figures, space and atmosphere. It is the culmination of the artist’s longstanding fascination with light and shade, which he explored in print and paint. In 1649, an impression of the print was sold for the exorbitant sum of 100 guilders, the price of a quality painting, which gave the etching its name.

The exhibition includes Rembrandt’s two largest prints, The three crosses, 1653, and Christ presented to the people: oblong plate, 1655 – each of these is presented in two different ‘states’. Rembrandt made continuous adjustments to take this image through a number of ‘states’ or changes. These works were completely transformed in the process, as Rembrandt added new elements that give the later impressions a different emphasis and mood. Seeing early and late states of these large-scale works side by side shows the artist’s ambition and his restless creative spirit.

The exhibition also features a small recreation of the artist’s Wunderkammer – or cabinet of curiosities – inspired by Rembrandt’s own collection of prints and drawings, shells and rare natural objects, musical instruments, weapons and exotic artefacts. Rembrandt often drew creative and artistic inspiration from the items in his collection, in particular for his biblical subjects, which are set in far-away places. Drawn from the NGV Collection, as well as the Melbourne Museum and the State Library of Victoria, the objects represent the exotic imports and luxury items that were traded in Amsterdam during the mid-seventeenth century.

During the exhibition, the NGV will seek to deepen its acclaimed Rembrandt collection through an appeal to acquire the important print Abraham Francen, Apothecary c. 1657. The work is an etched portrait from late in the artist’s career of his close friend Abraham Francen, a stalwart supporter of Rembrandt during his financial difficulties. Francen was also a passionate collector, like Rembrandt, and is shown in his chamber surrounded by objects in his collection. This etching provides a rare glimpse into the environment of the cultivated collector in 17th century Amsterdam. The work will also be included in the exhibition.

As part of the NGV Scholars Series, an exclusive talk by world-leading Dutch art expert Dr Marjorie E. (Betsy) Wieseman, Curator and Head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. will be held on 31 July. Dr Wieseman will use examples from the NGV’s extensive holdings of Rembrandt work to contextualise the most recent scholarship on the seventeenth-century Dutch master.

Rembrandt: True to Life
2 June – 10 September 2023
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

A kaleidoscopic exhibition, Pierre Bonnard features more than 100 works by the celebrated French artist, spanning the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Paintings, drawings, photographs, folding screens and early cinema will bring modern France to life with startling beauty and vivid colour. Developed in partnership with Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the exhibition is largely drawn from the museum’s impressive holdings of works by Bonnard alongside significant loans from other collections in France and beyond.

The first sections of the exhibition explore Bonnard’s central role within the Nabi circle of artists, as well as his interaction with the contemporary worlds of music and theatre. Calling themselves the Nabis, the young artists Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Ranson, Paul Sérusier and Félix Vallotton banded together in the early 1890s, and saw themselves as the Prophets of a new art that they envisaged encompassing every sphere of modern life – interior design, furniture, fans and textiles, stained glass, and commercial illustration and advertising. Paintings by Vuillard and Vallotton will be shown alongside prints by Denis.

During this period, Bonnard recorded daily life in the streets of Paris in an immediate and startlingly close manner, observing what he called the ‘theatre of the everyday’. Influenced by his friendship with the pioneering filmmakers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, he became one of the first artists to draw inspiration from the new medium of cinema in his art. He also embraced photography and cast his artist’s eye over his family circle to capture moments of unexpected movement and impromptu composition. Films by the Lumière Brothers are screened alongside dynamic urban scenes Bonnard produced during this period.

Bonnard’s meeting with Maria Boursin (known as Marthe de Méligny) in 1893 led to his own domestic intimacy, culminating in a remarkable series of nude studies, both lithographs and paintings. As Bonnard and Marthe shared their life together, this led to longer periods spent in the countryside for Marthe’s health. Alongside his intimate studies of their domestic life, Bonnard undertook campaigns of landscape painting, engaging with the legacy of French Impressionism. Visits to the south of France from 1909 onwards brought a new intensity of colour to Bonnard’s art, ‘this colour that drives one wild’ as he put it. A rich selection of the warm and vibrant interior scenes and still lifes recorded by Bonnard following his move to the south of France form an important part of the exhibition. In the last decades of his working life, Bonnard created works of poignant introspection – self portraits and scenes of his daily life with Marthe – and others of majestic scale and joyous colour, celebrating the luminous landscapes around Le Cannet, the town near Cannes on the French Riviera where he and Marthe lived.

For Pierre Bonnard, the NGV has commissioned award-winning architect and designer India Mahdavi to design the exhibition’s scenography. Described by The New Yorker as a ‘virtuoso of colour’ and ‘possessor of perfect chromatic pitch’, Mahdavi envelops Pierre Bonnard’s works in an environment that complements the artist’s distinct use of colour and texture, and the domestic intimacy for which his paintings are so renowned.

A design icon, Mahdavi has appeared multiple times on Architectural Digest’s list of the world’s 100 most influential architects and designers. Her singular approach to colour, structure and texture has resulted in numerous acclaimed projects, including commissions for hotels, restaurants and retail as well as scenography for exhibitions and fairs, including for Design Parade Toulon and Homo Faber, Venice. Mahdavi engages with both art history and contemporary culture to create a unique exhibition experience with Bonnard’s works. Wall and floor applications, as well as furniture, add a three-dimensional experience to the sumptuous, domestic interior worlds synonymous with Bonnard’s paintings.

Melbourne Winter Masterpieces 2023 – Pierre Bonnard Exhibition
9 June – 8 October 2023
National Gallery of Victoria
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum features 44 drawings on loan from the Prado Museum in Madrid, the largest group of Goya’s drawings ever seen in Australia. Ranging from bold ink to delicate red chalk drawings, the works on display have been selected by the Prado especially for this NGV presentation. They include examples from the artist’s earliest albums of social satires through to the enigmatic visions and dreams recorded in his late drawings. This rich and diverse selection of drawings showcases the breadth of Goya’s drawing practice, as well as offering a rare insight into the artist’s image-making process.

The works from the Prado collection are complemented by 120 etchings from Goya’s renowned print series, including the Caprichos 1797–98, which satirised vices and follies in Spanish society; the Disasters of War 1810–15, based on the atrocities of the war and famine that followed the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808; the Tauromaquia c. 1815–16 on the subject of bullfighting; and the enigmatic Disparates c. 1815–19, made during the reign of Ferdinand VII, whose suppression of civil liberties affected the lives of many intellectuals and reformers, including Goya and his friends. The prints are drawn from the NGV Collection with fifteen works on loan from the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum
25 June – 3 October 2021
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

The exhibition title KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness foregrounds the emotional content of the artist’s work. Through his works KAWS celebrates generosity, support for others and the deep need we have for companionship. KAWS represents someone who is very much of our time in terms of working across contexts and in hybrid and collaborative ways, and his work presents an antidote or rejoinder to the increasingly toxic nature of public discourse and social media, and division within and across societies. He reminds us we need one another and that life should be lived as compassionately as possible to combat this ‘Age of Loneliness’, in the face of fear and hatred.

KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness is a major contribution to the growing international reputation of this contemporary artist. It follows KAWS’s recent solo presentations at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2016), the Yuz Museum Shanghai and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2017) and the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation (2019). This exhibition introduces audiences to the full range of KAWS’s artistic output, including a newly commissioned monumental sculpture (his largest bronze sculpture to date), paintings reworking pop-culture figures and an impressive collection of human-scale sculptural figures. KAWS’s collaborations with other artists will be explored in the exhibition and those with major brands on display in the dedicated pop-up shop along with his own products.

An accompanying publication, available from December 2019, features a situating essay by exhibition curator Dr Simon Maidment and a specially commissioned essay by renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The book documents KAWS’s artistic practice across his whole career and incorporates installation documentation of the NGV exhibition.

KAWS: Companionship in the Age Exhibition
20 September 2019 – 13 April 2020
National Gallery of Victoria
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Roger Kemp: Visionary Modernist is the first major exhibition to chart the development of Kemp’s extraordinary career, beginning with his earliest paintings of symbolic landscapes and angular dancing figures, through his work of the 1950s – where the human form is transfigured and becomes part of an abstract structure – to his late works which reveal an artist whose concerns go beyond the physical world.

In Kemp’s later works – highly resolved paintings of the 1960s, 70s and 80s – the geometric structure heightens the symbolic richness contained within. Kemp’s works from this period are charged with great emotional energy and are the pinnacle of an artistic and spiritual journey.

Roger Kemp: Visionary Modernist has been developed in close association with the estate of the artist. Comprising paintings, prints and sketches, it is the most comprehensive retrospective of this significant artist’s work since Kemp’s death in 1987.

The NGV is publishing a monograph to coincide with the exhibition that features the artist’s work and new scholarship from Australian experts.

Roger Kemp – Visionary Modernist Exhibition
22 August 2019 – 15 March 2020
NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Keith Haring (American 1958–90) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (American 1960–88) changed the art world of the 1980s through their idiosyncratic imagery, radical ideas and complex socio-political commentary, creating an indelible legacy that continues to influence contemporary visual and popular culture today. Each artist is acclaimed for his distinctive visual language, employing signs, symbols and words to convey strong social and political messages in unconventional ways.

The exhibition surveys each artist’s tragically short, yet prolific career through more than 300 artworks, including works created in public spaces, painting, sculpture, objects, works on paper, photographs and more. Crossing Lines provides local and international audiences with a comprehensive insight into each of these influential artists, as well as an understanding of their broader impact, both in the 80s and 90s and continuing today.

Beginning with examples of both artist’s work from the streets and subway stations of New York City, the exhibition presents works from each artist’s first exhibitions, their collaborations with each other, as well as with the likes of Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Madonna. It continues by presenting some of their most acclaimed artworks, including pieces featuring Basquiat’s crown and head motifs and Haring’s iconic ‘radiant baby’ and dancing figures.

Curated for the NGV by Dr Dieter Buchhart, art historian and curator of recent monographic exhibitions on both Jean-Michel Basquiat (Fondation Louis Vuitton, Barbican art Gallery) and Keith Haring (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris).

Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat – Crossing Lines Exhibition
NGV International, Melbourne
1 December 2019 – 13 April 2020
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Featuring designers from Charles Frederick Worth, the celebrated ‘father of haute couture’, to the iconoclastic Alexander McQueen, the exhibition includes over 200 garments and archive works from the extensive fashion research collection comprising hundreds of designers’ sketches; workbooks; photographs; and fashion magazines, journals and periodicals from the early nineteenth century onwards. The selection is representative of Paris fashion and haute couture and demonstrates how a focused supporter can transform a museum collection.

Krystyna Campbell-Pretty’s support has introduced into the NGV Collection designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli, whose garments included Surrealist elements; Boué Soeurs, who were specialists in embroidery; and Christian Lacroix, who had a deep appreciation of history, textiles, colour and drama. The gift also includes Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s ‘little black dress’ in a number of styles, with the earliest from 1919; Madame Grès’ columnar gowns and sculptural bias-cut gowns by Madeleine Vionnet, a designer of the 1920s and 1930s who has inspired countless designers, including Issey Miyake and John Galliano.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue of over 300 pages including focused entries on major fashion houses and designers as well as an interview between Olivier Gabet, Director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Krystyna Campbell-Pretty about her personal history and her philanthropic motivations. It also includes essays by Françoise Tétart-Vittu, former curator at the Palais Galliera, and by NGV Curators.

The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty Fashion Gift Exhibition
National Gallery of Victoria – Melbourne
1 March – 14 July 2019
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

In many ways, theirs is an archetypal twentieth-century Australian story of migration, family life, wartime separation and a deep connection to place. Both artists travelled in Europe and their work demonstrates both international influences and engagement with their Australian contemporaries. While Hans devoted his mature practice predominantly to the depiction of landscape, Nora became renowned as a portraitist and painter of still life.

Hans and Nora’s lifelong written correspondence offers rare insight into a mutually loving and supportive relationship, as well as into their working methods, inspirations and thoughts on the key artistic debates of their time. Their shared reverence for the natural world, manifested in Hans’s evocative landscapes and Nora’s vibrant flower paintings, strengthened their bond. In 1936, Hans wrote to his daughter of what he perceived as the key to a fulfilling life and a source of sustenance in difficult times: ‘A great love for Nature – who will ever unfold all her secrets in any one of our lives’.

Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art Exhibition
8 March – 28 July 2019
NGV Australia, Federation Square
www.ngv.vic.gov.au