Arts Dialogue Series: Discovering the Impressionists
Felix Restaurant, Geelong
Step into a relaxed and welcoming space for conversation, ideas, and art. Over wine, hear from leading voices in their field as they unpack Discovering the Impressionist and key works from the Geelong Gallery Collection. See the exhibition and come ready to share your thoughts and enjoy direct, open dialogue with our hand-picked experts. Ticket includes one glass of wine or beer.
Jane Clark: Sunday 26 July 3.00-4.00pm
Jane Clark is a curator and art historian, writer and lecturer. She joined Mona—Australia’s largest private museum—in 2007, during the initial planning phase, having been Curator of Major Special Exhibitions in both international and Australian art at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and then Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s in Australia.
A graduate of Melbourne University and the Courtauld Institute, London University, she was a Harkness Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1988–90. At the NGV she was responsible for exhibitions including The Great 18th Century Exhibition, Golden Summers: Heidelberg and beyond and Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and legends. She continues to research and write on 19th and 20th-century Australian art, especially in its wider international context.
An Effect is Only Momentary….
In 1889, when the triumvirate of Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder announced their now famous exhibition of ‘9 by 5 Impressions’ in Melbourne, what did they know about the French art movement that was, by then, international? What did Australian artists mean when they proudly called themselves impressionists? Who were they and how did their approach to landscape painting come to dominate Australian art for decades?
Jane Clark, in conversation with Lisa Sullivan, will tease out some answers to these questions in relation to both current exhibitions: Discovering the Impressionists and Claude Monet and Australian Impressionism.
Laurie Benson: Sunday 9 August 3.00-4.00pm
Laurie Benson was Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Victoria for over 20 years until his retirement in 2025. His department cared for the NGV’s collection of 19th century French painting and sculpture. He also worked on many exhibitions including, The Impressionists, Salvador Dali Liquid Desire, Cinema India, the Art of Bollywood, and Monet’s Garden. He curated Medieval Moderns: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and was co-curator of the exhibition Horse. He has published widely on works in the NGV collection. His last show at the NGV was Cats and Dogs in 2025.
Taste and fashion are fickle beasts
Artists and styles fall in and out of favour almost without rhyme or reason. French Impressionism is a classic example of this phenom, bouncing from reviled to adored in almost a blink of an eye. Unlike so many, they are still up there. How and why does this happen, and what are the consequences of these trends in taste? These questions will be pondered with the Geelong Gallery.
Roger Benjamin: Sunday 30 August 3.00-4.00pm
Roger Benjamin, Emeritus Professor of Art History, has taught French art for many years at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney. His publications include Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism and French North Africa (Berkeley, 2003); Renoir and Algeria (Princeton, 2003); “Why did Matisse love late Renoir?” in Renoir in the 20th Century (LACMA, 2010); and “Arthur Streeton’s Venice” in Arthur Streeton (AGNSW 2022).
Labels and Canons, or Colours and Sensations?
The labels given us by art criticism – of ‘Post-Impressionism’, ‘Symbolism’, ‘Late Impressionism’ – sometimes seem as much of a hindrance as an aid to grasping the historical complexity of painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Australia’s ‘Heidelberg School’ is a case in point. Prof. Benjamin in conversation with Humphrey Clegg will discuss the unmatched popularity of Impressionist art, still a potent aesthetic paradigm in an age of machine vision.