With over seventy thousand artworks in the NGV Collection, spanning from antiquity right through to contemporary art, we are fortunate to be the cultural custodians of some of the most exquisite and precious works of art. Therefore in an effort to highlight these great treasures we have organised a series of free floor talks and lectures, presented by curators and external experts, in order to showcase art works that have never been on display before or rarely exhibited.
This month join us on Thursday 17 October at 12.30pm as Dr Petra Kayser Curator, Prints & Drawings, NGV kick starts this free series by looking at Renaissance portraiture, focusing on two prints depicting the German theologian Martin Luther. The following week Dr David McInnis, Lecturer, English and Theatre Studies, The University of Melbourne will give insights into the Shakespearean play King Lear, contextualising various prints in our collection. While Associate Professor Alison Inglis, The University of Melbourne will explore the idea of the ‘doomed woman’ in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their followers paying particular attention the NGV’s collection of the figure of the Lady of Shalott, and the highly original interpretation of this Arthurian myth by the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt and its influence on his contemporaries.
Floor Talk: Martin Luther and Renaissance portraiture
Thu 17 Oct, 12.30pm
This talk considers the portrait and its development as a genre during the Renaissance, from portrait medals to panel paintings, and focuses on two sixteenth-century prints depicting the German theologian Martin Luther. The portrait of Luther by Lucas Cranach, which shows him disguised as ‘Junker Jörg’ while he was in hiding, was made to gather support for the charismatic Reformer and his revolutionary ideas. Such propaganda images circulated in the new mass medium of print, and were highly effective in establishing the public profile of an individual and their cause.
Speaker Dr Petra Kayser, Curator, Prints & Drawings, NGV
Free, Meet information desk, NGV International
Floor Talk: Shakespeare’s King Lear
Thu 24 Oct, 12.30pm
The romanticised notion of Shakespeare as a lone genius (and an elitist at that) did not emerge during Shakespeare’s own lifetime. Shakespeare was a brilliant playwright who was also an actor and a shareholder in his company, and therefore had a vested interest in its commercial success. In this floor talk, David McInnis will discuss Shakespeare’s Jacobean masterpiece, King Lear (1605), in its historical context as a play performed in the public theatre, and will consider the significance of the play in its own time, focusing in particular on the arresting opening scene, the spectacle of the storm, and the pathos of the tragedy’s ending. The NGV’s eighteenth-century prints depicting characters and scenes from Lear will be discussed as later imaginings of these key moments, and as part of an important cultural shift that elevated Shakespeare to a bard-like status that was unheard of when he was still writing.
Speaker Dr David McInnis, Lecturer, English and Theatre Studies, The University of Melbourne
Free, Meet information desk, NGV International
Lecture: ‘The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side’: Doomed women in the art of the Pre-Raphaelites
Sat 26 Oct, 3.30pm
In this lecture, Alison Inglis will explore the idea of the ‘doomed woman’ in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their followers. She will focus her discussion on the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, and pay particular attention to the figure of the Lady of Shalott, and the highly original interpretation of this Arthurian myth by the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt and its influence on his contemporaries.
Speaker Assoc Prof Alison Inglis, The University of Melbourne
Free, Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International