Created especially for NGV Members and hosted by a senior NGV curator, join us for a fascinating and rich journey through the life and life’s work of one of the most original artists of the Romantic age, William Blake (1757–1827).
Neglected and misunderstood in his own time, William Blake was a visionary whose poetry and art have entered the mainstream of world culture, with Blake’s works such as Albion Rose, (1794–1796) and the Ancient of Days, (1794) reproduced on book and album covers. From D. G. Rossetti and T.S. Eliot, to Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith, Blake’s independence of mind and emphasis upon the imagination continues to inspire a long line of creatives.
NGV Senior Curator Cathy Leahy introduces the NGV’s significant Blake collection and considers those aspects of the artist’s work that have proved so influential over the two centuries since his death.
Speaker
Cathy Leahy is Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the NGV. Cathy has curated numerous exhibitions at the NGV including William Blake, 2014; John Wolseley – Heartlands and Headwaters, 2015; Luminous: Australian Watercolours 1900–2000, 2016 and Colony: Australia 1770–1861 / Frontier Wars, 2018. In 2018 she curated the NGV blockbuster exhibition Escher x nendo: Between Two Worlds and most recently curated Fred Williams: The London Drawings, 2022.