on 8/10/03 11:54 PM, Douglas Barbour at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> the next time I get down there I want to
> see that new gallery in Melbourne, only hoping that wonderful god/animal
> thjat used to stand outside the old one still has a place of eminence
> outside the new one...
Federation Square with its new Ian Potter Galleries of Australian Art will
absorb you, Doug, esp for its Aboriginal Art.
By the time you get here, the reopened galleries in St Kilda Road whose
eminent god-animal you recall will be enjoying their extra space for
European and Asian art.
Whether the beast will still be there, I dunno.
That makes two great homes for the National Gallery of Victoria so quaintly
named.
(Potter's benefactions cause confusion - his name attaches also to the art
museum at Melbourne University...)
Two Sundays out of a contracted four have now had me and Berenice my singing
friend perform 'Charles Conder in Words' at the NGV Fed Sq show of Conder
(down from Sydney)... Acoustics favourable, our scripts packed with his
favoured Herrick and a little Australiana for Conder's plein-air 1889 stint
in Melbourne (also we acted out the end of A Doll's House to suggest the
advent of the New Woman controversy here that year, with Conder rapt by the
London actress...); so many of his paintings link to poems, and we feel
Verlaine's 'Colloque Sentimental' (tr.Symons) had a palpably sardonic
pathos, and that our excerpt from 'A Toccata of Galuppi's' - sung! - was
heard intently. My respect for Browning is reawakened.
Max Richards, Melbourne
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