So I spent last Sunday at Heide, or to use it's formal name - the Heide Museum of Modern Art, It's a place I think about going a lot but never do, but a Photogrpahy exhibition of Mam Ray and Max Dupain was enough to get me over the line, but of course the photos today aren't of that exhibition they are from the sculpture park - which you can actually get into at any point if you wish.
So what is Heide, well It all began back in 1934 when Sunday and John Reed, a couple with a deep love of art and ideas (as well as a fair amount of inherited money, bought a rundown dairy farm in Bulleen. They named it “Heide” as a nod to nearby Heidelberg, home of the famed Heidelberg School of painters. Over time, Heide became something far more than a home. it was the beating heart of Australia’s modern art movement. What was the outskirts of Melbourne in 1934 is now a middle ring suburbs so this is a little bit of a refuge from the suburbs.
The Reeds opened their doors to a whole generation of avant-garde artists who would go on to shape Australian art. Their home became a creative commune for the “Heide Circle,” a group that included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester (who I must admit I'd not heard of before visiting but I was very impressed with her work), John Perceval, and Danila Vassilieff. Much of the famous Ned Kelly series by Nolan was painted right there in their dining room. It was indeed quite a odd feeling to be in a dining room of a house where something this famous (to Australians at least) was painted.
The Reeds weren’t just hosts; they were active patrons, publishers, and provocateurs, helping launch modernist art and the radical Angry Penguins journal, which shook up conservative Australia in the 1940s.
This 'house' is really a on wooden cottage, like literraly about 5 rooms, and nothing to write hom about, and is one of the three buildings on the site today, there is a modern very tradtional art gallery, this original cottage and my favourite building....
In the 1960s, the Reeds had a bold new dream—a home that would itself feel like an artwork. They commissioned architect David McGlashan to design Heide II, a stunning modernist limestone house they described as “a gallery to be lived in.” This is now a gallery, where you make a turn around a corner and realise you are in their shower, it's quite odd.
After their deaths, the property was sold to the Victorian Government, and in 1981 it officially opened as the Heide Museum of Modern Art. As mentioned there is the three buildings and then what was the grounds of the properity which spreads across 16 acres, complete with sculptures, including some of the ones I took photos of (and one Bin, although it might be modern art it's hard to tell)
I find the Reeds interesting, they weren't artists themselves, if you were cynical you would say they were rich people who had the luxury to play around with artists but then again isn't that the best way to spend money, and isn't it worth the legacy?
