A microcosm of modernity

For a regional city of fewer than 50,000 residents, Shepparton has pulled off a remarkable cultural coup. Currently on view at Shepparton Art Museum are thirty-seven works by some of the defining figures of European modernism, never before seen in Australia.

Drawn from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Facing Modernity: Degas to Picasso brings together paintings and sculptures by artists including Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and Salvador Dalí. Compact in scale but ambitious in scope, it traces a century of artistic upheaval, from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism through Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism to postwar abstraction.

The exhibition’s calibre is due in large part to the generosity of New York philanthropists Julian and Josie Robertson, whose collection has significantly enriched Auckland Art Gallery’s holdings of modern art. The Robertsons, passionate collectors with a longstanding connection to New Zealand, donated a substantial group of works to the gallery, fifteen of which appear in Facing Modernity. Formalised following Julian Robertson’s death in 2023, the bequest transformed the institution’s collection of European modernism.

Speaking about the couple’s decision to donate to Auckland rather than a major museum in New York, Sophie Matthiesson, Senior Curator of International Art at Auckland Art Gallery, explains that “their fear was that these pictures, if they gave them to a New York museum, would end up in the basement; a bit like sending coal to Newcastle.”

It was an astute act of philanthropy. Rather than disappear into the reserves of a vast metropolitan institution, the works entered a collection where they could be seen, interpreted, and valued as central holdings. In many ways, that same logic underpins their presentation in Shepparton rather than a major state gallery.

“We always had it in mind that we would travel these works across the Tasman,” Matthiesson says. “Our then director Kirsten Lacy was a former director of the Shepparton Art Museum. She maintained a good relationship with Shepparton and it had this wonderful new international facility . . . I see it as part of the revival of regional art galleries, where they’re upscaling, they’re expanding their ambitions. It’s very important to see the regions can draw people back into them instead of continue the cultural drain.”

The Shepparton exhibition follows Paths to Modernity, held at Auckland Art Gallery between 2024 and 2026, a broader exhibition that attracted close to half a million visitors. This iteration is more concise, but its intimate scale allows viewers to move between movements in art history without the fatigue or spectacle often associated with blockbuster exhibitions.

That intimacy is one of the exhibition’s great strengths. Cézanne’s 1875 painting of his father’s house in Aix-en-Provence is among its quiet triumphs, a restrained composition that hints at the structural innovations to come. André Derain’s landscape of L’Estaque (see our August 2026 cover) pulses with Fauvist colour, while Henri Matisse’s The Spanish Woman, 1922 revels in decorative bravura, the sitter leaning against a striped tablecloth before floral wallpaper, her direct gaze anchoring the painting’s chromatic exuberance.

Elsewhere, the exhibition moves gracefully between the canonical and the less familiar. Duncan Grant’s portrait of a heavily pregnant Vanessa Bell and Henri Fantin-Latour’s delicate still life of roses offer quieter pleasures, while the sculptural works bring a different kind of vitality: a Degas bronze of a woman exquisitely balancing while pulling on a stocking and a dynamic Rodin figure of a dancer reaching back to catch her foot. Iconic works by Jacob Epstein, Piet Mondrian, and
Dalí complete the arc, which culminates in a luminous abstract seascape by Helen Frankenthaler from 1965–6.

Curated as a thematic journey through modernism, Facing Modernity succeeds not only as a concise survey of one of art history’s most transformative periods, but as a demonstration of what regional institutions can achieve when ambition, philanthropy, and curatorial vision align.

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Victoria Hynes is a visual arts writer and editor based in Sydney.

 

Shepparton Art Museum
23 May to 20 September 2026
Victoria

Originally published in print – Art Almanac, August 2026 issue, pp. 24–28