The National Gallery of Victoria, like many of Melbourne’s cultural institutions, has been closed due to the pandemic. But luckily for you and thanks to the magic of the internet, you can still engage with the NGV and its offerings virtually from the comfort of your home.
If you missed out on the 2020 Triennial or simply want to revisit the highlights, you can now tour the exhibition via NGV Channel. You can view projects including 'Fallen Fruit', which consists of vibrant wall paper featuring plants, fruits and flowers being used as backdrops for the NGV's 16th and 17th century gallery, and 'Plastocene' which features large-scale handmade sea creatures made from disposed objects like plastic bags, cigarette butts and coffee cups.
You can also virtually visit some of the NGV's other exhibitions including She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism collection and the Kaws: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness exhibition. The free virtual tours are led by a curator, giving both those who have and haven’t seen the exhibitions a new insight into them.
Bookworms can engage with ebooks and curatorial essays, including an ebook from 2019 exhibition Collecting Comme and the NGV’s bi-monthly magazine. The NGV also has children’s activities you can download to keep restless kids appeased.
And let’s not forget you can still browse the NGV’s massive online collection, which includes some of our favourite artworks like ‘Anguish’ by August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck (i.e. the giant sad sheep), ‘Medieval Gathering’ by Mirka Mora and ‘Weeping Woman’ by Pablo Picasso (which was infamously stolen and held hostage in 1986).