Artscape | Hannah Gadsby - The NGV Story (p.1) | 10pm Tuesday 24th May, ABC1

http://ow.ly/4XUsZ Artscape | In May 2011 the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) turns 150. To celebrate, Hannah Gadsby, comedian and self-confessed art lover, is off on a rollicking historical ride through the collection of one of Australia's most loved art institutions.
From the NGV's humble beginnings at the Victorian Public Library to the recently refurbished facility on St Kilda Road, HANNAH GADSBY: THE NGV STORY reveals the last 150 years hasn't all been beer and skittles. In fact, the Gallery's 'unofficial history' reads more like a great battle: full of cunning strategies and embarrassing blunders. Wealth, conflict, ingenuity and stupidity all take a role in the story of one of the finest art collections in the world.
Gadsby's humorous expose uncovers the cast of rogues and rebels who have made the NGV what it is today. People like Sir Redmond Barry, the supreme-court judge who set up the gallery in 1861, better known for sentencing Ned Kelly to hang; the stuffy 'Trustees' who pushed their version of art and culture on to Melbourne; the eccentric art patron and hero, Alfred Felton, who, from his pharmaceutical empire built after the gold rush, left a fortune to the gallery; and of course, Patrick McCaughey, the flamboyant 80's director, who is best known for buying, losing and recovering the gallery's most famous painting, Picasso's Weeping Woman.
With her trade mark dead pan wit, Gadsby asks the hard questions: How did a gallery in such a far-flung colony manage to amass such a rich collection? Which trustee didn't have a beard? Was the head of the gallery school really anally retentive? And what is art all about?
HANNAH GADSBY: THE NGV STORY is an informative historical romp with Gadsby shaking the NGV's skeletons out of the closet!

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