VCE Programs

Unit 2, Area of Study 1: Understand, Develop and Resolve

This tour allows students to examine the curatorial and conservation practices in Heide Modern, which features site-responsive exhibitions by contemporary artists that are in conversation with the award-winning building’s spatial qualities, designed as a ‘gallery to be lived in’. Students learn strategies used by curators and exhibition designers to show artworks from different contexts in a thematic exhibition within this unique exhibition space, and examine how curators create relationships between artworks in exhibitions, taking into consideration display, design, conservation and aesthetics in the spaces within and outside the heritage listed building.

Tours take place in Heide Modern

Unit 3, Area of Study 3: Connect: Curate, Design and Propose

It takes many people with lots of different skills to make a great exhibition. This comprehensive tour explores a current Heide exhibition in depth to investigate how curators plan, prepare and present exhibitions. Students learn about the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the exhibition-making process, how curators research and develop themes and links between artworks, the procedures and requirements involved in securing and exhibiting Australian and international works, and strategies for creating interpretative texts and catalogues. In examining how the curatorial theme is reflected in the exhibition design, students look at design strategies, spatial planning, object display techniques and lighting, and the effect of the exhibition design on the viewer experience.

Tours take place in Heide Main Galleries

Unit 4, Area of Study 3: Conserve: Present and Care

This tour will focus on the methods and considerations used to present, conserve and take care of artworks in the Heide Collection, or current exhibition. The core of the Heide Collection comprises 500 artworks assembled from the 1930s to the 1970s representing artists now regarded as central figures in the history of Australian modernism—particularly Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Albert Tucker and Danila Vassilieff, a group known as the Heide Circle or Angry Penguins. This tour will examine in depth the conservation aspects of a current exhibition at Heide, or explore Always Modern: The Heide Story in Heide Cottage. Students learn about conservation techniques and materials (e.g. climate control, lighting, gloves, display cases) used in this unique gallery space and explore a case study demonstration on a selected artwork.

Unit 1 Interpreting artworks and exploring the Creative Practice
Unit 3 Investigation, ideas, artworks and the Creative Practice

View the current exhibition in the Albert and Barbara Tucker Gallery to investigate further the creative practice of a contemporary artist in dialogue with the materials, techniques, processes and cultural context of selected artworks by important Australian modernist painter Albert Tucker (1914–1999). Students will develop deeper insights into the creative practice of contemporary and historical artists.

Tours take place in Albert & Barbara Tucker Gallery

Unit 2: Interpreting artwork and developing the Creative Practice
Unit 4: Interpreting, resolving and presenting artworks and the Creative Practice

In this guided tour of the works in Always Modern: The Heide Story students will examine the cultural context, creative practice and art works of leading figures in the history of Australian modernist art from the 1930s to 1950s, including Sam Atyeo, Moya Dyring, Danila Vassilieff, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker, John Perceval, Charles Blackman and Mirka Mora. Through analysis and discussion of the artworks (including sculptures, drawings, paintings and ceramics), Heide Educators will guide in students in understanding and applying interpretative lenses to analyse and interpret artworks. Students will consider the diverse practices of artists (materials, techniques and processes), and the role of art in society, context and personal experience.

Tours take place in Heide Cottage

Unit 3: Investigation, ideas, artworks and the Creative Practice

Heide’s Create Art Workshops provide joyful opportunities for VCE Art Creative Practice students to explore at first-hand the practices of leading contemporary and modernist artists through working with particular art elements, art principles, materials, techniques, processes and art forms. Starting with a tour of the current Heide exhibitions and the sculpture park, students retrain their eyes to see while deriving compositions and content from their surroundings, before experimenting with their own work back in the studio under the guidance of Heide’s art facilitators.

Workshops take place across Heide galleries and in the Sidney Myer Education Centre

In this program Visual Communication and Design students reflect on the architectural design process, learning how the firm McGlashan Everist worked with clients John and Sunday Reed to create Heide Modern, ‘the gallery to be lived in’. This tour enhances students’ understanding of modern and contemporary Australian architecture, and environmental, industrial and communication design. It includes a tour of the current site-responsive exhibition in Heide Modern that references the history, architecture and atmosphere of the iconic building.