Scriptwriter for Degas: A New Vision

BACKGROUND: Degas: A New Vision was a major retrospective exhibition that premiered at the NGV before travelling to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition was curated by Henri Loyrette, former Director of the Musée de Louvre and a leading expert on Degas, in close collaboration with the NGV's Director, Tony Ellwood, and Houston's Gary Tinterow. Degas: A New Vision was the largest retrospective exhibition of Degas's work since the landmark exhibition of 1988, which toured Paris's Grand Palais, New York's Metropolitan Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada. Thirty years on, and just prior to the centenary of the artist's death, the NGV's major retrospective offered a new opportunity to return to Degas's rich and complex oeuvre, which has had an immense impact on modern and contemporary art. CONTRIBUTION: My contribution was as researcher and scriptwriter developing a 12,000-word manuscript for the exhibition's multimedia guide. The content was peer-reviewed by senior curators of International Art at the NGV and narrated by French-speaking Australian actress Chloé Boreham. While historical accuracy is carefully maintained, these projects also require a creative response to history and attentiveness to the performativity of the script. SIGNIFICANCE: The project required extensive research into the legacy of Edgar Degas, one of art-history's most towering and idiosyncratic case studies. Degas has been appraised in divergent and controversial ways by historians. The research required navigating this complex field of appraisal, as well as foundational knowledge of the French Impressionists and 19-century Paris. Drawing together techniques and approaches from art criticism, documentary filmmaking, scriptwriting, radio and podcast production, the 80-minute work found an audience of 12,384 through iPod touch hired onsite plus downloads (figure not available) from the Degas microsite where it will remain as a freely avilable podcast.