Van Gogh and the Seasons podcast/tour

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Curated by Sjraar van Heugten, the former Head of Collections at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, the NGV's VAN GOGH AND THE SEASONS presented the largest collection of Van Gogh artworks to ever travel to Australia. Presented in four sections devoted to the seasons, the exhibition explored the theme of nature in fifty artworks from Van Gogh's oeuvre. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: My contribution was as researcher and scriptwriter developing a 10,000-word manuscript for the podcast accompanying the exhibition. The script comprised two halves: one provided contextualising art-historical information narrated by David Stratton, film reviewer and historian. The other half comprised edits of Van Gogh's letters, with the voice of Van Gogh brought to life by David Wenham, film, theatre and television actor. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The manuscript gave a comprehensive overview of Van Gogh's life and work, which required extensive research into one of art history's most complex and controversial characters. The manuscript required negotiating this complex art-historical terrain, as well as a nuanced understanding of Van Gogh's writing - the artist has contributed one of art history's most profound and extensive compendiums of artist's letters and writings. The 60-minute podcast drew together techniques and approaches from art history and criticism, documentary filmmaking, scriptwriting, and radio and podcast production. The content was peer-reviewed by the NGV's senior curators of International Art and Sjraar van Heugten, a leading global scholar on Van Gogh. The creative work had an audience of 27,656 through iPod touch devices hired onsite, with numbers significantly increased by downloads (numbers not available) from the Van Gogh microsite, which remains as a project archive into the future.