The Heide Story
Heide began life in 1934 as the home of John and Sunday Reed and has since evolved into one of Australia’s most important cultural institutions.
Soon after purchasing the fifteen acre property, the Reeds opened their home to like-minded individuals such as artists Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff. They nurtured a circle of artists, writers and intellectuals who contributed to Heide becoming a place for the discussion, creation and promotion of modern art and literature.
Sunday, Sweeney and John Reed, 1953, photographer unknown
John and Sunday made a lasting contribution to Australian culture through their support of creative endeavours, from helping found the Contemporary Art Society in 1938 to promoting progressive writers and the famous Angry Penguins magazine through their publishing firm Reed and Harris in the 1940s. In the mid-1950s the Reeds established the Melbourne-based Gallery of Contemporary Art and in 1958, with the assistance of friend and entrepreneur Georges Mora, they re-launched the gallery as the Museum of Modern Art of Australia. This eventually led to the formal establishment of the museum in Bulleen.
Amassing an outstanding collection of the contemporary art of their time, the Reeds outgrew their original farmhouse, now known as the Heide Cottage, and in 1963 commissioned the promising young architect David McGlashan to design a ‘gallery to be lived in’. Now regarded as an exemplar of modernist architecture in Australia, this iconic building opened as a public art museum in November 1981 following its purchase by the State Government on behalf of the people of Victoria. John and Sunday both died shortly afterwards in December 1981, ten days apart. They are remembered as champions of modern art and literature and remain two of Australia’s most important art benefactors.
Sunday in Rosa Mutabilis c.1974, photographer unknown
Lelda Sunday Reed
As the inaugural director of Heide Park and Art Gallery, I knew Sunday and John Reed along with many of the artists who are now collectively called the Heide Circle. Sunday and John had lived at Heide for almost fifty years when we started the task of turning Heide II, the property and house they had sold to the State of Victoria, into a public museum.
Meeting with them both at Heide I, I witnessed not only their passion for the arts in Australia but also the great love they had for each other. I do not see the Sunday that I knew and so admired in the sensationalised accounts of her life that have emerged since her death, and it has saddened me greatly to see her legacy reduced to monotonal imaginings.
Sunday’s commitment to sharing her wealth, knowledge, ideas and home to create opportunities and a better life for artists accelerated the development of modernism in Australia. This contribution—combined with her acute artistic judgement and the strength of her convictions, at a time when subservience was expected of women—is a significant aspect of her life that is too often forgotten…
Maudie Palmer AO
Meanjin 82.4 Summer 2023