Always ModernRadical Nurture

In the early decades of Heide, art and life came together in radical and intimate ways. Alongside the museum’s founders John and Sunday Reed, the artists who gathered here challenged societal expectations both in how they lived, and through the art they made. Rejecting the accepted notions of family life, they formed their own kind of community; an unconventional family bound by shared ideals, friendship and creative exchange.

Heide became their meeting place and a testing ground for new ways of living, loving and creating. The Reeds offered encouragement, space and at times financial support, nurturing artists whose ideas were often misunderstood elsewhere.

Radical Nurture celebrates Heide as both a home and a catalyst; a place where living differently became a creative act that ultimately allowed Australian modernism to take root.