An Italian day of culture

Round up of our NGV Winter Masterpieces Daytrip - Wed 30th July

Some think we're a little nuts to head out at the crack of dawn into the freezing cold to go and see some foreign paintings - but it's now our 2nd Winter Masterpieces daytrip and we're really getting to enjoy the frosty start.

It was a culture packed day which kicked off with some French pastries and the obligatory coffee followed by a casual stroll to our first stop, The Melbourne Arts Centre, where we spent some time ogling their fantastic in-house art collection including works by Charles Blackman, Inge King, Colin Lanceley, John Olsen (right) and Fred Williams.

Next was a guided tour through the extraordinary collection of Italian Masterpieces from Spain's Royal Court, Museo Del Prado. My personal favourite was a divine and captivating work by Caravaggio which superbly illustrated his unique and ground breaking light and shade technique called Caravaggism.

After enjoying a superb Italian lunch at La Camera, we wandered over to Ian Potter Gallery to admire Inge King's collection of post modern sculptures - a beautifully curated exhibition of her works since she arrived in Australia featuring the progression of scaled models that are a precursor to her enormous public pieces (see left) - not bad for a 98 year old women who is still hard at it.

A final stop at The Westin Hotel to check out some of Bill Henson's photograph was the perfect precursor to our wind down at Hardware Lane, and in keeping with the Italian theme of the day, a few glasses of red and aperativo. Phew! We were truly exhausted and cultured out, but no too tired to plot out our next day trip! Stay tuned!