A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra titled The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Her Parts invites visitors to touch, play with, and even inhabit the art – offering an interactive experience designed for all ages and challenging traditional museum etiquette.
The exhibition has been created by artist and Sydney College of the Arts senior lecturer Dr Sanné Mestrom and runs alongside the Cézanne to Giacometti exhibition. The installation responds to works by modernist masters including Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Klee, and Giacometti through touchable sculptures, drawing systems and immersive spaces. It invites audiences to rethink the way we engage with art and challenges how women are represented in the modernist canon.
Designed for playful learning, the exhibition features 3D construction activities, bronze reliefs and tactile forms that encourage co-creation across generations.
“This is real art that both children and adults can engage with,” Dr Mestrom said. “I tested many of these ideas in my son’s school art class. The kids showed me how they learn – through movement, touch, and curiosity. Their feedback shaped the final exhibition.”
“The most striking response has been watching children naturally understand the cubist concept of multiple perspectives through play. Children intuitively grasp that the same object can look completely different from various viewpoints – they experience this daily through their embodied movement through space and daily life. Adults, however, often need to unlearn fixed perceptual habits.”
The project is the result of Mestrom’s four-year DECRA research grant and is an example of how arts research can generate real-world impact. Her broader work on play and public space has influenced urban design policy and attracted $1.7 million in research funding.
The exhibition also contributes to the NGA’s Know My Name initiative, aiming to elevate women artists in Australian collections.
“This work emerged from my sustained investigation of female representation in Western art, particularly modernism’s fragmentation of women’s bodies. The title directly addresses how modernist artists like Picasso dismantled female forms according to male desire. As both feminist artist and researcher, I wanted to reclaim this fragmentation by transforming the passive reclining female nude into an active site of engagement,” says Dr Mestrom.
“This is about loosening the grip of hierarchy and ownership in art,” said Dr Mestrom. “My work is inclusive, it’s playable, and it’s about making space for new ways of seeing and being in spaces accessible by all.”
“I hope visitors discover that ‘perception’ of art is an active, creative process rather than passive reception – we often learn and understand things through our bodies, not just our minds. This sort of embodied knowledge is central to being a child, and also to being a practicing artist. The exhibition demonstrates that comprehensive understanding emerges through integrating multiple viewpoints – visual, tactile, and kinesthetic,” says Dr Mestrom.
The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Her Parts is on view at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until 21 September 2025.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
