How To Spend the Day In and Around Heide Museum of Modern Art

It’s easy to lose track of time at Heide Museum of Modern Art. In 1934, on a stretch of land beside the Birrarung/Yarra River, art patrons John and Sunday Reed created Heide as a place where artists could live, work and exchange ideas. What began as a private home quickly became a creative hub for some of Australia’s most influential artists.

Today, five galleries extend across the museum and sculpture park, presenting works from those early years, alongside contemporary installations. Here’s how to spend a day at Heide, a place where the flurry of the city feels far, far away.

Coffee and picnic essentials before you go

Before arriving, grab coffee at nearby Superdays Coffee, which has been serving quality brews and sandwiches from its Heidelberg corner since 2019. Dine in at the bright, plant-filled space or take your spoils to go. Next, stop by Leo’s Fine Food & Wine for picnic provisions – you’ll need them later. Pick up fresh sourdough, cheeses and something sweet, from raspberry coconut cake to fruity popsicles.

Start with the major exhibition

Once at Heide, beeline to the main building for your ticket and begin with the major exhibition. Currently on view is John Nixon: Song of the Earth 1968–2020, the first survey to span the abstract artist’s 50-year career. Showcased five years after Nixon’s passing, the exhibition is curated by his wife Sue Cramer and Heide’s senior curator Melissa Keys, and brings together his experimental, multidisciplinary practice from across the decades.

Nixon’s Experimental Painting Workshop is a series of bold, geometric constructions that explore the “relationships between colour and structure, surface and plane, material and space”, as Nixon described it. Don’t miss his unconventional self-portrait: a room filled with cloth banners and paintings stacked together, blurring the line between artist and artwork.

There’s also Anti-Music, where Nixon collaborated with creatives to produce one-off audio cassette recordings.

Step inside the Reeds’ former home

Afterwards, head to the modernist extension that was once the Reeds’ home. Here, works from Nell’s exhibition Face Everything are scattered throughout: idiosyncratic egg sculptures and ghostly figures perch in the shower and sunken lounge, while snake paintings line the walls. Curated by Lesley Harding, it’s the Australian artist’s biggest survey yet, transforming the Heide Modern building with juxtapositions of joy and grief, the everyday and the sacred, through humour, heart and an electric – almost rebellious – energy.

Lunch from the kitchen garden

For a bite, Heide Kitchen pays homage to the afternoon teas Sunday once hosted for visiting artists. The menu is winery-adjacent in style, drawing heavily on produce from the lush Heide Kitchen Gardens. Choose between dishes like a fresh baguette, gnocchi or the standout, a steak bearnaise.

Visit the original Heide cottage

After your meal, stroll up the hill to the original Heide cottage and wander through its idyllic garden, punctuated by vine-covered arches and gently babbling fountains. Inside, find displays from the museum’s permanent collection scattered across the sunroom, impressive library and cool, tiled kitchen.

Wind down with a picnic in the sculpture park

As the sun lowers, it’s time to unpack that Leo’s picnic. There are ample spots to lay down your rug: beneath the slatted roof that filters dappled light, among the sculptures, or under the shade of an ancient towering gum tree.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of Heide Museum of Modern Art.