Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi at NGV — Color, Domesticity and Immersive Scenography
For the National Gallery of Victoria's 2023 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, India Mahdavi transformed the presentation of Pierre Bonnard's art into a spatial experience of colour and domestic intimacy. Organised with the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the exhibition gathered more than 100 works by the French painter. Mahdavi's commission brought an interior designer's sensibility to an art-historical undertaking, allowing the spaces around the works to become part of the encounter rather than disappear behind a conventional white gallery wall.
From Bonnard's rooms to the visitor's route
Bonnard's paintings repeatedly return to rooms, windows, tables, gardens and intimate moments of ordinary life. His attention to colour is not merely decorative; it helps communicate the texture of memory and the atmosphere of familiar spaces. This made the exhibition a compelling invitation to consider the gallery as another kind of interior. Mahdavi's scenography draws a conceptual connection between the painter's domestic subjects and the environments in which contemporary visitors experience them.
Colour takes architectural form
The NGV describes wall and floor treatments, as well as furniture, as defining elements of the installation. These are not neutral pieces of exhibition equipment. They extend the language of painted colour into a three-dimensional framework of surfaces, thresholds and places to pause. Rather than creating a literal reconstruction of a Bonnard room, the design proposes an atmosphere that prepares the eye to recognise pattern, shifts in hue and the relationship between figure and setting.
More than a display of paintings
The exhibition combined paintings with drawings, photographs, folding screens and other material from the artist's time, much of it drawn from the Musée d'Orsay's holdings. That diversity presents a challenge for the exhibition architect: works of different scales and media must remain individually legible while belonging to a coherent sequence. The scenography connects these pieces through an overall spatial rhythm, helping a visitor experience the project as an unfolding argument about Bonnard's world.
An interior designer in the museum
The project demonstrates how exhibition design can be both expressive and disciplined. Mahdavi brings a recognisable interest in colour, texture and furniture, yet the objective is to encourage closer looking at Bonnard rather than replace his work with an installation. In this balance lies the exhibition's design significance: the museum becomes a place where contemporary interiors and historic painting can communicate across their different media.
Project credits and references
Exhibition design: India Mahdavi. Organiser: National Gallery of Victoria in partnership with Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Exhibition: 2023 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces. Photography: Lillie Thompson.
Primary project references: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/pierre-bonnard-archive/ | https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/media_release/2023-melbourne-winter-masterpieces-exhibition-pierre-bonnard-designed-by-india-mahdavi/
Comments