For two years, the doors of the Brett Whiteley Studio in inner city Sydney, have been closed. Behind the scaffolding and roofless structure, however, something more significant than a museum refurbishment has been unfolding.
It had been on the brink of no return, just as Whiteley himself had been in 1969, when he left New York after his dealer refused to exhibit his epic multi-panel painting American Dream. Vacating their Chelsea Hotel apartment, the family headed to Fiji via London intending never to return to Australia. Instead, circumstances forced them home, changing the course of Australian art.
