Nestled among the rolling hills of the Yarra Valley, TarraWarra Museum of Art has long been a place where art, nature and ideas meet. The Museum’s new Eva and Marc Besen Centre extends this vision, offering a cultural hub for learning, gathering and celebrating creativity. Designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects and recognised with the 2025 Victorian Architecture Award for Public Architecture, the Centre houses something truly unique: a Visible Art Storage that reveals the depth and breadth of TarraWarra’s collection of modern and contemporary Australian art.
The Eva and Marc Besen Centre honours the vision and generosity of the Museum’s founders, Eva and Marc Besen, whose support established TarraWarra in 2003 as Australia’s first privately funded public art museum. Their belief in the power of art to enrich communities’ lives on in this new building, which makes the Museum’s nationally significant collection more accessible than ever before. Instead of being hidden away, around 300 works are stored behind a 46-metre-long glass wall, allowing visitors to glimpse treasures from across generations of Australian art.
Taking this experience further, TarraWarra has introduced Behind the Glass tours, guided tours into the visible storage led by Museum staff. These tours invite visitors into the heart of the collection, creating an intimate encounter with artworks. Walking among racks, participants encounter paintings and sculptures by many of Australia’s most important artists, including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Clement Meadmore, Rosalie Gascoigne, John Olsen, Patricia Piccinini, Jeffrey Smart and Howard Arkley. Each tour is shaped by a TarraWarra Museum guide, who shares insights into the works, the stories behind them, and the ongoing care that ensures their preservation for future generations.
Far from being static, the visible storage is a living space, with works regularly rotated as they move in and out for exhibition, conservation and loan. This constant activity reflects the Museum’s role as both a custodian of the past and an active participant in the present. Visitors gain a deeper understanding of what it means to care for a collection and the delicate balance between protection and accessibility, between conserving history and sharing it with the public.
For the Yarra Valley community, Behind the Glass offers a rare chance to encounter Australian art history close to home. It enriches the region’s identity as a place where culture and nature thrive together, complementing the vineyards, trails and landscapes with a world-class cultural experience. Many visitors pair a tour with a walk across the Museum’s grounds or a long lunch in the Valley, making it part of a day that engages both the senses and the imagination.
At its core, the Behind the Glass tours reflect TarraWarra’s commitment to connecting people with art in meaningful ways. Whether you are a lifelong art enthusiast or curious to discover what lies beyond the gallery walls, these tours open a window into the Museum’s evolving collection and the vision that has shaped it. They offer a moment to pause, to learn, and to see Australian art in a new light right here in the Yarra Valley.
