Talk: Virginia Rigney and Anthony White

Join us for a discussion during the Taglietti: Life in Design exhibition on Friday 14 August from 4-5:30pm in the Design Gallery of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne.

Hear Professor Anthony White speak about 1950s Italian Art, such as the work of Lucio Fontana (a collaborator of Taglietti’s and whose work features in the exhibition) and the pivotal role these interdisciplinary collaborations had on the development, representation, and exploration of an Italian design culture, both domestically and internationally, that continues to resonate to this day. With Virginia Rigney, curator of the Canberra edition of Taglietti: Life in Design, White will discuss the positioning of Italian art within the 1940s and 50s Milanese design community, and the interactions between Taglietti and a series of  interdisciplinary creatives prior to his departure for Australia, thus contextualising inspirations that lie behind Taglietti’s diasporic oeuvre.

Anthony White is Associate Professor and Head of the Art History and Art Curatorship Programme at the University of Melbourne, specialising in modern and contemporary art. He is the author of Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism (2020) and Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch (2011), and co‑author of Variations (2023) and Art as Enterprise (2016).

After a PhD from Harvard (2000) Anthony was Curator of International Painting and Sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia (2000–2002) and has held visiting posts at NYU, CASVA and ANU. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and SSHRC, and was President of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (2014–2018).

Virginia Rigney is a Curator, Writer and Creative Producer who has worked with artists, designers and collections to develop exhibitions, publications, digital platforms, installations, short films, and public programs within museums for over 35 years. Her curatorial practice also embraces the expanded field of temporal and permanent public art.

Virginia joined CMAG in 2018 in the role of Senior Curator Visual Arts. Her most recent curatorial projects there include Taglietti: Life in Design (2025-6), Materiality…But not as we Know it (2024), eX de Medici - Sidney Nolan - Guns and Flowers (2023-4), Mandy Martin: From Queanbeyan to New York 1978-1984 (2021-2) and the co-curation of Canberra/Kamberri Place & People, which was awarded the 2023 AMAGA Award for Best Permanent Collection Exhibition.