Sally Grant

Sally Grant is a freelance arts and culture writer based in New York. Born and raised in Scotland, a working holiday visa first brought her to Australia. She subsequently completed her undergraduate degree and PhD in Art History and Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. She is an Honorary Research Associate of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies, where her scholarly research focuses on the art and experience of eighteenth-century Venice and the Veneto villa.

McQueen (Bleecker Street)

ABR Arts • 07 September 2018

In old interview footage included in the documentary McQueen, the late British designer Lee Alexander McQueen states, ‘If you want to know me, just look at my work.’ Relatively few had the privilege of seeing his extraordinary designs on the runway firsthand. Many more got to witness the results of his impeccable craftsmanship and raw, romantic vision at Savage Beauty, the landmark exhibition ... (read more)

Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia

ABR Arts • 28 August 2018

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this review contains images or names of people who have since passed away. During 2015 and 2016 the exhibition No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting travelled to different venues in the United States. Drawn from the collection of an American couple, Debra and Dennis Scholl, the featured works were by ... (read more)

Letter from New York

ABR Arts • 31 July 2018

Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele: 1918 Centenary (Neue Galerie) In 1993 Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library held an exhibition entitled Nothing but Degeneracy: Modernism at The Dial, which consisted of documents from the library’s archival holdings ... (read more)

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

ABR Arts • 29 May 2018

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest blockbuster, is dazzling. Organised by Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the museum’s Costume Institute, the exhibition brings together contemporary fashion designs with the imagery of the Roman Catholic Church by which they were inspired. The featured outfits are presented on mannequins inters ... (read more)

'The Brodie set: Muriel Spark’s "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"' by Sally Grant

June-July 2018, no. 402 • 25 May 2018

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw the film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . As a young girl growing up in north-east Scotland, I didn’t know that it had been adapted from a 1961 novel of the same name by a writer known for her keen observational skills and biting wit called Muriel Spark, or that the story had first appeared, almost word for word, in the pages of The Ne ... (read more)

On Country: Australian Aboriginal art from the Kaplan–Levi Gift (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

ABR Arts • 10 October 2017

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this review contains images or names of people who have since passed away. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is known for its large-scale, ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions. These are usually impressive, often enlightening. But sometimes it can be even more rewarding (and less exhausting) to visit a show on a much smaller scale. ... (read more)