INTERVIEW David K Shields
PHOTOGRAPHY David Roche
From a world-class gallery for contemporary Chinese art to an acoustically extraordinary performance space, to a vast private collection accessible to all – the third and final part of our introduction to Dr Judith Neilson explores the role of art, music, and beauty in her vision for a better world.
There is a moment in conversation with Judith Neilson when she is asked whether she ever feels torn between traditional approaches to art patronage and more disruptive, modern ones. Her answer is immediate and utterly characteristic: “I’m a bit of a free thinker. I sort of go my own way.”
It is a small exchange, but it tells you a great deal. Because the art-related dimensions of her philanthropy are not the product of a conventional collector’s impulse – the accumulation of prestige, the performance of taste. They are expressions of the same philosophy that drives her support for women in rural Uganda and journalists in under-resourced newsrooms: a belief that beauty, like truth, is not a luxury. It is a necessity for societal survival. And it should be accessible to everyone who has any interest in it, regardless of their circumstance.
The White Rabbit Gallery
At the visible centre of Neilson’s artistic philanthropy stands the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney – a world-class institution she created to give contemporary Chinese art the platform it deserves in the Western world. It is now a globally recognised venue for 21st-century Chinese cultural expression: a space where the richness, complexity, and evolving narratives of Chinese art are not merely displayed, but celebrated and interrogated.
The Gallery operates free of charge. That decision is not incidental. It is the point.
In a period of growing polarisation between East and West – when headlines about China tend toward the geopolitical and the adversarial – the White Rabbit Gallery offers something different: an invitation to sit with the work of individual artists, to encounter their voices on their own terms, and to find in that encounter something that resists easy categorisation. Art, Neilson understands, can humanise the “other” in ways that political discourse rarely manages. It allows audiences to see beyond stereotypes and beyond the news cycle, toward the lived experience of people whose lives and imaginations are as rich and varied as any other’s. Her patronage provides the tools for artists to tell those stories across borders – a counter-narrative to the fracturing of our world.
Phoenix Central Park
If the White Rabbit Gallery is where art is seen, Phoenix Central Park is where music and performance are heard – and felt, in the fullest sense of the word.
Designed by two of Australia’s most acclaimed architectural firms – John Wardle Architects for the gallery wing and Durbach Block Jaggers for the performance space – Phoenix Central Park won the Cultural Building of the Year award at the 2021 World Architecture Festival. It is not difficult to understand why. Its semi-domed structure, central garden separating the gallery and performance elements, and extraordinary diffusive acoustic design make it a venue of rare intimacy and sonic sophistication. The space itself is a work of art.
But its architectural distinction is in service of something more than aesthetic ambition. Phoenix Central Park is designed to accommodate the full range of musical and performance expression – from solo recitals and chamber music to experimental and contemporary work – and to make that range genuinely accessible. Ticketing operates through a free ballot system, ensuring that the experience of world-class performance is not determined by the ability to pay. Here again, Neilson’s overarching vision is structural, not incidental: the building and the programme are inseparable from the principle.
Dangrove
Less publicly visible, but no less significant, is Dangrove – the home of Neilson’s private collection of contemporary Chinese art, and a facility that is as philosophically considered as it is practically impressive.
Spanning 10,000 square metres of internal space, Dangrove is designed for adaptability. Exposed utilities allow for easy changes and retrofits; works of any scale can be displayed and regularly rotated to reflect the ever-evolving nature of both the collection and the broader contemporary art landscape. Its Great Hall serves as a multi-purpose performance and recording space – used by developing and established musical artists alike – extending the reach of Neilson’s support for the performing arts beyond the public venues that bear her imprint.
What art does that nothing else can
In her advice to anyone drawn to any of the pursuits she cares about, Neilson is characteristic in her directness: “Don’t stop, just try it. If you don’t do it immediately it’s never, ever going to be done – you’ve just got to lean into it, and do it.”
She speaks about artistic practice with the same pragmatism she applies to everything else. If someone is working with watercolour and you see that plastic is a better idea, use plastic. Look at what’s working. Build on it. Keep moving. It is the philosophy of a free thinker – someone for whom the categories of “traditional” and “disruptive” are less interesting than the question of what actually serves the work.
And the work, in her view, is always in service of something larger: the creation of spaces where truth and beauty can reach the people who need them. Where creativity can function as a bridge in times of division. Where an artist’s voice – whether it emerges from a Chinese painter’s studio, a Zimbabwean wildlife ranger’s lived experience, or a musician rehearsing in a space that has been made available to them precisely because someone believed their work mattered – can be heard.
A life that instructs by example
This is the third and final post in our brief introduction to Judith Neilson’s philanthropy. Across journalism, women’s empowerment, and now art, music, and cultural exchange, what emerges is a portrait of someone whose generosity is matched only by the rigour of her thinking about how generosity actually works.
She is not interested in the performance of giving. She is interested in the conditions that allow people to flourish. In an era when populism has reduced so much discourse to noise, and when those with the capacity to improve lives too often choose only to advance their own, she offers a different account of what wealth and power can be for.
With humility. With tenacity. And, in her own words, with an absolute insistence on not stopping.
The full conversation – candid, searching, and rare – is in Resolve, Issue 3 of It’s Interval. We are profoundly grateful to her for it.
Featured in It’s Interval RESOLVE – view full story and more from this issue!