Cats, Cows & Artists

Year 3 students learned about the history of the Heide Museum of Art. Paige and Ava explain:

On the Thursday 22nd November 2017, almost all the Year Three’s went to the Heide Museum.

The Heide Museum is in Heidelberg, this is where it gets its name from. The original owners of the museum are John and Sunday Reed. They always let artists stay at their house (Heide) as long as they needed to. They were very nice people. They would often let those people that were staying at their house use their art supplies. The visitors would create wonderful pieces of art to say thank you for John and Sunday’s kindness.

Their kindness extended to their pets. They had three cows, their names were Cappuccino, Espresso and ‘the other one’. John and Sunday also loved cats. They had over 30. They had a cat door in their house and an outside cat enclosure for them all to live in. Once, one of their guests was so thankful for letting them stay that they created lots of kitten clay tiles. Sunday and John loved them so much that they put them around their fire place in their kitchen.

Many years after living in their old house, Heide I, John and Sunday built a newer house virtually next door in 1964, Heide II. They had beautiful sheep wool on their couches and enjoyed using natural materials in an artistic way around their house.

Sadly, John passed away in 1981, and so did Sunday. She died 10 days later of a broken heart. What an amazing story.