We acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the Country on which the Art Gallery of New South Wales stands.

Louise Bourgeois Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?

A sculpture of a large spider

Louise Bourgeois Crouching Spider 2003, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Ron Amstutz

Black and white portrait of Louise Bourgeois wearing a white shirt and black jacket with grey hair pulled back.

Louise Bourgeois, 1990 © Yann Charbonnier/ADAGP. Copyright Agency, 2023

An abstracted human figure with two projecting pieces at hip level

Louise Bourgeois Woman with Packages 1949, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A dark red sculpture

Louise Bourgeois The Destruction of the Father 1974, Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Ron Amstutz

A suspended sculpture of a gold arched body

Louise Bourgeois Arch of Hysteria 1993, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A grid with 24 rectangular images. The first grid has text in capitals reading 'Ode à la Bièvre'

Louise Bourgeois Ode à la Bièvre 2007, private collection, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A black wrinkly spider with the ends of a few legs curled or hooked

Louise Bourgeois Spider IV 1996, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York, © The Easton Foundation / VAGA at ARS / Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A plinth with a kneeling pink figure which has five spools of thread attached to its nipples

Louise Bourgeois The Good Mother 2003 (detail), Collection The Easton Foundation, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A sculpture of overlapping semi-circular shapes in shades of blue, grey, green and yellow

Louise Bourgeois Clouds and Caverns 1982–89, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York, courtesy Kunstmuseum Den Haag © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

A textile sculpture of a head with four faces

Louise Bourgeois Untitled 2009, Collection The Easton Foundation, New York © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS/Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Christopher Burke

Two suspended and joined silver figures, each with buttocks, legs and arms emerging from a spiral form

Louise Bourgeois The Couple 2003, private collection, New York © The Easton Foundation / VAGA at ARS / Copyright Agency 2023, photo: Jonathan Leijonhufvud

Experience the strange beauty and emotional power of Louise Bourgeois’s art, in the largest exhibition of her work ever seen in Australia

Louise Bourgeois Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?

25 November 2023 – 28 April 2024

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Naala Badu, our north building

Lower level 2

Lower level 4, The Tank

🛈 Find out what you need to know before visiting

Tickets are dated but not timed, and can be used once
$35 adult
$32 concession
$30 member
$88 family (2 adults + up to 3 children)
$18 youth (12–17 years)
Free for children under 12 and companion card holders

2-for-1 ticket offer
Available for visits 5–10pm
Wednesdays 17 and 24 April
Friday 26, Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 April

Booked school groups
$8 student

Members can access free and discounted tickets

Tour and dining packages available

Ticket FAQs for more information, including refunds

Buy tickets Download audio experience

2-for-1 tickets and extended hours!

A special 2-for-1 offer is available for visits after 5pm on Wednesdays 17 and 24 April during Art After Hours when the whole Gallery is open until 10pm, and after 5pm on Friday 26 to Sunday 28 April when the exhibition and shop will remain open until 10pm for the final weekend of Louise Bourgeois, with curator tours and a pop-up bar on the Friday and Saturday nights.

Day and night, love and rage, calm and chaos, conscious and unconscious. Enter a world of emotional extremes in this exhibition of the art of Louise Bourgeois, one of the most influential artists of the past century.

Born in Paris in 1911 and living and working in New York until her death in 2010, Bourgeois is renowned for her fearless exploration of human relationships across a relentlessly inventive seven-decade career.

Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? reveals the extraordinary reach and intensity of her art, from her haunting Personage sculptures of the 1940s to her tough yet tender textile works of the 1990s and 2000s. It also reveals, as never before, the psychological tensions that powered her search, through a dramatic presentation in two contrasting exhibition spaces.

Moving from the well-lit rooms of ‘Day’, on lower level 2 of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ north building, to the darkened terrain of ‘Night’, downstairs in the Tank, viewers will encounter more than 120 works, including many never seen before in Australia, among them The Destruction of the Father 1974 and Crouching Spider 2003.

This exhibition, one of the most extensive ever dedicated to an international woman artist in Australia, is realised in close collaboration with The Easton Foundation, New York.

The exhibition is made possible with the support of the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW. Along with Kandinsky, also at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Tacita Dean, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, it is part of the Sydney International Art Series, bringing the world’s most outstanding exhibitions to Australia, exclusively to Sydney.

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  • Visit information and accessibility

    • Bring your own device, with earbuds or headphones, to listen to our free audio guide in the exhibition.

    • Visitors are advised that the exhibition includes adult themes and some artworks depicting nude bodies and body parts.

    • The Tank space is dark with changing light and noise, as well as moving and suspended objects.

    • A specially designed children’s trail with fun activities is available for the exhibition. Children under 12 must be supervised by an adult at all times.

    • Also available free for loan are aids for people with low vision, including magnifying glasses and large-print labels in printed booklets or on iPads. Ask at the exhibition entry.

    • Please ask a host if you’d like further information or suggestions about any aspects of the exhibition.

    • You can also download a PDF of the children’s trail (below).

    • For more information about visiting, including physical access and facilities, see Plan your visit

    • For more information about our family and access programs, see Events

The Art Gallery of New South Wales gratefully acknowledges the support of the following donors: principal exhibition patrons Rosie Williams and John Grill AO; bequest patron Neville Holmes Grace Exhibition Endowment Fund; major exhibition patron Victoria Taylor; and exhibition patrons Ginny and Leslie Green, and Alenka Tindale.

Note: This display includes works that are protected under the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Act 2013. More information

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