Max Ernst Collection & Lake Sentani Figures is an episode of the series Hidden Treasures (15 × 5 mins) produced in 2006.

The National Gallery of Australia has more than 100,000 works in its collection—an extraordinary reservoir of creative vision and cultural history, from decorative arts to photography and sculpture.

Yet on a visit to the gallery, you’ll see only the tip of this iceberg. Carefully stored away are the things that can’t be placed on permanent display.

These unseen gems include works of exquisite fragility, from brilliant hand-painted fabrics to delicate works on paper. From Australia, the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Oceania, there are masks and carvings, lithographs and linocuts, set designs and stage costumes, sketchpads and handprinted books, marionettes and maquettes, teapots and textiles, and much, much more.

Now in this series of micro-docs, former director of the gallery Betty Churcher presents an insider’s guide to some of these 'hidden treasures’.

In the entertaining, accessible style for which she is renowned, Betty Churcher takes us behind the scenes, sharing with us her passion and insights. From her unique vantage point, she makes intriguing connections between a range of different objects and artists, linking them to the stories that surround them.

These are fascinating tales—about the works themselves, the people who created them and the challenge of preserving them—and a tantalising look at some of the ideas and influences that have shaped modern art across the globe.

A Film Australia National Interest Program in association with Early Works. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

What kind of art does an artist collect? At the National Gallery of Australia is part of a collection once owned by European surrealist artist Max Ernst. An eclectic collection of masks and carvings from Africa and the Americas, it’s a fascinating glimpse of Ernst’s personal passions and preoccupations as an artist.

Like other surrealists, Ernst felt himself to be at the tail end of a European tradition that had for centuries been dedicated to visual realism. To his eyes, the indigenous artists he collected had by birthright what the surrealists longed for: access to human instincts that lie buried under the layers of inhibitions and societal taboos of European civilisation.

American-born British sculptor Jacob Epstein was also an avid collector. Amongst his collection were a series of imposing figures, probably from the 18th century. Dredged up from the bottom of Lake Sentani in West Papua in 1929, they once would have formed the post of a house built over its water. Now they’re part of the National Gallery’s collection.

In Australia, it was the European surrealists who most inspired a group of young artists in Melbourne as they responded in their work to the trauma of the Second World War. Among them was Albert Tucker who was appalled by the licentious behaviour he saw in the blacked-out city streets. In the gallery’s collection is his Image of Modern Evil 24, with its brilliant red crescent a symbol of female depravity. Its watcher on a balcony is as weird and inventive as anything the European surrealists came up with, but the setting—a cast-iron balcony—makes it unmistakably Australian.