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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Susan Chenery

‘We never thought we’d have a Monet on our farm’: $174m artwork heads to regional Australian gallery

Claude Monet’s Meules, milieu du jour (Haystacks, midday), being hung at the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Center on Wednesday.
Claude Monet’s Meules, milieu du jour (Haystacks, midday), being hung at the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre. Photograph: Tweed Shire Council

In late October an armoured van travelled through the flat cane fields of the Tweed Valley, in northern New South Wales. Carrying its precious cargo past tractors ploughing the earth after the cane burn-off, the fortified van came to a stop in what was, until relatively recently, a cow paddock.

It was here in this bucolic setting that a $174m impressionist masterpiece, in a specialised crate to insulate it from heat and vibration, was unloaded into the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre at Murwillumbah.

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