Adelaide is known for several things — beautiful churches, wineries, festivals — but what I’ll remember most about it is the life-sized sculpture of a mother breastfeeding her baby at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

As you can see, it’s not quite a human mother. What gives the life-sized piece by Patricia Piccinini even more power is its placement beside a traditional Virgin and Child by William Adolphe Bouguereau. 

Here are the two works together, each offering a different vision of motherhood. 

Now consider this Rodin sculpture placed beside Ricky Swallow’s meticulous carving of a skeleton from lime wood.

I found the juxtaposition strange and wonderful. Likewise for the presentation shown at the top of this post. 

Champa and I are both art lovers; she is an artist herself. We try to check out local museums whenever we visit a new city. Most have galleries filled with works of specific periods or genres. Adelaide’s museum had those, too, but it also challenged us to think beyond categories, as with this surrealist mashup:

Adelaide’s museum can’t compete with the volume of places like the Louvre, but it impressed us in its own way, as did the city generally. 

Next door, for instance, and also free, is the South Australian Museum, which has excellent displays of natural history and Aboriginal culture. 

Next to that is the State Library, whose historic Mortlock Wing looks like a reading room at Hogwarts.

Further up the street is an excellent botanic garden, now featuring pieces by American glass artist Dale Chihuly placed in strategic locations and lit up at night. 

We also enjoyed Adelaide’s giant outdoor Rundell Mall, decked out for the holidays, and a Central Market filled with luscious produce and specialty food shops. 

Australia’s fifth largest city has many other attractions, which we didn’t have time to visit. However, we saw enough to give it an artistic thumbs up.