Because much of Matulka's later work is derivative, the early rooms take on an added interest.
Perhaps the most significant artifact in these early rooms is an original copy of the Constitution owned and signed by Franklin.
The stunning still lifes in the early rooms of this show, for instance, have clear overtones of Paul Klee and Giorgio Morandi: fantastical cityscapes, silent vessels on the tabletop.
Part of Albertoni's face has been smashed in an accident – which somehow connects Bernini's flighty genius with the cruder 17th-century images of the macabre that cast a dark shadow over the early rooms here.
The early rooms were, for me, the high point of this show, which draws heavily on the museum's extremely rich woodblock print collection, supplemented with loans from commercial galleries.
Some of the early rooms are padded out with lacklustre and irrelevant works by the British surrealists (thriftily drawn from the Tate Collection), presumably because they saw Carroll as one of their own, a surrealist avant la lettre.
It's tempting to view the mood of genteel prosperity in these early rooms as evidence of cultural cringe: that Australians preferred to take their fashion cues from far-off Europe while disparaging their own surroundings.
Central to much of the art in the early rooms is an embrace of consumer culture, much of it imported from the United States, which was beginning to have a huge impact on Europe in the 60's.
Unlike early rooms, Alexa isn't built-in.
