Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations

Love doesn’t follow the rules: it rewrites them. 

Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations is a tribute to defiant expressions of the heart, celebrating true stories of the rebels of romance from the past to the present. 

This stirring new exhibition explores romantic love – and its foil, heartbreak – through State Library Victoria’s extraordinary archive of soul-baring letters, intimate diaries and rare manuscripts, amplified in powerful new music commissions by Australian artists Angie McMahon, Mindy Meng Wang, Mo’Ju and Amos Roach.  

Spanning centuries of connection and courage, meet the brave hearts who dared to love unapologetically – from same-sex couples in the Victorian era and a mid-century marriage at odds with the White Australia policy, to love outside marriage, across borders and online. 

Discover the love story of bushrangers Captain Moonlight and James Nesbitt, who met in Pentridge Prison; a mourning brooch from 1853 made of the woven hair of Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb; and the legacy of Australian music icons Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. 

The exhibition also spotlights modern expressions of the rebel heart, from mixtapes and DMs to fandoms and AI relationships, exploring how our search for connection is evolving in today’s age of digital intimacy and algorithmic matchmaking. 

Rebel Heart is a daring, defiant celebration of love’s power to connect us, challenge us and remind us that the heart wants what it wants – no matter the century. 

Find out more about Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations.