“I’m against cancel culture,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday night at the National Gallery of Australia in one of the more  unusual gallery speeches in a while, as he unveiled Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao, the first exhibition in this country dedicated to the famous French post-impressionist artist, Paul Gauguin.

The context was, Mr Albanese said, that the best adjective he could think of when considering  Gauguin’s life and work was “problematic”, a reference no doubt to the time that the famous artist spent in French Polynesia in the company of the young women he painted.

It was nonetheless, the Prime Minister said, an occasion for rejoicing, as the extraordinary breadth and depth of the loans – especially from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas — testified to the importance of our National Gallery, which, he asserted, could only be in Canberra – roars of applause.

It had been a day of excitement at the gallery, with dancers and musicians from French Polynesia’s O Tahiti E replicating one of Gauguin’s most famous paintings, Trois Tahitiens, both in the pop-up “Savage Club”, (SaVĀge K’lub Te Paepae Aora’i) a satirical Polynesian take on 19th century European gentleman’s clubs, and in Gandel Hall where the formal reception took place.

On hand for both was the exhibition’s curator and one of the world’s most eminent historians of 19th century art, Henri Loyrette, the former director of both the Louvre Museum and Musée d’Orsay.

Loyrette outlined Gauguin’s dying years in the Marqueasas and praised the both the gallery’s initiatives and that of its Polynesian visitors in creating an expanded and renewed understanding of the Pacific.

The artist’s own introduction to the Pacific, he told those present, had been described as a mythical experience and it was his hope that visitors to the National Gallery of Australia would enjoy the very same experience.

The public opening day, Saturday, will feature more dance performances, SaVĀge K’lub “Acti.VĀ.tions” and a session with Dr Hinanui Cauchois and Dr Marine Vallée from Te Fare Iamanaha – Musée de Tahiti et des Îles – as they discuss the history of the Gauguin Museum and its connections with Tahitian and Marquesan cultures.

Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao, National Gallery of Australia, June 29-October 7.