National Portrait Gallery

20/20

Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions

20/20 showcases the dynamic suite of new portraits commissioned to celebrate the National Portrait Gallery’s 20th year. Leaders and individualists invited by the Gallery were matched with unique artists to create distinctive contemporary portraits.

Carte-o-mania!

Drawn from the NPG’s burgeoning collection of cartes de visite, Carte-o-mania! celebrates the wit, style and substance of the pocket-sized portraits that were taken and collected like crazy in post-goldrush Australia.

Electric!

Portraits that pop!

Celebrate the Gallery’s 20th birthday summer with Electric! Portraits that pop! The collection exhibition features a mix of bright, bold and colourful paintings, prints and photographs, and buoyant video portraits.

Browse the collection

Portraits of people who have influenced and contributed to the shaping of Australian society.

Support portraiture

We depend on your support to keep creating our programs, exhibitions, publications and building collection.

Gallery to undergo renovation work in 2019

The National Portrait Gallery will undergo renovation works in 2019 to maintain the integrity of its building and the Gallery’s collection of prized artworks.

Study for John Bell as King Lear, 1998-2001 by Nicholas Harding

Spring dinner

Monday 19 November 2018

6:30 – 10:30pm

Join Director, Angus Trumble at the Circle of Friends Spring Dinner with guest speaker the inimitable John Bell AO, OBE. National living treasure, award winning actor and acclaimed director.

Art and dementia

Tuesday 20 November 2018

11:00am – 12:00pm

Interactive tour for people living with dementia and their carer.

Undercurrent Market

Friday 23 November 2018

5:00 – 8:00pm

The Undercurrent Design Market showcases an array of contemporary, leading edge Australian-made design treats.

Undercurrent Market

Saturday 24 November 2018
until Sunday 25 November 2018

10:00am – 5:00pm

The Undercurrent Design Market showcases an array of contemporary, leading edge Australian-made design treats.

Barbara Blackman, c. 1953 by an unknown artist

Seeing From Within (2016)

Directed by John Swindells

Sunday 2 December 2018

2:00 – 4:00pm

Coinciding with International Day of People with Disability, join us for a special Q&A with John Swindells, Seeing From Within director, and Karen Vickery, NPG Director of Learning Programs, followed by film screening.

Little faces

Summer series

Tuesday 4 December 2018

9:30 – 10:15am; 10:30 – 11:15am

Little children and their carer join a Learning Facilitator for playful activities in the galleries.

More events

Lustre, held by a Groom, ca. 1762 by George Stubbs

Stubbs and the horse

by Angus Trumble, 30 October 2018

One of the chief aims of George Stubbs, 1724–1806, the late Judy Egerton’s great 1984–85 exhibition at the Tate Gallery was to provide an eloquent rebuttal to Josiah Wedgwood’s famous remark of 1780: “Noboby suspects Mr Stubs [sic] of painting anything but horses & lions, or dogs & tigers.”