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.

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.

NPPP 2019 call for entries

National Photographic Portrait Prize call for entries

National Photographic Portrait Prize entries now open, closing on 22 October 2018.

Collection: Icons

Volume Two

When a portrait communicates determination and individuality as boldly as these do, it has the potential to become an iconic image. For the Gallery’s 20^th birthday this display brings together a group contemporary photographic portraits of inspiring women and men.

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.

Canberra Symphony Orchestra Australia Series

Thursday 25 October 2018

6:30 – 8:30pm

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra presents Triple Concerto, a concert of cutting-edge classical Australian music featuring the bassoon, harp and clarinet, highlighting the brilliance of three Australian composers.

Spring Festival

Sand and Sky

Sunday 28 October 2018

11:00am – 3:00pm

Celebrate Children’s Week and Canberra’s spring season at our free Spring Festival.

The Portrait piper

Sunday 28 October 2018

11:30am – 12:00pm; 12:30 – 1:00pm; 2:00 – 2:30pm

Explore the Gallery’s portraits in a musical tour led by flautist Eliza Shephard, with whistlestop story enactments by Zsuzsi Soboslay to bring the portraits to life. Limited places.

Construct-a-kite

Sunday 28 October 2018

11:00am – 3:00pm

Make your own kite, then send it soaring! Try a simple shape, challenge yourself with a more complex form, or be brave and engineer your own design.

The reconciliation place hearthstone represents the Yuriarra Moth Stone, which was used to cook Bogong moths

Bogong moths

Sunday 28 October 2018

11:00am – 3:00pm

Discover the intertwined histories of people, places and Bogong moths, and create a badge inspired by the annual migration.

Sand in your eyes

Sunday 28 October 2018

11:00am – 3:00pm

Watch a man and his horse emerge from the sand heap! Sand In Your Eyes’ champion sand sculptor Den Massoud will be crafting a portrait from the Gallery’s collection.

More events

Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and David R. L. Litchfield at Villa Favorita, Lugano, Switzerland, 1989 © Nicola Graydo

The Thyssen Art Macabre

by Angus Trumble, 28 September 2018

Books seldom make me angry but this one did. At first, I was powerfully struck by the uncanny parallels that existed between the Mellons of Pittsburgh and the Thyssens of the Ruhr through the same period, essentially the last quarter of the nineteenth century.