National Portrait Gallery

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.

20 years of portraits

Throughout 2018 we are celebrating our 20th birthday!

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 of Louis Nowra, 2018 by Imants Tillers

Exclusive Members Preview: 20/20

Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions

Friday 19 October 2018

2:00 – 3:00pm

Join us for an introduction to this exciting exhibition by Senior Curator, Christopher Chapman, with free time to explore 20/20 after.

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.

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.