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Victor Smorgon AC (1913-2009), industrialist and philanthropist, was the chairman of Smorgon Consolidated Industries. Smorgon emigrated to Australia from the Ukraine in 1927, and ran a kosher butchery with his two brothers in Lygon St, Carlton. Over the ensuing decades they built a vast family business empire encompassing steel, meat, paper, plastics, forestry and commercial property. In 1937, at the East Melbourne Synagogue, Victor married Loti Kiffer (later Loti Smorgon AO, who died in 2013); throughout their long marriage, they were amongst the country’s most generous philanthropists. Their enormous contributions to a wide range of medical and arts institutions in Australia include the Smorgon outpatients’ wing at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital; the Loti and Victor Smorgon Gift of Contemporary Australian Art to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and the Loti and Victor Smorgon Gallery of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. For some years running, the family has been listed as Australia’s most prosperous; the Smorgons’ four daughters, who have fifteen children between them, have perpetuated the family tradition of philanthropy.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC 2001
Accession number: 2001.32
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On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
This exhibition showcases portraits acquired through the generosity of the National Portrait Gallery’s Founding Patrons, L Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC.
Drawn from some of the many donations made to the Gallery's collection, the exhibition Portraits for Posterity pays homage both to the remarkable (and varied) group of Australians who are portrayed in the portraits and the generosity of the many donors who have presented them to the Gallery.
Over the last five years the National Portrait Gallery has developed a collection of portrait photographs that reflects both the strength and diversity of Australian achievement as well as the talents of our photographers.