Ticketed entry is in place to safely manage your visit so please book ahead. Need to cancel or rejig? Email bookings@npg.gov.au
Janine Burke (b. 1952) art historian, biographer, novelist and curator, graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1974. That year she co-curated Australian Women Artists: 1840-1940 at the Ewing and George Paton Gallery; the book that evolved from the exhibition remains a standard Australian art text. In 1975, Burke co-founded the Victorian Women’s Art Movement and LIP, a feminist arts journal. From 1977 to 1982, she lectured in art history at the Victorian College of the Arts; she resigned to write full-time and spent the some years living in Italy and France writing fiction. Second Sight won the 1987 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. While a trustee of Heide Museum of Modern Art between 1996 and 2005, she wrote books and curated exhibitions about the Heide modernist circle including Dear Sun (2001), Joy Hester.(2001) and Australian Gothic: A life of Albert Tucker (2003). Recently, she curated Sigmund Freud's Art Collection: An Archaeology of the Mind for Monash University Museum of Art and Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney. In Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing she examined the transformative effects of nature on Picasso, Virginia Woolf and Monet, among others. Personal View: Photographs 1978-1986, a book of her photographs of the Melbourne artworld, was published by Monash University Publishing in May 2011, coinciding with an exhibition of the photographs at the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery. Her most recent publications are The Heart Garden (2012), a fourth book about Heide; and Nest: The art of birds (2012).
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2012
© Estate of Robert Rooney
Accession number: 2012.104
Copyright image request form
Request a digital copy of an image for publication
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.
Explore portraiture and come face to face with Australian identity, history, culture, creativity and diversity.
Timed ticketing, location, accessibility and amenities
We depend on your support to keep creating our programs, exhibitions, publications and building the amazing portrait collection!