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Brenda L Croft and Dr Matilda House

Brenda L Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples) talks with Ngambri/Ngunnawal/Wiradjuri elder, Dr Matilda House, about her photographic portrait.

In Conversation

Brenda L Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples) talks with Ngambri/Ngunnawal/Wiradjuri elder, Dr Matilda House, about her photographic portrait.

Sean Godsell Architects

Based in Melbourne, Sean Godsell is known internationally for his distinctive residential architecture.

Lily Hatten

My daughter was struggling a lot with Impetigo and the isolation that we were experiencing. We'd been stuck in the house together for a few weeks.

Listen: Mysterious eyes

An open house, recollections of my early life: extracts from the reminiscences of David Boyd.

Lost Love, Yiyi is tired, and Waiting on the bridge, 2014

Winner, MDPA 2014

2004 Acquisition Fund

Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon was the subject of the 2004 Circle of Friends Acquisition Fund.

Breakfast

Begin your day in an elegant, convivial, award-winning building.

Stepping out

Beautiful punk love

Elliot Brown

This portrait is called Jaye and it's a photo of my friend. She's a member of the Multicultural Society in Geraldton.

The 'Multi Exposed Hand'

Photographer Jozef Vissel talks about his ‘Multi Exposed Hand’ portrait of Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon.

To arrive at hope

Penelope Grist, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2020 Prize.

Announcing... Jonathan Jones Bogong Cluster: Physically distant, socially connected

A new light installation by Jonathan Jones reflects on the importance of community through the lens of his Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi heritage, whilst also acting as a prompt for gallery visitors to maintain social distancing.

All together now, 2012

Finalist, iD2012

Sharing the dream?

In love and war

Update on Temporary Closure of the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery will close its doors from Tuesday 23 April 2019, but the public are still able to experience the home of portraiture during the four-month closure.

Conference or seminar

We can tailor our spaces to suit your conference, seminar or forum.

Dr John Janson-Moore

The Zammitt Family is part of a massive series of mine that I've been doing since early 2020, documenting COVID in and around Sydney.

Very small business

Under the ‘Old Poor Law’, people begging on the streets could be arrested, so to avoid punishment, they often pretended to commerce, offering the most marginal of goods and services.

A life shared

Wartime romance

Designing the ideal marriage

Deep foundations, shared vision

Buoyant Brack brood breeds inspiration

Domesticity’s creative maelstrom

Here’s looking at you, kid

Is he thinking of me?

Key Outcome Area 1

The attitudes and behaviours of the general community towards people with disability have been described as the single greatest barrier to full access and inclusion.

Deborah Kelly

Deborah Kelly, based between Gadigal Country, Sydney and Jerrinja Country, Currarong, is known for her multi-disciplinary, exuberant and diverse participatory collages and costumes that come to life in workshops and performances.

John McRae

An interview with the photographer.

New Chief Patron for the National Portrait Gallery

Mrs Lucy Hughes Turnbull AO has accepted an invitation to become the new Chief Patron of the National Portrait Gallery. 

National Portrait Gallery takes out top gong in MAPDA awards

The National Portrait Gallery is thrilled to be named the winner of the Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards in the category of exhibition major catalogue level B, for our publication So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

Triumphant weekend for Gallery at MAPDAs

The National Portrait Gallery has had its most successful Multimedia and Publication Design Awards (MAPDAs) ever, winning four awards across multiple categories. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the Australian Maritime Museum last Friday night.

History

How the National Portrait Gallery and its unique collection came to be

Ken Done

With a mum who was married to a tradie, you’d think it a fair chance that the baby Jesus would have grown up with a dog in the house.

David Cossini

Godfrey's amazing man. I've known him for four years now. He has a very tough story.

Memories

The second row of paintings recall stories relating to specific sites, experiences and activities.

Li Cunxin, 2017–2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AC 2018

Kristin Headlam

Basil grew into a speckled beauty – a long-legged leaper and an exceptionally vocal dog, with a great register of sounds, ascending in shock value from a whimper to a growl to a bark to a yelp that’s a violation of the ears.

Nadiah Bamadhaj

Born in Malaysia in 1968, to a Malaysian Muslim father and a New Zealander mother of Scottish descent Nadiah Bamadhaj studied Fine Arts in New Zealand, and is currently working on a PhD from Curtin University, Western Australia.

Foundation members announced

The newly-established National Portrait Gallery Foundation met for its inaugural meeting last Friday 15 May in Canberra.

National Portrait Gallery Director's tenure ends in triumph

National Portrait Gallery Director Angus Trumble is ending his five-year tenure with a flourish, after announcing that Gallery publication Dempsey’s People: A Folio of British Street Portraits 1824-1844 has been awarded the 2018 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.

Dissections: Layered portraits from the collection is now open

Dissections, showcases the hyper-realist sculptural self-portrait of artist Sam Jinks, Divide, alongside the painted portrait of philosopher David Chalmers by Nick Mourtzakis, which was commissioned by the Gallery in 2011.

Robyn Sweaney

Robyn's parents had two terriers, Wuff and Snuff. In spite of Snuff’s ominous name and a couple of close shaves – once, he jumped out of a moving car, and another time, on a long road trip, he was accidentally left behind at a petrol station – he outlived Wuff.

Catherine Livingstone, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AC 2018

Davida Allen

Going around a gallery with a child, we point to a painting of a dog and brightly ask ‘What’s that?’ If they don’t say ‘A dog’, we tell them that’s what it is. We don’t say it’s a shape inscribed by an artist that’s popularly understood to signify a dog. That’d only serve to foster a smarty-pants.

Jude Rae

Jude Rae’s high reputation rests on her austere, cerebral still lifes of gas canisters, electric jugs and jars, which she groups and rearranges for paintings that catch their difficult curves and reflections. Her self-portrait’s likewise thoughtfully composed.

William Robinson

Unique in the world, perhaps, is a bronze sculpture that fuses the age-old human portrait bronze tradition, and the later genre of the bronze pug figurine: that’d be William Robinson’s Self-portrait with pug.

L. Gordon Darling AC CMG

The Chairman, Board, Director and all the Staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Founding Patron, who died peacefully in Melbourne this morning. He was 94.

The 1850s to the 1880s

The restrained and cultivated facial hair fashions evident through the first decades of the 1800s were on the wane by the middle of the century, when hirsute faces became mainstream.

Janet Dawson

When soulmates Janet Dawson and Michael Boddy moved from Sydney to a property, Boddy was clear about why: ‘Our marriage is one long conversation - we moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.’

Lucy Culliton

Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.

Mal Meninga, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Maliganis Edwards Johnson and Alan Dodge AM 2018

Announcing... Ralph Heimans: Portraiture. Power. Influence.

In March 2024, the National Portrait Gallery will launch a major exhibition of the work of Ralph Heimans AM, the Australian artist who’s painted some of the world’s most recognisable people.

Arcadia: Sound of the sea

One night in the spring of 1970 in an old house in Whale Beach, north of Sydney, John Witzig, Albe Falzon and David Elfick put together the first issue of Tracks, playing Neil Young’s album Harvest over and over again as they pasted up galleys of type.

Noel McKenna

It’s a matter beyond dispute that in the entire history of Australian art, it’s Noel McKenna who’s painted the liveliest rendition of the head of a Chihuahua.

NPPP 2009 exhibition essay

Dr Christopher Chapman, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2009 Prize.

Anthony Anderton

An interview with the photographer.

Forum participants

Biographies of participants in the Writing lives, revealing lives forum.

Graeme Drendel

I like talking about Drendel’s pictures as if they expressed dreams of my own.

Anna Culliton

Anna Culliton never had a colouring-in book when she was little. Her parents –Tony, a filmmaker, and Stephanie, a painter – wouldn’t let her have one. Instead, they insisted on her drawing her own pictures to colour-in. 

Darren McDonald

The wild balancing act of McDonald’s home décor (is that there as a joke? where do I actually sit down? is this ironic or what? what a lovely photo of Darren and Robin in Europe!) is reflected in his own personality.

Uncommon Australians

Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.

Melati Suryodarmo

Born in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia in 1969, Melati Suryodarmo’s first degree was in international relations.

S Teddy D

S Teddy D was born in Padang, Sumatra in 1970, and studied painting at the Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Art) in Yogyakarta.

Seduce, Amuse, Entertain

Michael Desmond, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2007 Prize.

Our achievements to date

During the period 2018–20, the Gallery implemented our first Access Action Plan.

The art of Inner Worlds

Dr Christopher Chapman NPG Curator of Inner Worlds explains the development of an exhibition that spans from Surrealism to contemporary art.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.

Portrait Donors

Foundation Members

Chairman Sid Myer AM, Hayley Baillie, Tim Bednall, Jillian Broadbent AC, Patrick Corrigan AM, Marilyn Darling AC, Tim Fairfax AC, Penny Fowler AM, John Liangis, Dr Helen Nugent AC and Nigel Satterley AM.

The more things change...

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.

Less than six degrees of separation

Dr Anne Sanders NPG Curatorial Researcher investigated the lives of the pioneering psychologists whose portraits are featured in Inner Worlds.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.

A non-material and non-physical portrait

Inner Worlds features the recently commissioned portrait of world-renowned philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers by Melbourne-based artist Nick Mourtzakis.

Rick Amor: 21 Portraits

Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.

Everybody, look serious

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.

Fiona McMonagle

Fiona aims to create a dangerous situation with a flood of water on the paper, forcing each work to the point where it can fail, and then rescuing it. 

Faces of war

Lesley Harding, Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne explores Albert Tucker’s experience of World War II, his interests in the intersection between psychology and creativity, and their influence on his portrait making.