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Icons

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 20th birthday this display brings together a group contemporary photographic portraits of inspiring women and men.

Activating the space

Sandra Phillips on portraits of Indigenous activism from Cairns Art Gallery’s 2019 Queen’s Land Blak Portraiture exhibition.

Time and light

This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.

Sideshow Alley

Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

Announcing... Portrait23: Identity

In this major new exhibition marking the National Portrait Gallery’s third decade, 23 Australian artists and collectives have been invited to create portraits without constraints or boundaries.

Philanthropic donations enable otherwise unobtainable acquisition

A magnanimous portrait of Helena Rubinstein has been acquired for the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

So Fine

The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce its winter exhibition is So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history. It will open to the public from 29 June 2018.

So Fine

Ten women artists explore the possibilities of portraiture as a contemporary art form; and reinterpret and reimagine Australian history in the Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

20/20 launch speech

Dr Helen Nugent AO, Chairman, National Portrait Gallery at the opening of 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

Portrait Donors

See through me

Penelope Grist and Rebecca Ray talk to the artists in Portrait23: Identity about transcending modes of portraiture.

Study in scarlet

Angus Trumble reflects on the force of nature that was Helena Rubinstein.

Everybody, look serious

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