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Giving and getting

The exhibition Portraits for Posterity celebrates gifts to the Gallery, of purchases made with donated funds, and testifies to the generosity and community spirit of Australians.

Unbuttoning uniforms

Sharon Peoples contemplates costumes and the construction of identity.

Some prime ministers

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

The play’s the thing

Penelope Grist charts an immersive path through Stuart Spence’s photography.

Portrait Donors

The bright-eyed Mariner

Lauded legacy

Karl James gives short shrift to doubts about the profile of General Sir John Monash.

The numbers man

Dr. Sarah Engledow tells the story of Australia's first Federal statistician, Sir George Knibbs.

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.

Listomania

Sarah Engledow describes the fall-out once Brett Whiteley stuck Patrick White’s list of his loves and hates onto his great portrait of the writer.

The Royal she

Traversing paint and pixels, Inga Walton examines portraits of select women in Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits.

Regarding Henrys

Sarah Engledow ponders the divergent legacies of Messrs Kendall and Lawson.

Generous Janice

Dr Sarah Engledow puts four gifts to the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection in context.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

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