Blog

In Canberra for Botticelli to Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Australia

Apr 13th, 2021 | Dr Kathleen Olive

In Canberra for Botticelli to Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Australia George Salting, born in 1835, was known to fellow students at Sydney Grammar School as a somewhat eccentric Classics scholar. When his Danish-Australian family moved to England, George developed an interest in European painting and embarked on...

Beyond Spectacle: At the NGV Triennial

Feb 5th, 2021 | Dr Nick Gordon

A single note plays in a darkened room – a C tone. It is then repeated, short + long, long + short, until you hear an unfortunately familiar pattern: short short short, long long long, short short short. It’s a distress call from a violin on a spaceship that has...

Arthur Streeton | The Unknown Streeton

Jan 10th, 2021 | Dr Michael Adcock

The ‘unknown’ Streeton might more accurately be termed the less well-known Streeton, in the sense that art galleries will usually hang his iconic Australian works in some numbers, but will tend to show only a few examples of his work done outside this country. The average visitor might see the...

Arthur Streeton: The Master of Light

Dec 10th, 2020 | Dr Michael Adcock

The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ latest blockbuster exhibition, Streeton, very correctly describes him as “The impressionist who captured Australia’s light, land and sea.” The rubric is most apposite, for the core of his work is indeed to capture the essence of our landscape saturated with bright light. However,...

The 1%: African American artists in US institutions

Oct 2nd, 2020 | Dr Nick Gordon

In 2018 Amy Sherald’s Portrait of Michelle Obama and Kehinde Wiley’s Portrait of Barack Obama were unveiled at The National Portrait Gallery. The museum contains 23,000 works in its collections, from the official portraits of presidents to the great men and women of the arts, sciences and public life in...