Qualla: National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tenniscourtisland, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1973 the Australian government paid A$1.3 million for a painting most of its citizens thought a child could have made. Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles - a vast, dripped tangle of colour - cost more than any contemporary American work had ever fetched, and because the gallery's director could not authorise a purchase that large, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam approved it himself and let the public know the price. The country erupted. Newspapers raged about waste; the painting became a symbol of everything people loved or loathed about the Whitlam years. Half a century on, Blue Poles has been valued near half a billion dollars, and the howls of 1973 sound like the best art investment the nation ever made.

Image: Tenniscourtisland | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery of Australia: Eighty Years in the Waiting

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BriMiDra, CC BY-SA 4.0. The gallery took a remarkably long time to arrive. The painter Tom Roberts had lobbied prime ministers for a national collection as far back as the federation era, and a committee began gathering portraits in 1911. But governments always found more urgent priorities - the buildin...

Image: BriMiDra | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery of Australia: A Temple of Raw Concrete

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Quincepaste, CC BY-SA 4.0. When it opened in 1982, the gallery was a statement in concrete. Madigan built in the late Brutalist style, all angular masses and rough bush-hammered surfaces, the whole structure governed by the geometry of the triangle - you see it in the coffered ceilings, the stair towers, t...

Image: Quincepaste | CC BY-SA 4.0

National Gallery of Australia: Two Hundred Hollow Logs

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason Antony (Alexanderino), CC BY 2.5. The most powerful work in the building is also the quietest. The Aboriginal Memorial is an installation of 200 hollow log coffins - dupun - the traditional bone vessels of Arnhem Land. Conceived by the curator Djon Mundine and made by 43 artists from Ramingining, the number is no...

Image: Jason Antony (Alexanderino) | CC BY 2.5

National Gallery of Australia: The Largest Collection of Australian Art on Earth

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arthur Streeton, Public domain. Beyond its famous foreigners, the gallery holds the finest collection of Australian art in existence - more than 166,000 works in all. Its first director, James Mollison, built it from almost nothing, securing Sidney Nolan's haunting Ned Kelly series, thousands of works donated b...

Image: Arthur Streeton | Public domain