Current exhibitions
Current and future | Travelling | Previous
19 February – 30 May 2010 | Childrens Gallery
Shimmer examines the many ways artists have employed colour, pattern, line and materials to give their work a special energy in the eye of the viewer. Through a display of works from the national collection, this exhibition explores various interpretations of the power of patterns.
Audrey Flack Jolie madame (Pretty woman) 1973 (detail)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1978 © Audrey Flack
Masterpieces from Paris:
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond
4 December 2009 – 18 April 2010 | Exhibition Galleries
The National Gallery of Australia is proud to present one of the most extraordinary exhibitions ever held in Australia. Soon, you won’t have to travel to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to see masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Emile Bernard, Claude Monet, Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard; you can visit them in Canberra.
Vincent van Gogh Portrait of the artist 1887
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Gérard Blot
honouring senior Indigenous artists
3 October 2009 – 14 June 2010 | Project Gallery
Elders play important roles in Indigenous communities. They are admired and respected as keepers and enforcers of law, stories and culture. They guide communities today as they have done for generations, and their ability to visualise significant stories gives rise to some of Australia’s most dynamic and stunning contemporary works of art.
Ningura Napurrula Untitled 2006 (detail)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2009
© the artist licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency, 2009
14 May – 11 July 2010 | Exhibition Galleries
Hans Heysen (1877–1968) is one of Australia’s best-known artists. He was an influential artist, one whose work was pivotal to the development of Australian landscape art in the twentieth century. Comprising 80 works, the exhibition includes oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints.
Hans Heysen The Land of the Oratunga 1932 (detail)
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
South Australian Government Grant 1937
Space invaders:
Australian street stencils and posters
30 October 2010 – 27 February 2011 | Project Gallery
Off the street and into the gallery. This exciting exhibition looks at work from the past 10 years by 35 contemporary artists from around Australia.
Prism Not titled (red shoes)
2004
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2007
Robert Dowling:
Tasmanian son of Empire
24 July – 3 October 2010 | Orde Poynton Gallery
Robert Dowling holds a special place in the history of Australian art. He was the first artist to be trained in Australia and was renowned for his paintings of pastoralists and their properties, Indigenous people and biblical themes. This is the first major exhibition of his oeuvre, including his much-lauded oriental subjects.
Robert Dowling ‘Mrs Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station ’ 1855–56 (detail)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased from the Founding Donor Fund 1984
To please the living and the dead:
ancestral art of Southeast Asia
6 August – 24 October 2010 | Exhibition Galleries
A major exhibition featuring dramatic sculpture, jewellery and textiles revealing the power of art made for rituals of life and death from prehistoric to recent times.
The Gallery's renowned collection of Southeast Asian textiles and gold objects, and important new acquisitions of animist sculpture will be displayed alongside key loans from institutions in Asia, Europe and America.
Collected Flores, Indonesia The Bronze Weaver
6th century
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 2006
Ballets Russes:
the art of costume
10 December 2010 – 20 March 2011 | Exhibition Galleries
A major exhibition of the Gallery’s renowned collection of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes including costumes by artists Natalia Goncharova, Michel Larionov, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Georges Braque, André Masson and Giorgio de Chirico.
Léon Bakst Costume for the Blue God c 1912 (detail)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1987