National Portrait Gallery
Editorial
The idea of an Australian portrait gallery was first suggested by painter Tom Roberts in the first decade of the 20th century. By 1999, the last year of that century, the National Portrait Gallery finally became a reality, opening in Canberra's Old Parliament House building. The youngest of Australia's national cultural institutions, it moved to its current, specially designed location in 2006.
The gallery's permanent display contains 450 drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures of significant Australians, and its eclectic exhibition schedule presents the best of national and global portraiture in all its varied forms.
It's odd that a grouping of recognisable faces - each writ large and each belonging to an intellect significant for shaping some aspect of political or cultural life - can effectively capture the identity of a nation.
Portraits of long-dead nobility have always hung, drab and true-to-life, in the world's public buildings. However thanks to the camera, modern portraiture is freed from the necessity of creating a likeness. Our National Portrait Gallery contains walls of artistic tributes - exciting and defining sculptures, snapshots, multimedia presentations and caricatures.
The gallery is a garden of the nation's immediate and distant past, and staring vivaciously from its walls are our authors, artists, musicians, footballers, politicians and personalities; a diverse lot, from Trukanini to Reg Mombassa.
Some of the images on display have become iconic in their own right, and some are images of immediately recognisable iconic Australians. Many more are quite obscure - some artist, scientist or soldier whose contribution we never knew, or read about and forgot.
Robert Stevenson, Citysearch
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