In late November, we opened a new purpose-built gallery for our popular Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly series 1946. This new gallery, off the main foyer in the space formerly occupied by the Gallery Shop, has been specially designed to enhance visitor experience of these famous and much-loved Australian works. Their previous home in the main Australian galleries on the first floor is now a dedicated space for our remarkable collection of Australian Surrealism, including, of course, the recently given Agapitos/Wilson collection. Other newly opened display areas near the Ned Kelly gallery include showcases for Asian and international costumes and fashion, a large showcase for our stunning jewellery collection, and a dedicated space for changing displays of photography— the first display is of John Gollings’s colourful New Guinea
Henri-Edmond Cross Hair (La chevelure) c 1892 oil on canvas 61 x 46 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris purchased 1969 © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
over 7000 works by 77 artists—more than 3000 of which have been digitised for the website. The dynamic features of the Kenneth Tyler Collection website allow our online visitors to take a journey through the decades-long creative collaboration behind some of the most famous images of American art from the second half of the twentieth century. The collection was compiled over decades by Ken and Marabeth Tyler and gifted exclusively to the National Gallery of Australia in 2002. The online content includes hundreds of behind-the-scenes photographs of artists at work as well as rare film footage and audio from these years. This website demonstrates the role of the internet in preserving and publishing archival material and in providing electronic access to an important part of the national collection.
4 national gallery of australia
suite 1973–74. Until now, the Gallery has never had a permanent exclusive place for its jewellery, costume and photography collections. We have also just opened our new Polynesian gallery in the space previously occupied by the Childrens Gallery. Immediately above it upstairs, the former Pacific arts gallery is now devoted to Melanesian art. The Childrens Gallery reopens in mid February 2010, near the Gallery’s Small Theatre. A new art loading dock and a goods loading dock, a new staff entrance and vitally needed spaces for registration, exhibition preparation, packing, quarantine and mount-cutting have been completed as part of Stage 1 early this year. These crucial back-of-house spaces are of the international standard now expected of a major art museum. Gallery 3, which until recently housed The Aboriginal memorial poles, has been restored and refurbished and has had new lighting installed for international art. All these changes complete the planned extensive refurbishment of the current Gallery building and its displays, which has been going on for several years. The current Gallery display spaces have been redesignated, all extensively refurbished and redisplayed. We can now look forward to the opening of your new Gallery building later in 2010.
Ron Radford AM