National Portrait Gallery
National Portrait Gallery – Australia is a country that never fails to showcase its love for all kinds of arts and artists. A number of art destinations are located in the country. Here, all the art lovers gather along to celebrate the beauty of flourishing art in the country. One such perfect destination for art is the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. This gallery of the country focuses its attention mainly on the portrait art. This gallery is nothing but a foremost collection of various portraits of the notable Australians. The Gallery was opened in the year 2008. And it is located at the King Edward Terrace, Parkes.
The Aim of National Portrait Gallery:
The building of the National Portrait Gallery was designed by the famous architect Mr. John Pilton Walker. He had put his best foot forward in giving this building a magnificent structure and design. This building extends up to an area of 14,000 meter squares that provides an exhibition space for around 500 portraits . The National Portrait Gallery aims to accelerate the understanding of the identity, culture, history and creativity of the Australian People .
Other activities carried out by the gallery:
The Gallery is not limited to merely showcasing and exhibiting portraits to all the art-lovers. You can additionally enjoy your day at the gallery sitting in the portrait café. It also carries out a number of events where the experienced team of this gallery works its hearts out to arrange all kinds of dinners, conferences, cocktail functions and all other kinds of events for you.
National Portrait Gallery – An overview:
A number of portraits, paintings, photographs and other kind of artistic media are made available at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. You can propose your portrait in this gallery by simply sending your work via email. It is one wonderful destination for all kinds of people who look forward to appreciating good piece of arts.
Interested in Arts check out Cairns Indigenous Art Fair
Exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in 2022
The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today
The National Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition celebrates excellence in the art of portraiture. As the realization of a gift made by Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920–2005) to the Smithsonian, both the competition and this exhibition demonstrate the power of one individual to make a transformative impact. The forty-two portraits on view here were selected through an open call that garnered more than 2,700 entries from artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico. The artists responded with works that engage contemporary society, many providing new insights into the unprecedented reality we have experienced in the time surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
The selected finalists create artworks in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, textiles, video, and performance. They demonstrate how capacious and changing the genre of portraiture can be and illuminate the genre’s power to make visible a multitude of life experiences.
The competition and exhibition are made possible by the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment, which was established by Virginia Outwin Boochever, a longtime docent at the National Portrait Gallery. The endowment is sustained by her family.
Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue
The break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Complex on June 17, 1972, quickly escalated to become a political and legal crisis that reached the highest levels of the United States government. Today, fifty years after the incident took place in Washington, D.C., “Watergate” stands for much more than the burglary itself. It conjures the subsequent cover-up of White House complicity and President Richard M. Nixon’s use of federal agencies to obstruct justice. This exhibition combines portraiture and visual biography from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection to bring visitors face-to-face with Watergate’s key players.
The media’s relentless, razor-sharp focus on those involved in Watergate is evidenced by the number of covers that Time magazine devoted to the scandal, many of which are on view here. Also included are some of the consequential portrayals that appeared in the Washington Post and other popular news outlets.
Watergate brought the delicate play of checks and balances of U.S. governance to the forefront of the public’s mind. Who restricts presidential power? Congress? What role should the media—including social media—play? Are politicians, including the president, above the law? Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue provides a new window through which to consider these questions
This exhibition was supported in part by the American Portrait Gala Endowment. All objects are from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
Block by Block: Naming Washington
Exhibition Explores the People Represented by Washington, D.C.’s Streets and Public Spaces
The National Portrait Gallery will explore the namesakes of Washington, D.C.’s streets, avenues, neighborhoods and other public spaces in the new exhibition “Block by Block: Naming Washington.” Featuring reproductions of 16 portraits, drawn mostly from the museum’s collection, the exhibition will present the faces and biographies behind some of the city’s most familiar locations, introducing visitors to those whose names are part of the nation’s capital. “Block by Block,” curated by the National Portrait Gallery’s curator of photographs, Leslie Ureña, will be on view in the museum’s second-floor Riley Gallery July 30 to Jan. 16, 2023.
“The naming of streets and places creates a living history, connecting past to present,” Ureña said. “There is little doubt that naming a public space after a historical figure, in the nation’s capital no less, grants a degree of importance to those whose names have been chosen and, at times, evokes a reckoning with some of those eponyms and the legacies they leave behind. I hope ‘Block by Block’ prompts visitors to not only see D.C. a little differently, but also to approach the streets and spaces in their own communities with a renewed sense of curiosity.”
Recent Acquisitions: Gifts from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, one of the first private museums in the United States, was established in Washington, D.C., in 1869 by William Wilson Corcoran. It expanded in 1880 to include the Corcoran College of Art and Design and, for more than a century, remained “dedicated to art and used solely for the purpose of encouraging the American genius.”
In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to George Washington University and distributed the collection. The National Portrait Gallery received eighty portraits, ranging from images of nineteenth-century American presidents to twentieth-century artists, athletes, and movie stars. This exhibition features a selection of portraits from this generous gift.
William Wilson Corcoran’s wide-ranging collection encompassed portraits of historical and contemporary figures. In 1879, the first curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, William MacLeod, noted that Corcoran’s purchase of a series of presidential portraits by George Peter Alexander Healy showed “the determination of Mr. Corcoran and the trustees to make national portraiture a strong point in the gallery.” Today, Corcoran’s legacy continues as thousands of works from the collection are treasured and exhibited by several institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, including other Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery of Art, and the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
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