Victor Smorgon AC (1913-2009), industrialist and philanthropist, was the chairman of Smorgon Consolidated Industries. Smorgon emigrated to Australia from the Ukraine in 1927, and ran a kosher butchery with his two brothers in Lygon St, Carlton. Over the ensuing decades they built a vast family business empire encompassing steel, meat, paper, plastics, forestry and commercial property. In 1937, at the East Melbourne Synagogue, Victor married Loti Kiffer (later Loti Smorgon AO, who died in 2013); throughout their long marriage, they were amongst the country’s most generous philanthropists. Their enormous contributions to a wide range of medical and arts institutions in Australia include the Smorgon outpatients’ wing at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital; the Loti and Victor Smorgon Gift of Contemporary Australian Art to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and the Loti and Victor Smorgon Gallery of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. For some years running, the family has been listed as Australia’s most prosperous; the Smorgons’ four daughters, who have fifteen children between them, have perpetuated the family tradition of philanthropy.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC 2001
© Estate of Kate Gollings
Kate Gollings (age 52 in 1995)
Victor Smorgon AC (age 82 in 1995)
Loti Smorgon AO (age 76 in 1995)
Marilyn Darling AC (33 portraits supported)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
This exhibition showcases portraits acquired through the generosity of the National Portrait Gallery’s Founding Patrons, L Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC.
Drawn from some of the many donations made to the Gallery's collection, the exhibition Portraits for Posterity pays homage both to the remarkable (and varied) group of Australians who are portrayed in the portraits and the generosity of the many donors who have presented them to the Gallery.
