Ursula Hoff AO OBE (1909–2005) was a curator, art historian and academic. A German Jew, educated in Hamburg, Munich and London, she was invited to Melbourne in 1939 to take up a position as secretary to the Women's College at the University of Melbourne. From 1942 she worked at the National Gallery of Victoria, building up its outstanding collection of international and Australian prints and delivering public lectures on European art history; she was an assistant director from 1968 to 1973. Having lectured part-time in Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne from the late 1940s, she was senior associate in fine arts there from 1985. Her many publications include Art Appreciation (c.1944); Charles Conder: His Australian Years (1960) and The Art of Arthur Boyd (1986). In 1970, Hoff became a foundation fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Purchased 2004
© Estate of Francis Reiss
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Anne Sanders and Christopher Chapman bring passionate characterisation to Express Yourself, the Portrait Gallery collection exhibition celebrating iconoclastic Australians.
1 July 2014
I first knew Dr. Hoff when in 1986, long after retiring from the National Gallery of Victoria, she taught a graduate seminar on Rembrandt.
