© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Australian Love stories
Family, friends, fanatics and foes (and everything in between!)
Previous exhibition, 2021
Reconnect and reflect with our new major exhibition, Australian Love Stories (in real life!) as we explore love, affection and connection in all its guises.
Elegance in exile
Portrait drawings from colonial Australia
Previous exhibition, 2012
Elegance in exile is an exhibition surveying the work of Richard Read senior, Thomas Bock, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and Charles Rodius: four artists who, though exiled to Australia as convicts, created many of the most significant and elegant portraits of the colonial period.
Little Darlings Youth Portrait Prize 2022
Previous exhibition, 2022
Little Darlings is for primary and secondary students, with four separate categories across Kindergarten to Year 12. Responding to the theme ‘identity’, students painted, drew, photographed, printed or combined all of these to make their portrait.
POL
Portrait of a Generation
Previous exhibition, 2003
POL was a magazine that ran from 1969 to 1986
Recognition
Percy Leason's Aboriginal Portraits
Previous exhibition, 1999
Originally conceived as an anthropological record, Percy Leason’s powerful 1934 portraits of Victorian Aboriginal people are today considered to be a highlight of 20th century Australian portraiture
Time and light
In Gallery Seven
Previous exhibition, 2023
This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018
Previous exhibition, 2018
The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.
Husbands and Wives
Photographic Portraits from 19th Century Australia
Previous exhibition, 2010
'I have just been to my dressing case to take a peep at you.
Uncommon Australians
The vision of Gordon and Marilyn Darling
Previous exhibition, 2015
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.
Sideshow Alley
Infamy, the macabre & the portrait
Previous exhibition, 2015
Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.