© National Portrait Gallery 2024
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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
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Robert Oatley AO
1928–2016
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The National Portrait Gallery mourns the loss of one our most generous benefactors, Robert Oatley AO.
Prime Ministers
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On the day before the Hon. E. G. Whitlam, AC, QC, died last month, at the great age of 98, there were seven former prime ministers of Australia still living, plus the incumbent Mr. Abbott – eight in all.
Banksia and grevillea
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Portraits can render honour to remarkable men and women, but there are other ways.
Tribute: Mary Isabel Murphy
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The Chairman, Board, Director and all the staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Benefactor, Mary Isabel Murphy.
Lord Kitchener
Imperial strategist
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Once central to military strategy and venerated in patriotic households, Lord Kitchener is now largely forgotten.
The Pavlova
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It is a painful truth, but one which must be faced up to, that the pavlova, that iconic Australian dessert, a staple since the 1930s, was actually invented in New Zealand.
The play’s the thing
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Penelope Grist charts an immersive path through Stuart Spence’s photography.
Cocky McGrath
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The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
200 Years of Portraiture
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To celebrate his family bicentenary, Malcolm Robertson looks at the portraiture legacy left by his ancestors.
Back track
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Penelope Grist finds photographer Matt Nettheim re-visiting a formative and fulfilling career tram stop.
Indexing, the art of
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The first index I created was for my first book, and, to my astonishment, that was almost twenty-five years ago.
Talking heads
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In their own words lead researcher Louise Maher on the novel project that lets the Gallery’s portraits speak for themselves.
Of plague and portraits
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Corinna Cullen on the symbolic power of pandemic-related imagery over the ages.
Maria Caroline Brownrigg
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At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant
Poise and Carats
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I keep going back to Cartier: The Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia next door, and, within the exhibition, to Princess Marie Louise’s diamond, pearl and sapphire Indian tiara (1923), surely one of the most superb head ornaments ever conceived.
Christmas Island
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This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.