ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Description

Essentials about the Art Gallery of New South Wales in brief

Art lovers also get their money’s worth in Sydney at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It is the city’s most important museum. The collection spectrum of the Art Gallery of New South Wales ranges from Australian art to European painting from the 16th to the 19th century to works of European modernism. Founded in 1897, the museum is located on the grounds of The Domain, an open parkland in the heart of Sydney.

The history of the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Historically, the Art Gallery of New South Wales dates back to the 1870s when an art academy was established in Sydney to serve art education, art class formation and art exhibitions. The government provided funding to purchase the first works of art to be exhibited in a museum in Australia. The collection was housed in various buildings until 1885. The current building, with its neoclassical façade, was built between 1896 and 1909 and expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. The ancient cultures of the Romans, Greeks, Assyrians and Egyptians are symbolically represented on the building facade.

The collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales

One of the museum’s main focuses is on Australian artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. There are also collections of Aboriginal art and art from the Asia-Pacific region. However, the Art Gallery of New South Wales also owns an extensive collection of Victorian art by Lord Frederic Leighton and Sir Edward John Poynter, as well as 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century Dutch, French and Italian painting, with Old Master works by Peter Paul Rubens, Canaletto, Agnolo Bronzino, Domenico Beccafumi and Niccolò dell’ Abbate. European Modernism is also represented with works by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi, among others.