National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery is located in Parkes, ACT and offers many unique opportunities to learn about the rich and diverse history of Australia. The Gallery features more than 400 portraits of prominent Australians. The museum’s main building is designed by Johnson Pilton Walker and opened in May 1998. Visitors will find an education area, café, and shop inside the gallery, as well as underground parking. During the warmer months, the gallery is also open to the public on weekends. You can visit this amazing attraction at King Edward Terrace, Parkes ACT 2600.
The National Portrait Gallery is accessible to visitors with disabilities. There are eight reserved accessible spaces located in the underground parking station near the main entrance. After securing a parking space, visitors can then pick up their validated parking tickets at the front desk of the building’s main foyer. Bus routes 2 and 6 travel via Barton and stop in Parkes Place, which is six minutes away from the gallery. If you’re driving, you can easily arrange for a rideshare to drop you off.
During the week, the National Portrait Gallery will host several free screenings of films by Indigenous Australians, and CIT Yurauna students will present an exhibition of their artwork. The exhibition is part of the BCG’s “RESPECT” series. The exhibition, “Corroboree Beats,” celebrates the endangered Corroboree Frog. It will be held June 19 – July 13. Next post.
The building itself features in an open international competition in 2005, and the winning design has won praise for its architectural design. It features 14,000 square metres of exhibition space, including daylit galleries, and a contemporary design that connects to the landscape and key alignments of the area. Its design is composed of five bays that are 70 metres long and are aligned perpendicular to the Land Axis – one of the early concepts by Walter Burley Griffin that defines the National Capital.
The collection began as a collection of paintings, prints, and engravings, but today the gallery has over 23,000 items of various kinds, including digital and daguerreotypes. It also began commissioning portraits of presidents with George H.W. Bush in the late 1990s. In 2002, it held its first-ever Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, bringing commissioned works into the collection. A recent example of this was a video and sound portrait of jazz singer Esperanza Spalding, which was featured in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.
America’s Presidents is the largest presidential portrait collection outside of the White House. This exhibition tells the history of the nation through the lives of famous individuals, including President George Washington. An introductory image to this exhibition is Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne.” The painting had been on the verge of being sold when it was donated to the Portrait Gallery by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. This exhibition features portraits of all 50 U.S. presidents and their wives and daughters. Learn more about Woden.