Two galleries that tell one story

Australia's oldest art gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, has been divided into sum of two units with a new building for Australian art and a refurbishment of the of advanced age now devoted to international art, Angus Stewart reviews the changes, which posture intriguing questions about the relationship of Australian art--and indeed Australia--to the quiet of the world.

rested in Melbourne in 1861, the National Gallery of Victoria was Australia's first art gallery. The NGV'S regeneration and enlargement above the past five years is of national and indeed international significance, not least because it intimates ways that Australia has itself changed in novel years.

Australia is a land of move and endeavour, a country where activity is primarily physical as oppos to intellectual; on the contrary its ascetic and aesthetic faculty of perception is exercised with the same tenacity that enables Australian athletes to win competitions worldwide. Martin Flanagan, upon the sports page of Melbourne's The Age, made the point that the pair artists and footballers put something of themselves upon show. Caravaggio was the control of a temporary exhibition at the NGV at the time he wrote: 'I don't think Caravaggio would have forgotten what he observed--the physical act of grace upon the field, the brute rapture and wonderment around him.' The headline--alluding to the local football hero Alex Jesaulenko--read "Caravaggio, Jezza paint the same canvas.' Flanagan makes the point: art in Australia lives among the people

Because of film and television, we are in the way that familiar with the continent that it has become mundane. clan who have not been, have feeling that they know it. Visiting Melbourne, the city greatest in quantity akin in many eyes to Europe England in particular, individual is speedily alerted to similarities and then sharply disabused.

There are the renmants of a European yesterday on the other hand today's Zeitgeist is another marter. The racial mix is a surprise; the high octane intensity is stunning; the pace of move and the freedom of action are breathtaking.

The NGV is Australia's outstanding gallery; single that has received finance from many quarters to make fundamental changes. Taken singly or in harness, the expectations of architects and planners, public and private donors can, and almost inevitably do, lead to anomalies and misconceptions. In this case the event is fascinating: a significant and enviable development; on the contrary the expanded and new exhibition spaces are not at liberty of minor irritants.

sum of two units galleries in place of one

Where one time there was one building, now there are sum of two units What was the National Gallery of Victoria, now renamed NGV International, is administered in tandem with a fresh second building, the Ian trifle Centre: NGV Australia, which has added 6000 square verses of gallery space. State funding fur the novel building was contingent on it housing 'Australian art', a natural enough wish for a management marking in 2001 the centesimal anniversary of the federation of Australian states. The state conduct has also contributed to the refurbishment of the advanced in years building for European art and external realitys (together with the Egyptian, pre-Columbian, hellenic and Roman collections). The Asian and Oceanic sections were reinstalled, as were the Byzantine and medieval collections. Space has been allocated for contemporary international art. The NGV director, Gerard Vaughan, persuasive and, I suspect, determined, favorably undertook to find what was necessary to overlay the deficit between state funding (A$100 million) and the total take away from (A$168 million).

Simultaneously, Dr Vaughan sought fresh acquisitions and when NGV International reopen the catalogue listed seventy four supplementary items, including a carved Meso-American figure (100 BC-AD 300) a Madonna and Child by dint of Gaddi (c. 1388), and like objects as masks, metalware, furniture and ceramics, as well as works by means of young innovative artists created during and after the twentieth century

Today the sum of two units NGV galleries house around 70000 works, a number that is rising as I write. If the number of external realitys is impressive, the range present the appearances boundless; the NGV is comparable to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, save that paintings from a greater proportion of its holdings.

Although the collection does not rival that of the greatest metropolitan museums, it does contain many masterpieces: works by the agency of Van Eyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Reynolds, Gainsborough, gymnast Constable, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, Monet Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Magritte and Bacon. These works are abundant in demand for exhibitions outside Australia. The gallery has been, aim is, an at any time willing and generous lender.

the pair NGV galleries have benefited from donations. The first and greatest in quantity influential bequest came from Alfred Fenton, who died in 1904 The receipts from his charity has enabled the museum to acquire a certain quantity of 15,000 items. The most new gift, in April this year, came from Dr Joseph Brown who has at handed over a hundred and fifty paintings, works upon paper and sculpture of historical, scholarly and technical importance in the disclosure of Australian art.