Art Gallery of South Australia
The Art Gallery of South Australia, established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east. Jason Smith has been director of AGSA since February 2025.
As well as its permanent collection, which is especially renowned for its collection of Australian art, AGSA hosts the annual Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art known as Tarnanthi, displays a number of visiting exhibitions each year and also contributes travelling exhibitions to regional galleries. European, Asian and North American art are also well represented in its collections.
History
Establishment
The South Australian Society of Arts, established in 1856 and oldest fine arts society still in existence, held annual exhibitions in South Australian Institute rooms and advocated for a public art collection. In 1880 Parliament gave £2,000 to the institute to start acquiring a collection and the National Gallery of South Australia was established in June 1881 with 22 works purchased at the Melbourne International Exhibition, together with others lent by Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the British Government and private collectors. It was opened in two rooms of the public library, by Prince Albert Victor and Prince George.In 1889 the collection was moved to the Jubilee Exhibition Building, where it remained for ten years.
On 6 March 1897 Sir Thomas Elder died, bequeathing £25,000 to the art gallery for the purchase of artworks.
The Elder bequest was the first major endowment to any Australian gallery, seven years before the Felton Bequest to the NGV.
Buildings
In response to the Elder Bequest, the Government commissioned a specially designed building and pushed ahead with all due speed, to provide employment for skilled tradesmen in a time of economic recession.The building was designed by C. E. Owen Smyth in Classical Revival style, built by Trudgen Brothers, and opened by the Governor, Lord Tennyson on 7 April 1900.
Originally built with an enclosed portico, a 1936 refurbishment and enlargement included a new facade with an open Doric portico.
Major extensions in 1962, 1979 and 1996 increased the gallery's display, administrative and ancillary facilities further.
The building is listed in the South Australian Heritage Register.
, the building houses 64kWh worth of solar battery storage as part of the Government of South Australia Storage Demonstration project, powered by three 7.5 kW Selectronic inverters. This reduces the consumption of power from the state grid.
Governance
In 1939, an act of parliament, the Libraries and Institutes Act 1939, repealed the Public library, Museum and Art Gallery and Institutes Act and separated the Gallery from the Public Library, and Museum, established its own board and changed its name to the Art Gallery of South Australia.The Art Gallery Act 1939 was passed to provide for the control of the library. This has been amended several times since.
In 1967 the National Gallery of South Australia changed its name to the Art Gallery of South Australia.
From about 1996 until late 2018 Arts SA had responsibility for this and several other statutory bodies such as the Museum and the State Library, after which the functions were transferred to direct oversight by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Arts and Culture section.
Christopher Menz was director of the gallery until 2010, when he refused to renew his five-year contract because he believed that government funding to the gallery was inadequate.
Nick Mitzevich was appointed as director in July 2010, when he was hardly known in SA. He had grand ambitions and made a big impression in the eight years he ran AGSA. During this time, he acquired and commissioned works that would make an impression on the public, such as projecting an AES+F video work onto the gallery's façade during the Adelaide Fringe in 2012, and buying an entire exhibition of 16 paintings by Ben Quilty on the 130th anniversary of AGSA. He also hung We Are All Flesh, an epoxy resin sculpture of two headless horses by Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere, from the ceiling of the gallery, which attracted much press coverage. His overall approach was to display contemporary works in close proximity to classics. Although he had a few detractors, the general opinion was that he had done a fine job at AGSA. His achievements included curating the highly successful 2014 Adelaide Biennial, the purchase of Camille Pissarro's Prairie à Eragny, with its million price raised from donations only. He also oversaw a major internal refurbishment of the gallery, introduced the Tarnanthi festival, hosted large-scale exhibitions, and greatly increased the collection of both contemporary Australian and international art. Annual visitor numbers increased from 480,000 in 2010 to 800,000 by the time of his departure. He was the first gallery director in Australia to implement a provenance project, which investigates old objects which were acquired without historical checks.
After the departure of Mitzevich, who left to lead the National Gallery of Australia in April 2018, the first female director in the history of AGSA was appointed. On 22 October of that year, Australian-born Rhana Devenport started her appointment after leaving the Auckland Art Gallery, where she had been director since 2013. In March 2024 Devenport announced her departure after her contract ends on 7 July 2024, after serving for six years.
In June 2024, Lisa Slade, who joined the gallery in 2011 as project curator and was appointed assistant director, artistic programs, in 2015, announced her departure from 3 July 2024, after being appointed Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne, a position based in the Art History Program in the School of Culture and Communication.
In February 2025 Jason Smith, former director of the Geelong Gallery, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and Monash Gallery of Art, began his term as director of AGSA.
On 13 June 2025, the Governor of South Australia, Frances Adamson, and her husband Rod Bunten were named as the inaugural patrons of the gallery. Their main role will be "advocacy on a national and international scale".
Collection
, the AGSA collection comprises almost 45,000 works of art. Of the state galleries, only the National Gallery of Victoria is larger. It attracts about 512,000 visitors each year.Lindy Lee's sculpture "The Life of Stars" is mounted on the forecourt of the gallery, after being presented for the 2018 Biennial, Divided Worlds. Created in Shanghai in 2015, the sculpture's polished stainless steel surface reflects its surroundings during the day and radiates light at night. Over 30,000 perforated holes individually placed by Lee resemble a map of our galaxy when lit from within. The sculpture was bought by the gallery as a farewell "gift" for and tribute to departing director Nick Mitzevich in April 2018.
Australian art
The Gallery is renowned for its collections of Australian art, including Indigenous Australian and colonial art, from about 1800 onwards. The collection is strong in nineteenth-century works and in particular Australian Impressionist paintings. Its twentieth-century Modernist art collection includes the work of many female artists, and there is a large collection of South Australian art, which includes 2,000 drawings by Hans Heysen and a large collection of photographs.Heidelberg school works include Tom Roberts' A break away!, Charles Conder's A holiday at Mentone, and Arthur Streeton's Road to Templestowe. The mid-twentieth century is represented by works by Russell Drysdale, Arthur Boyd, Margaret Preston, Bessie Davidson, and Sidney Nolan, and South Australian art includes works by James Ashton and Jeffrey Smart.
The Gallery became the first Australian gallery to acquire a work by an Indigenous artist in 1939, although systematic acquisition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art was not realised until the mid-1950s. The Gallery and now holds a large and diverse collection of older and contemporary works, including the Kulata Tjuta collaboration created by Aṉangu artists working in the north of SA.
International
an landscape paintings include works by Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael, Salomon van Ruysdael, Joseph Wright of Derby, and Camille Pissarro. Other European works include paintings by Goya, Francesco Guardi, Pompeo Batoni and Camille Corot.There is a large collection of British art, including many Pre-Raphaelite works, by artists Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Morris & Co. Other works include John William Waterhouse's Circe Invidiosa and The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius ; William Holman Hunt's Christ and the Two Marys and The Risen Christ with the Two Marys in the Garden Of Joseph of Aramathea ; and John Collier's Priestess of Delphi. Works by British portrait painters include Robert Peake, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Lely and Thomas Gainsborough.
Sculpture includes works by Rodin, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein and Thomas Hirschhorn.
The Asian art collection, begun in 1904, includes work from the whole region, with focuses on the pre-modern Japanese art, art of Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. The Gallery holds Australia's only permanent display of Islamic art.