National Gallery of Australia - Canberra ACT

The National Gallery of Australia is the major art gallery and museum in Canberra, holding over 100,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Government of Australia as a national public art gallery.

Tom Roberts, a famous Australian painter, had lobbied various Australian Prime Minister's, starting with the first, Edmund Barton. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher accepted the idea in 1910 and Parliament established a bipartisan committee of six political leaders, the Historic Memorials Committee in 1911. This Committee decided that the Government should collect portraits of Australian Governors-General, Parliamentary leaders and the principal "fathers" of Federation to be painted by Australian artists. This led to the establishment of what became known as the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (CAAB), which was responsible for art acquisitions until 1973. Nevertheless, the Parliamentary Library Committee also collected paintings for the collection, including landscapes, notably the acquisition of Tom Roberts' Allegro con brio, Bourke St West in 1918. Prior to the opening of the Gallery these paintings were displayed around Parliament House, in Commonwealth offices, including diplomatic missions overseas, and State Galleries.

From 1912, the building of a permanent building to house the collection in Canberra was the major priority of the CAAB. However, this period included two World Wars and a Depression and Governments always considered they had more pressing priorities, including building the initial infrastructure of Canberra and Old Parliament House in the 1920s and the rapid expansion of Canberra and the building of government offices, Lake Burley Griffin and the National Library of Australia in the 1950s and early 1960s. Finally in 1965 the CAAB was able to persuade Prime Minister Robert Menzies to take the steps necessary to establish the gallery.[1] On 1 November 1967, Prime Minister Harold Holt formally announced that the Government would construct the building, two weeks before his death.

The design of the building was complcated by the difficulty in finalising its location, which was affected by the layout of the Parliamentary Triangle. The main problem was the final site of the new Parliament House. In Canberra's original Griffin 1912 plan, Parliament House was to be built on Camp Hill, between Capital Hill and the Provisonal Parliament House and a Capitol was to be built on top of Capital Hill. He envisaged the Capitol to be "either a general administration structure for popular receptions and ceremony or for housing archives and commemorating Australian Achivements".[2]. In the early 1960s, the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) proposed, in accordance with the 1958 and 1964 Holford plans for the Parliamentary Triangle, that the site for the new Parliament House be moved to the shore of Lake Burley Griffin, with a vast National Place, to be built on its south side, to be surrounded by a large mass of buildings. The Gallery would be built on Capital Hill, along with other national cultural institutions.[3]

In 1968, Colin Madigan of Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners won the competition for the design, even though no design could be finalised, as the final site was now in doubt. Prime Minister John Gorton stated that,

The Competition had as its aim not a final design for the building but rather the selection of a vigorous and imaginative architect who would then be commissioned to submit the actual design of the Gallery.[4]
Gorton proposed to Parliament in 1968 that it endorse Holford's lakeside site for the new Parliament House, but it refused and sites at Camp Hill and Capital Hill were then investigated. As a result, the Government decided that the Gallery could not be built on Capital Hill.[5] In 1971, the Government selected a 17 hectare site on the eastern side of the proposed National Place, between King Edward Terrace and for the Gallery. Even though it was now unlikely that the lakeside Parliament House would proceed, a raised National Place (to hide parking stations) surrounded by national institutions and government offices was still planned.[6] Madigan's brief included the Gallery, a building for the High Court of Australia and the precinct around them, linking to the raised National Place at the centre of the Land Axis of the Parliamentary Triangle, which then led to the National Library on the western side.