National Portrait Gallery

Located on King Edward Terrace in Canberra, the National Portrait Gallery is home to Australia’s portrait collection.

From its outset, the National Portrait Gallery has signalled its direction as a museum offering a distinct brand of visitor experience, underscored by the specific capacity that portraiture has for enabling up-close encounters with others and hence the effectiveness of a national portrait collection as a means of relating information about our identity, history and culture. Through its temporary exhibitions, permanent displays and related programs, the National Portrait Gallery has continued to demonstrate portraiture’s flexibility, energy and resonance; while the interpretation of the Gallery’s ever-growing collection creates a means for people to connect with the lives of others: the people we variously revere, revile or desire; those we are most inspired, moved, perplexed or intrigued by; those who best illuminate historical experience and circumstance; and all of the other past or present-day companions whose lives might cause us to reflect on and understand our own.