National Library of Australia (NLA)

Home to the Treasures Gallery and Exhibition Gallery.

The Treasures Gallery highlights the extraordinary holdings of the National Library of Australia. From maps and rare books to manuscripts, photographs, oil paintings and watercolours, this is where you will find many of the Library’s most unexpected and unique items. Be intrigued, surprised, challenged and amazed by the stories these treasures tell.

National Library of Australia (NLA)

Parkes Place Canberra ACT 2600

02 6262 1111

www.nla.gov.au

Daily
9am - 5pm

Closed Good Friday and Christmas Day

Preview

The ceramics of the Central Desert

Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Review

About Face mirrors the alluring world of contemporary portrait painting

About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.

Jane O'Sullivan

Preview

Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana and inherited influence

In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

In Pictures

Beasts of burden at the inaugural Melbourne Sculpture Biennale

A new event has arrived in Melbourne’s cultural calendar with the inauguration of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: an exhibition that aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary sculpture in Victoria.

Art Guide Australia

News

The NGV returns to French Impressionism

The National Gallery of Victoria has announced the next instalment of the Winter Masterpieces series, coming in June 2025, will be a return to French Impressionism—an exhibition from 2021 that closed as soon as it opened due to the global pandemic.

Art Guide Australia

Feature

Julie Gough on history’s many afterlives

In GHOSTLAND, her new exhibition at the ANU Art & Design Gallery, Julie Gough continues her lifelong inquiry into gaps and silences—while conjuring the apparitions that haunt Tasmania’s colonial past.

National Library of Australia (NLA)