The National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia began to collect European and American painting and sculpture in the 1970s. At this time it became clear that the Gallery's mission would be to show works of art from all the cultures of the world, not only that of European Australians, Europe being the continent from which most immigrants have come to Australia. The collection includes works from every continent, concentrating on the cultures that underpin contemporary life, those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In 1992 the Gallery published a catalogue written by Michael Lloyd and Michael Desmond, European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery. The catalogue is now available here.

In October 2002, twenty years after its doors opened to the public in 1982, the Gallery is publishing more of its collections of 430 paintings and sculptures made by European and American artists on its website. It will be possible to examine all these holdings, from a handful of examples of the art of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy to many works of art made in the last decades