Art Gallery of South Australia

About

The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), 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 (after the National Gallery of Victoria). As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and Adelaide University 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 (including British), Asian and North American art are also well represented in its collections.

On 13 October 1856 Charles Hill proposed the establishment of the South Australian Society of Arts to promote the arts through lectures, conversazioni, and an art school, first conducted in his own home, and to agitate for a permanent gallery. Hill was first President of The Society (subsequently granted the name Royal South Australian Society of Arts). Its first exhibition was held in 1857, and the South Australian School of Design was inaugurated in September 1861 with Charles Hill as its principal.

Five months prior to Charles Hill's proposal, the South Australian Institute was established by Act of Council with six Governors overseeing a Public Library and Museum, to encourage art, science, literature and philosophy, and incorporating other cultural societies in giving them access to rooms in the Institute Building and in appending their annual reports the Institute's own.

The South Australian Society of Arts, established in 1856 and incorporated in 1859 is the 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 (now the Mortlock Wing of the State 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.

In response to the Elder Bequest, the Government commissioned a specially designed building (now the Elder Wing) 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 (including a three-storey air-conditioned addition on the northern side), 1979 (general refurbishment, in time for its centenary in 1981) and 1996 (large expansion) increased the gallery's display, administrative and ancillary facilities further.

The building is listed in the South Australian Heritage Register.

As of 2019 [update], 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.

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 (now the State 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.

Ballarat -born David Thomas was appointed Director in 1976. He had taken a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, had been Keeper of the Pictorial Collections at the National Library of Australia, Canberra 1963-65, and Director of the Newcastle City Art Gallery in 1965-75. In 1983 he left AGSA to become Director of Adelaide's Carrick Hill House Museum & Garden, and from 1987-1995 was Director of Bendigo Art Gallery. Thomas died in 2022.

From about 1996 until late 2018 Arts SA (later Arts South Australia) 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 A$4.5 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 ONZM started her appointment after leaving the Auckland Art Gallery, where she had been director since 2013. In March 2024 Devenport announced that she would depart after her contract ended on 7 July 2024, having served 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".