Description [EN]
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) is part of a historic cultural boulevard that lines the North Terrace in Adelaide. It stands on the land of the Kaurna, at a traditional camping and meeting place called Tarntanya (“Place of the Red Kangaroo”). The gallery was founded in 1881 and was originally located in two rooms in the city's 19th-century library/museum complex, and later in the Jubilee Exhibition Building (now demolished). In 1900, the gallery moved to its current location when a building was specially constructed to house its growing collection. This original stone building is now the magnificent Elder Wing of Australian Art of the AGSA. Many other benefactors have shaped the collection and the building. For example, a donation from Sir Samuel Way in 1916 significantly expanded our collection of Asian decorative art. In 1935, a donation of £10,000 from Alexander Melrose helped finance construction work, creating the Melrose Wing and the neoclassical facade that visitors see today. Extensions in 1962, 1979, and 1996 increased exhibition space for a collection that today includes more than 47,000 pieces of art - almost 90 percent of which were acquired through donations. From an early focus on works by European and Australian male artists, the gallery has over time developed an outstanding collection of Asian art, an extensive representation of remarkable Australian female artists, a rich collection of Islamic art, and international holdings of great significance. This includes the largest collection of Morris & Co. decorative art outside of Britain, the finest collection of Auguste Rodin sculptures in the southern hemisphere (acquired in 1996), and a rare “topographic” sculpture by American Donald Judd, created in 1974 in response to the site of our northern meadow. In 1939, we were the first state gallery to acquire a work by an Aboriginal artist, and from the mid-1950s we began carefully building a significant collection of artworks by the First Peoples of the land. Since 2015, we have been hosting the unique Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. The AGSA has also long promoted contemporary art. Since 1990, we have been hosting the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the oldest survey exhibition of Australian contemporary art, and since 2017 the Ramsay Art Prize, Australia's most generous prize for young contemporary artists. In 2018, the benefactors of the art prize, James Stewart Ramsay and Diana May Ramsay, left one of the country's most generous cultural gifts - the 38 million dollar James and Diana Ramsay Fund - to strategically further develop the gallery's collection. Our history has made us what we are today - and what we could become.