Our Gallery’s history
The Art Gallery’s first permanent home at Clark’s New Assembly Hall on Elisabeth Street, 1875-80. The Illustrated Sydney News, 1878.
In 1871, an Academy of Art was established in Sydney ‘for the purpose of promoting fine arts through lectures, art classes and regular exhibitions’ and, with funds made available by government, acquired the first artworks for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1874.
The collection as it developed had several homes but in 1885 it was moved to the present site. The historic sandstone buildings facing Art Gallery Road were built between 1896 and 1909, with major new extensions opened in 1972, 1988 and 2003.
But the history of the Art Gallery is much more complicated – and interesting – than that.