Captain Cook Wing, 1968–72

Returning from a study visit to Europe in 1951, Art Gallery of New South Wales director Hal Missingham began working on a masterplan for ‘a first-rate gallery on the present site’ which would include flexible gallery spaces, new staff offices, a library, air-conditioned exhibition areas and a restaurant. Architectural drawings preserved in the Art Gallery’s archive indicate the progress of this masterplan. It was not until April 1960 that the ‘preliminary plans of proposed extensions’ were drawn up by the government architect, Ted Farmer. Missingham was again overseas in 1961, where he visited art museums in the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and the USA. The plans were modified throughout October and November of 1963.

The proposed extension, largely conceived by Peter Webber, was to be a multi-storied separate wing at the back of the Art Gallery, where the conservation laboratories were situated, joined to the existing building at ground level. The Vernon and Hunt buildings would be left untouched. The plans were approved and construction was set to commence in the middle of 1966. However, in 1965 the Labor government narrowly lost the state election to the Coalition, after 24 years in power. The Art Gallery’s building project consequently fell to the bottom of the new government’s priorities.

The only construction that occurred at this time was an updating of the Art Gallery’s entrance court. Young architect Andrew Andersons worked on the project before going overseas in 1965 to do his master degree at Yale University, taking study leave from the Government Architect’s Office. His return at the end of 1967 was fortuitous, as by this time the government was looking for a memorial project to mark the 150th anniversary of Captain Cook’s landing in Australia, in 1970. Andersons was appointed the project architect.

Andersons’ 1968 designs abandoned the idea of a separate wing and beautifully incorporated the new building within the original ground plan of the old. Tony Tuckson, the Art Gallery’s deputy director, and curator Daniel Thomas worked closely with the architect. Nonetheless, there were differences of opinion to resolve. A double-height space within the new galleries was initially planned by the architect as an interior courtyard. The National Gallery of Victoria had opened a new building on St Kilda Road in Melbourne and this incorporated – successfully in Andersons’ view – courtyards. Tuckson insisted that interior hanging space was more urgent. The architect was successful in convincing the curators to allow windows at the corner of the galleries, giving glimpses of Woolloomooloo Bay and anchoring the building within its unique geographical location.

The new gallery opened on 2 May 1972, delayed, like the Sydney Opera House, by ‘heavy rains and industrial trouble’.  The building was actually finished the year before, but after the significant Captain Cook memorial date of 22 August 1970 was missed, it was decided to take extra time to ensure that everything was perfect for the official opening. The government had also allocated a further $200,000 for the refurbishment of the Grand Courts to ensure that the new ‘would not outshine the old … as they were to form one integral unit’. The completed building was widely admired and awarded the 1975 Sulman Award for Architectural Merit as ‘a bold architectural statement both in the uncompromising way it cross-bred modern architecture with 19th-century stock by stark confrontation, and for the purity and understated quality of the modern work itself’.