Revealed: National Gallery’s pandemic art splurge

Disclosure list obtained by The Australian reveals the arts institution purchased or acquired 1300 works in the past two years | FULL LIST

When I sleep, by British artist Tracey Emin, was purchased this year for $1.1m.

Architect Penelope Seidler, investment banker Simon Mordant, philanthropist Andrew Cameron, even fashion magazine Vogue – these are among the names to have gifted the National Gallery some of the 1300 works acquired in the past two financial years, according to the most comprehensive disclosure of purchases and donations to the country’s premier visual arts institution obtained by The Australian.

The data – including purchase price, vendors and donors from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2021 – gives the best ever glimpse into the works now held by the gallery.

Before the $14m purchase of Lindy Lee’s 13-tonne, 4m-high sculpture Ouroboros – announced in September and not included in disclosures – the NGA’s most expensive acquisition in the two-year period was the 2019 purchase of Jordan Wolfson’s Body Sculpture for $US4.5m.

That work, yet to be completed, allows audience members to simulate acts of sexual violence, according to an interview with the artist.

The next most expensive work, by British artist Tracey Emin – When I Sleep – was purchased earlier this year for $1.1m from international gallery White Cube. In all, the NGA purchased 16 works from Emin.

The gallery also paid $429,056 for a set of 15 works made in collaboration with artist Louise Bourgeois.

Other expensive acquisitions included Patricia Piccinini’s hot air balloon Skywhalepapa, purchased for $822,000 with the help of former Ardent Leisure chairman Neil Balnaves, and German artist Rebecca Horn’s 1991 sculpture Les Amants (The lovers).

Without Lee, only four of the NGA’s 10 most expensive acquisitions in the past three years have been from Australian artists.

The oldest works acquired – all in 2019 and 2020 – are a series of prints dating back to the late 1700s and early 1800s depicting life in Australia and the Pacific.

The full list of works, prices and vendors was obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

The NGA purchased or was gifted more than 1050 works in 2019, but acquired only 114 in 2020 and a further 141 in 2021.

Nick Mitzevich, the gallery’s director since 2018, said he had always prioritised Australian art in his three-decade career.

“Nearly 90 per cent of the acquisitions we made were Australian artists – in both volume and in value,” he said.

“The gallery’s mandate to elevate Australian artists … is being undertaken within the available resources the NGA has.”

Of the Wolfson commission, which the artist allegedly demonstrated to a journalist at the New Yorker by miming a sexual interaction with his car, Mr Mitzevich said: “The work is still in choreography; however, that is not how the work presents itself to us.” He said the work was yet to be seen because of the pandemic – it is now expected in 2023.

The acquisitions have divided critics. Sydney College of the Arts academic Adam Geczy said the disclosures “just show they’re shooting fish in a barrel”.

“There’s no sort of philosophy on what sort of things we want to project, what do we want our artworks to say, what do we want people to get out of it,” Dr Geczy, an artist whose work is in a number of prominent public galleries, said. Yet it was unfair that all responsibility for nurturing local talent fell on the shoulders of the NGA, he said.

Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, now chairman of Indigenous art foundation The Torch, said Australian art was no longer undervalued, and Indigenous artists were in high demand by local and international collectors. “My tastes have changed over the years (and) I know other people’s have changed as well,” he said. “Our public galleries are meant to be able to map for current and future generations the road we travelled historically.”

Among philanthropists who donated works were investment banker Simon Mordant, the former chairman of Sydney’s MCA, and his wife, prominent art collector Catriona Mordant.

They donated Gemma Smith’s sculpture Boulder #2 after the gallery requested works from the late 2000s.

“We have a large collection of art and where works are no longer going to be shown in our home, rather than having them in storage we would much rather them be seen by the public,” Mr Mordant said.

Australian architect Penelope Seidler has donated several works, including South African artist William Kentridge’s Ensemble (Variation) Costume maquettes for The Nose.

Vogue Australia gifted a 2020 work from Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler that was commissioned by the magazine.

Andrew and Cathy Cameron, who have had long involvements with the country’s public galleries, donated the 2001 photograph Overstepping by Sydney artist Julie Rrap.

The disclosures highlight the diverse sources of purchased works, with several significant international galleries on the list, including Marian Goodman in Paris, where the NGA acquired the Thomas Struth print ALICE, CERN, Saint Genis-pouilly for $487,000.

The NGA paid $1.56m for 11 works from Milani Gallery in Brisbane, including $540,000 for Notes to Basquiat (The Death of Irony) by Gordon Bennett.