The Broken Hill City Art Gallery will begin celebrating its 120th anniversary as a prominent regional gallery with two upcoming exhibitions – Australian Sienna – Interpreting The Outback by Trevor Purvis and CXX – Celebrating 120 Years – opening on Friday, February 9.
“It’s a huge milestone for any gallery. Or for any business. It’s exciting for the team working here, to be a part of. It’s something to be really excited about,” Gallery and Museum Manager, Kathy Graham, told the Barrier Truth.
“We are known as the oldest regional gallery in NSW and it’s a tribute [to the fact] that our collection started 120 years ago. When we benchmark against other regional galleries, it gives us an edge because we have had that history and we’ve got some beautiful works there as well.”
CXX – Celebrating 120 Years will display works from the gallery’s prestigious collection and mark a momentous occasion in celebrating 120 years of fostering creativity, diversity, and meaningful conversations within the art community.
The exhibition will pay tribute to the artists who have graced the walls throughout the decades including John Olsen, David Rankin, Sir Arthur Streeton, Sir Hans Heysen, Arthur Hacker, Harriette Sutcliffe, May Harding, Sam Byrne, and our own Brushmen of the Bush.
Spanning various styles and mediums, the exhibition will take visitors on a journey through time, showcasing the gallery’s commitment to artistic excellence and innovation, with each artwork carefully chosen to link local and global connections and reflect its past and present.
Ms Graham said past feedback, current feedback, and an acknowledgement of the more infamous works factored into what would be displayed and the importance of showing the community – and tourists – how good the gallery and its collection is.
“This one is particularly important because we’ve had a lot of feedback over the last couple of years about people wanting to see the collection works. And rightly so. We do have a magnificent collection,” Ms Graham said.
“Having a real balance as well, because a lot of the art galleries you see – and I don’t want to sound sexist here – is primarily male artists. So, we did have that in the back of our minds. Just to be conscious of making sure that there was a good representation of female artists [and] Indigenous artists as well.
“We want to try and eventually have the storyline that ties some of these together. If we get the didactics up there, it would be paying tribute to how the collection started. There are so many ways we could have done it, but we wanted to be able to show the best of the best.”
