- Location: Art Gallery Rd, The Domain.
- Opening hours: 10am to 5pm daily except Good Friday and Chistmas Day; Wednesdays until 9pm.
- Entry fee: None. Certain special or visiting exhibitions may attract an admission fee.
If you walk east from St Mary's Cathedral, which itself is on the eastern edge of Sydney's Hyde Park, you'll come across a large expanse of parkland which is known as The Domain.
The street which leads into The Domain is Art Gallery Rd, and its name becomes clear as you reach the stone and brick building that is the Art Gallery of New South Wales, whose facade looks to be of early Greek style with tall columns and steps leading into an interior of pillared archways and thence into exhibition halls and spaces.
Curatorial areas
Despite early controversies on what the gallery building should look like, with several plans submitted and discarded, the wonder is that the building exists and has proved quite eminently suited for its purposes, with room for expansion and additions.
At present, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has a collection of some 29,000 pieces of artworks, divided into various "curatorial areas" according to the curators who look after them.
Uniquely Australian
For visitors to Australia wishing to know more of the people's art and culture, the two main areas of interest would be the Australian collection and the Yiribana Gallery.
- The Australian collection is described as reflecting the evolving traditions of the past 200 years of European settlement in Australia and features Australian works from the late 19th century up to the whole of the 20th.
These are represented through paintings, sculptures and works on paper, and include noted Australian painters of the time, such as post-impressionist Grace Cossington Smith, and Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale, who both painted the Australian Outback but in widely differing styles.
- The Yiribana Gallery is a showcase of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art with a changing exhibition program featuring highlights from the gallery's permanent collection as well as special exhibitions on the diversity of Australian Indigenous art practice.
Collections on display
The gallery's other curatorial areas are the Asian, European, contemporary, photography, and prints, drawings and watercolors collections.
The artworks on display are so huge in number that anyone wishing to savor the diverisity and breadth of the art collections may need to visit the gallery on more than one occasion.
Exhibitions and entry
In addition to what are more or less on permanent display, the Art Gallery of New South Wales also hosts a number of special and visiting exhibitions, such as those from the Louvre in France or the Getty Museum in the United States.
Entry to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and particularly to its permanent exhibitions, is free. Certain special exhibitions may attract an admission fee.
The gallery is open from 10am to 5pm daily and to 9pm on Wednesday nights with its Art Aftr Hours program.
How to get there
The most practical way to get to the Art Gallery of New South Wales is to take the train and alight at St James or Martin Place, depending on which of these stations are on your route.
- From St James station, exit at Macquarie St and follow the northeastern edge of Hyde Park south of Hyde Park Barracks, then turn east into Prince Alfred Rd just north of St Mary's Cathedral and into Art Gallery Rd.
- From Martin Place station, walk east to Macquarie St, then south to Hyde Park and follow the route as from St James station. You could also cut through the grounds of Sydney Hospital from Martin Place and exit at the western edge of The Domain. Walk on the grass to the Art Gallery or south down Hospital Rd, then northeast on Art Gallery Rd.
