THE Art Gallery of Ballarat has landed a major coup in the popular art world by securing the Archibald Prize over the next two years.
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The best-known art prize in the country that regularly draws tens of thousands of visitors to see the exhibition of portraits of prominent Australians is set to be based in Ballarat for a number of weeks next spring.
Art Gallery of Ballarat director Gordon Morrison said the prize had a broad and popular appeal, with almost 50,000 people expected to visit Ballarat over the five-week period to see the exhibition.
“It is something that I am absolutely thrilled about,” Mr Morrison said.”
“We know, because it has been to other venues before, how popular it is and how many people will come up the road from the big smoke to see all the celebrity images.”
The prize is awarded annually to the best portrait, ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia’.
The prize, hosted and judged by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was established in 1921 by the Bulletin editor, J F Archibald, and has been won by a cavalcade of Australian artistic luminaries including Clifton Pugh, Brett Whiteley, William Dobell, William Dargie and John Olsen.
Hosting the exhibition in 2008 was one of the launching points for an extraordinary run of popular success by Bendigo Art Gallery when it received more than 40,000 visitors in a month.
Mr Morrison said the exhibition was almost like a gift to Ballarat.
“But it is a gift that doesn’t just get handed out to anyone. You have to have a facility that is capable of taking work like that and capable of receiving that number of people,” he said.
He said the gallery had already had meetings with the City of Ballarat to discuss ways to ensure the facility would be able to handle the large crowds. Arts Minister Heidi Victoria said the Archibald was the most important portrait competition in Australia, and was set to flood the city with people eager to see it.
It went to just one Victorian place each year, and Ballarat would have it over two years.
“I think one of the things you have got here in Ballarat is an amazing in-house collection and what you do is go one step further and take on great touring exhibitions,” she said.
matthew.dixon@fairfaxmedia.com.au