Art Gallery of South Australia

The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) sits on Adelaide’s cultural boulevard on North Terrace. Over time the gallery has grown from modest rooms into a major public collection that brings together Australian, Indigenous, Asian and international art.

Early history and development

AGSA began in 1881 as the National Gallery of South Australia. Initially the collection occupied two rooms within Adelaide’s library and museum complex, and later moved through exhibition spaces in the Jubilee Exhibition Building. As the collection expanded, dedicated gallery buildings and wings were added across the twentieth century, reflecting both philanthropic gifts and government support. The institution grew its holdings steadily, and by the twenty-first century the collection had become one of Australia’s largest public art repositories.

Collections and Australian painters

AGSA’s strengths include a deep and well-documented collection of Australian painting. For example, works by Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin are held in the collection and are displayed periodically, illustrating the gallery’s holdings of Heidelberg-school and late-nineteenth-century landscape painting. In addition, the gallery’s collection includes major examples by Margaret Preston, whose modernist synthesis of Australian motifs is well represented. Sidney Nolan also appears in the collection, offering visitors examples of a pivotal twentieth-century painter who reimagined national narratives. The gallery’s Australian holdings range across styles and eras, and they feature both canonical figures and lesser-known regional artists. These works are used to tell broader stories about landscape, history and identity.

Beyond those familiar names, AGSA houses significant Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander art. The institution has cultivated relationships with First Nations artists and communities, and it presents Indigenous work both within the permanent collection and through major focused programs. The gallery’s Indigenous collection and curatorial projects have, over recent years, helped reposition First Nations voices at the centre of South Australia’s public art story.