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National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Johnson Pilton Walker

Photo: Shkuru Afshar · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, Australia
Client / Owner
Australian Government
Year
Completed 2008
Access
Public
Typology
Cultural
Style
—

The National Portrait Gallery stands on King Edward Terrace in Canberra, beside the High Court. Johnson Pilton Walker of Sydney won an open international competition in 2005 to design it. An Australian Government agency runs it. Construction began in December 2006, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened it on December 4, 2008. The article names no style.

The building covers about 150,000 square feet (14,000 m²) and has space for roughly 500 portraits. It is laid out as five bays, each over 70 meters long, set across the Land Axis that refers to Walter Burley Griffin's plans for Canberra. Two large cantilevered concrete blades frame the Entrance Court, and translucent clerestory windows light the galleries.

It cost A7 million. The collection held about 3,000 portraits in 2020. It closed for rectification work in April 2019 and reopened that September. The article gives no hours.

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