More about National Gallery of Australia

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You're down under and need a break from sweating over all the scary creatures that can kill you. It's time to hop on your kangaroo and take a visit to the National Gallery of Australia.

The first thing you will probably notice is how striking this building is. It cost over $82 million to build, and curators have even complained that the museum itself is so impressive, it's hard to make the art look as good! This is also the largest art museum in the vast country. Though to be fair, most of the country has no people or buildings. Just big snakes.

The NGA was involved in a controversial lawsuit recently when they sued one of their antique dealers, Subhash Kapoor, for selling them a bronze statue of Dancing Shiva for $5.6 million in 2008. Turns out that Kapoor may have stolen this piece from an Indian temple in Tamil Nadu, and then turned around and sold it directly to the Nationally Gallery of Australia for that monstrous sum. Understandably, the temple asked for their statue back and the aussies were ready to throw him on the barbie. (Sorry, we can't help ourselves.)

There was a huge uproar about this museum's air conditioning system as well. I know, given the nature of most controversies in the art world this may seen a little lackluster. But the staff claimed that the system was giving them cancer. This may have been a strategy to get the director to quit, because promptly after he realized he wasn’t wanted anymore and left, the air conditioning unit was removed and all was well.

With these controversies aside, this museum snagged some serious kudos points in my book. They've recently allowed for the inner art enthusiast and exhibitionist to coincide in harmony. That’s right, the National Gallery of Australia has allowed for after hour tours of the James Turrell retrospective to be conducted in the nude! Any institution that is laid back enough to allow their guests to go au natural is okay by me. 

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Here is what Wikipedia says about National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.

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