The opening of the National Gallery in 1982 concluded a planning, design and construction period of fourteen years. In 1968 the government announced a limited competition to establish an approach to the design of a national gallery in Canberra, inviting thirteen Australian architectural firms to submit proposals for a building to be completed in the early 1970s.
The Sydney firm Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners won the competition, with a design by the senior partner of the firm, Colin Madigan, leading the team of Christopher Kringas, Renato Giacco and Michael Rolfe.
The design concept had been developed for a national gallery on Capital Hill, not beside Lake Burley Griffin. A proposal for a National Centre, promulgated in 1963 by the authority for Canberra, the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC), had suggested a Capital Hill location for the gallery with other national institutions, and a central lakeside site for the new Parliament House. The National Gallery’s ultimate lakeside position was not decided until May 1970 after lengthy debate concerning the siting of Parliament House – which was finally located at the summit of Capital Hill. At its lakeside site, the Gallery forms part of the Parliamentary Triangle, with Parliament House symbolically at the apex, the National Library of Australia within the north-west angle and the High Court of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia within the north-east angle at the base of the triangle
A design brief for the National Gallery at this new location was given to the architects who developed the detailed building program during the latter part of 1970 and early 1971, with extensive input from consultant JJ Sweeney and the Gallery’s founding Director, James Mollison. Sketch plans were approved in April 1971 by the Gallery’s Interim Council, the NCDC and the government. On 8 November 1973, a plaque marking the start of construction was unveiled by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, with the expectation that the Gallery would be completed by 1976.
The adjacent High Court of Australia had also been designed by Edwards, Madigan, Torzillo and Partners. Both buildings form a powerful grouping of sculptural, yet functional elements that visually balance the composition of other major structures within the Parliamentary Triangle. They were to form an integral part of a proposed National Place linking them to the National Library via elevated pedestrian walkways and a vast public square.
The only completed part of this plan is the pedestrian overpass between the National Gallery and High Court buildings. The area is now the site of Commonwealth Place and Reconciliation Place, opened in July 2002.
A combination of diminished capital project funding and a government priority for the completion of the High Court by 1980 meant that construction of the Gallery was temporarily halted in 1975 and would not be completed until October 1981 . The building, which was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 12 October 1982, won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (ACT) Canberra Medallion in 1982 and is listed on Australia’s Register of the National Estate.
The National Gallery of Australia is the most substantial and complex of Madigan’s buildings, a powerful structure reflecting his beliefs in organic evolution, the expression of materials, environmental integration and functional design that grows from human needs.
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), located in Canberra, is the Commonwealth of Australia's national cultural institution for the visual arts and is a portfolio agency within the Department of Communications and the Arts.
The functions of the NGA are prescribed in its enabling legislation, the National Gallery Act 1975, which requires the NGA to:
The NGA receives funding from the Commonwealth Government and actively seeks, and relies upon, financial and in-kind support from private and corporate sources.