The Naracoorte Regional Art Gallery has undergone a significance assessment thanks to grant funding.
The gallery, which is the oldest regional gallery in South Australia, has a permanent collection of almost 200 unique art works.
Flinders University Museum of Art Collections’ Curator Alice Clanachan recently spent a week at the gallery for the significance assessment, funded by a Community Heritage Grant through the National Library of Australia.
Ms Clanachan said since the Naracoorte Gallery was established in 1968, almost 200 individual works of art had been acquired and now formed a unique public collection.
The collection is held by the gallery for the local community and comprises 20th century prints, drawings and some paintings by Australian artists.
Several works have significance in South Australia as they are outstanding examples of leading Australian artists’ practice acquired when they were establishing their careers.
“The collection has been shaped by successive donations and most importantly the passion and ambition of board members who acquired the works through purchase for the gallery,” Ms Clanachan said.
“It was assembled primarily through the support of community fundraising and government funding streams which no longer exist.
“Therefore the Naracoorte Gallery no longer has an acquisitions budget.”
In her report to the art gallery board Ms Clanachan described the particular strength of the permanent collection as being the works on paper, including a unique group of prints by Aboriginal artists acquired in the late 1980s as well as works by key South Australian artists working in the print medium.
The Gallery holds 50 etchings, aquatints and lithographs by John Goodchild, the second largest collection in Australia after the Art Gallery of South Australia. These were acquired in 1978 and celebrate the close connection of this artist to the local region. They are regularly hung in the gallery’s hallway.
Ms Clanachan presented a list of recommendations for the gallery including an exhibition of the collection with a published catalogue, an upgrade of storage facilities, conservation of some works and the establishment of an online collection database or website.
