Art Gallery of New South Wales

Listen for a moment. Fig trees creak overhead, cockatoos call across the lawns of the Domain, and somewhere below, traffic hums toward the harbour. In front of you rises a wall of warm, honey-coloured sandstone. Run your eyes along it and you will see the stone carries a faint grain, like the rings of old wood. This is the Art Gallery of New South Wales, one of the oldest art institutions in Australia. And it sits on land that holds stories far older than any painting inside.

Before the gallery, before the colony, this was Gadigal country. The Gadigal are one of the Aboriginal clans whose homeland covers much of what is now central Sydney. The gallery acknowledges this openly, and you will see that acknowledgement in its signage and in the way it presents its collection. Keep that in mind as you walk. Everything here, from the colonial stonework to the newest glass, stands on ground that was already full of meaning long before 1788.

The gallery itself began modestly. In 1871, a group of art lovers formed an academy of art in Sydney. They had no permanent home at first. Exhibitions moved between temporary rooms and borrowed halls. Over the following decades, the collection grew, and the city decided it deserved a proper building. The result is the classical temple now in front of you, completed in stages around the turn of the twentieth century.

The design came from Walter Liberty Vernon, the colonial architect of New South Wales at the time. He chose the language of ancient Greece and Rome — tall columns, a deep portico, a sense of calm order. For a young colony, this was a statement. It said that Sydney belonged to a long European tradition of art and learning. Look up at the frieze above the columns. Carved into the stone are the names of great European artists, chosen as a kind of promise of what visitors might find inside.

Now turn to the two bronze riders on either side of the entrance. Most visitors walk straight past them. They are called The Offerings of Peace and The Offerings of War, by the British sculptor Gilbert Bayes. They were installed in the 1920s, in the years after the First World War. One rider carries the gifts of a peaceful life. The other carries the weight of conflict. Standing between them, you enter the gallery the way the sculptor intended — passing through both ideas at once.

Inside the original building, the rooms feel high and measured. Daylight falls from above in many of the older halls. Here you will find Australian painting from the colonial period onward, along with European works collected over generations. Notice how early Australian landscapes often show the bush through European eyes, with soft, misty light. Later painters learned to show the hard glare and the dry blues that you can actually see outside. That shift, from borrowed vision to local vision, is one of the quiet stories these walls tell.

And then there is the Archibald Prize. Every year since the 1920s, this gallery has hosted a portrait prize that Australians argue about like a football final. Artists paint well-known figures — actors, scientists, athletes, writers. The winner is often controversial, and the crowds come in large numbers. Alongside it run the Wynne Prize, for landscape painting or figure sculpture, and the Sulman Prize. If you visit while these shows are on, expect queues, loud opinions, and a real sense of a city looking at itself.

Here is something many visitors miss. The gallery is no longer one building. In December 2022, a second building opened a short walk away, as part of a project called Sydney Modern. It was designed by the Japanese architecture studio SANAA, led by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who have received the Pritzker Prize, often described as architecture's highest honour. Where the old building is heavy stone, the new one is light — thin roofs, glass walls, and pavilions that step gently down the slope toward the water.

Walk between the two and notice how the path itself becomes part of the visit. Gardens and open terraces link the buildings. From the new building, the views open toward Woolloomooloo Bay, with its long timber wharf and the grey shapes of naval ships nearby. The architects wanted the art, the landscape and the harbour to feel connected. On a clear day, the light off the water fills the galleries with a soft, moving brightness.

Now for the second surprise. Deep beneath the new building lies a space called the Tank. During the Second World War, this was a huge underground fuel oil tank for the navy. Today it is a gallery. Rows of concrete columns stand in the dim light, and sound behaves strangely down here. Footsteps echo, voices soften, and the air feels cool. Artists use the Tank for large installations, often with sound or light. It is worth descending even if you only stay a few minutes.

At the heart of the gallery's mission is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. The Yiribana Gallery is dedicated to it, and it now holds a prominent place in the new building. You may see bark paintings, woven fibre works, sculpture, and bold contemporary canvases. Some works come from remote communities, others from Sydney artists. Take your time here. Many pieces connect to Country, family and ancestral stories, and the wall texts often explain who has the right to tell them.

The collection reaches well beyond Australia, too. Asian art has long been a strength, with ceramics, scrolls and sculpture from across the region. There are also international modern and contemporary works. Rather than trying to see everything, choose one or two areas and let yourself slow down. A single room, seen properly, often stays with you longer than a rushed hour through twenty. Benches are placed throughout, and sitting for a moment is part of looking well.

When you step back outside, pause on the steps. The sandstone is warm again in the sun, and the fig trees still move in the breeze. Behind you are two very different buildings, more than a century apart, holding art from thousands of years of human making. Ahead, the Domain rolls toward the harbour and the Botanic Garden. Listen once more for the cockatoos... and notice how the city's light, the light so many painters inside tried to capture, is right here around you.