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Gotta catch 'em all
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Angus Trumble grabs his life jacket and rides the Pokémon GO tsunami.
A papal pet encounter
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In honour of the launch of the Popular Pet Show, Angus recalls a diplomatic incident with an over-excited golden retriever.
Not perspiring, but glowing.
The cultural history of radiance.
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Angus Trumble explores the creative manifestations of radiance.
Tribute: Mary Isabel Murphy
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The Chairman, Board, Director and all the staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Benefactor, Mary Isabel Murphy.
Portrait dendrochronology
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Angus's latest Trumbology is accompanied by the following caveat: 'This one is reeeeeeally geeky.'
A bear of great substance
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Just in time for Christmas, Angus reflects on the most special present he has ever received.
Audacity, audacity, audacity
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Angus delves into the biographies of two ambitious characters; Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir John Pope-Hennessy.
Anangu landscape learning
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Angus' initial perception of Uluru shifts, as he comes to see it as central to the entire order of Anangu life.
Inditchenous beestes of New Olland
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A remarkable undated drawing by Edward Lear (1812–88) blends natural history and whimsy.
The stately lotus
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I spent much of my summer holiday at D’Omah, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta. Lotus and waterlilies sprout in extraordinary profusion in artful ponds amid palms and deep scarlet ginger flowers.
Dementia and the arts
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That principle of equity of access has ever since been a noble aspiration for all public art museums, as it is for us here at the National Portrait Gallery.
Grateful admiration and brotherly love
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In the earliest stages of the Great War, the Royal Pavilion in Brighton was turned into a military hospital, and arrangements made there to accommodate the different dietary and other requirements of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim patients.
The mystery of Enoch Arden
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Tennyson's Enoch Arden was inspired by a story that Thomas Woolner passed on to him – but whose story and of whom?
The Thyssen Art Macabre
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Books seldom make me angry but this one did. At first, I was powerfully struck by the uncanny parallels that existed between the Mellons of Pittsburgh and the Thyssens of the Ruhr through the same period, essentially the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Cooey! An Australian Song
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"Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—Love has caught the strain, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—it whispers back again." The “Australian lady” who composed these fruity lyrics was none other than Desda— Jane Davies, sometime Messiter (née Price) of Leddicott, Lavender Bay.
Humdinger
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At a meeting by teleconference of the National Portrait Gallery Foundation last week, I found myself reporting that our forthcoming exhibition So Fine is going to be “a humdinger,” whereupon Tim Fairfax chuckled and said that he hadn’t heard that expression for years.