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The medallion
About Face article
In recent years I have become fascinated by the so-called Sydney Cove Medallion (1789), a work of art that bridges the 10,000-mile gap between the newly established penal settlement at Port Jackson and the beating heart of Enlightenment England.
Cocky McGrath
About Face article
The long life and few words of a vice-regal cockatoo
Magna Carta
About Face article
On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
20/20 launch speech
About Face article
Dr Helen Nugent AO, Chairman, National Portrait Gallery at the opening of 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.
Desert Island Discs
About Face article
I agonized over the choice of four songs to take with me to the ABC Studios for Alex Sloan’s Canberra 666 afternoon program, a sort of iteration of the old BBC Desert Island Discs.
Dance like everyone’s watching
About Face article
Penelope Grist’s spirits soar with Lisa Tomasetti’s Dancers in the Streets series.
Maria Caroline Brownrigg
About Face article
At first glance, this small watercolour group portrait of her two sons and four daughters by Maria Caroline Brownrigg (d. 1880) may seem prosaic, even hesitant
The personal and the historical
About Face article
Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick.
Christmas Island
About Face article
This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.