The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) has appointed a new director, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Nick Mitzevich, formerly the director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, will take the place of current director Gerard Vaughan, who announced his plans for retirement last year. Since taking over the Adelaide gallery in 2010, Mitzevich has overseen 4 editions of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and more than 50 exhibitions. He joins the NGA amid a federal investigation into the funding of the capital’s museum and galleries, which have been dealing with budget cuts applied to national institutions (estimated at AUS$30 million) since the current government’s coalition in 2013. NGA’s chairman, Allan Myers, praised the work of Gerard Vaughan since his tenure began in 2014 during which he launched an independent review of the gallery’s Asian art collection (exposing 22 artworks that had ‘insufficient or questionable’ documentation), a major re-hang of the gallery’s collection, as well as initiating ‘new philanthropic avenues to cultivate private and public support for the NGA’ while grappling with the closure of the exhibition space NGA Contemporary due to funding restraints.
Nick Mitzevich will begin his role at the gallery on 2 July 2018.
10 April 2018
