The South Australian Government has announced a transformative $15 million investment in the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) this week. The announcement comes after last month’s Senate hearings into the South Australian Museum and AGSA (3 March 2025), during which the Gallery presented the economic and social value of major exhibitions, from its homegrown Tarnanthi Festival to blockbuster exhibitions from the Musée D’Orsay in Paris and the Gelman Collection in the US.
This new funding will enable AGSA to more consistently bring major international exhibitions exclusively to Adelaide during the winter seasons of 2026-2029.
In a statement today (1 April) Premier Peter Malinauskas said cultural tourism generates significant economic benefits and positive social impacts for South Australians. “The Art Gallery of South Australia has cemented itself as an international tourism destination. This new investment will see blockbuster exhibitions exclusively in Adelaide over winter for the next four years, driving tourism visitation and delivering tangible economic growth to the state.”
The announcement places AGSA in stride with the NGV International and the National Gallery of Australia, which have both positioned themselves in the winter event market with blockbuster offerings.
This new addition to the calendar will, “amplify Adelaide’s position as a vibrant cultural destination,” says the gallery in a formal statement. Recently appointed Director, Jason Smith, adds: “These destination experiences will complement AGSA’s acclaimed flagship offerings – Tarnanthi Festival, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and the Ramsay Art Prize. AGSA has a successful history in presenting critically acclaimed major exhibitions. In partnership with the South Australian Government, AGSA has delivered the celebrated Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution in 2023 and the record-breaking Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay in 2018.’
The Gallery has also worked with the celebrated international collections of Tate (UK), Musée des Arts Décoratifs (France), the Saatchi Gallery (UK) and the Gelman Collection (US), and looks forward to building upon these relationships.
AGSA Board Chair, Sandy Verschoor explains, “This investment is the outcome of many months of productive, collaborative work between the Government and the AGSA Board and Executive team.”
The first exhibition in the Winter Art Series, to be held in winter 2026, will be announced later this year.
A bigger funding question
While the news today is welcomed by the Gallery and wider visual arts sector, AGSA is still facing a deficit in government funding when compared with its counterparts in other states.
At the Statutory Authorities Review Committee hearing (3 March 2025), the Gallery told government that it receives the lowest operating grant of any state gallery.
“While AGSA outperforms at a national level, the limitation of exhibition space and operational funding present real pressures. Among state galleries, the Art Gallery of South Australia has the third largest collection to care for, store and exhibit, yet its building has the smallest footprint. The Art Gallery also receives the lowest operating grant of the three cultural institutions on North Terrace and of any state art gallery in Australia,” reported Smith.
He continued: “For every one dollar of state government operational funding, the Art Gallery generates a further $1.80. This is the highest proportion of non-government to government revenue of any art museum in Australia.”
Smith added that the 125-year-old building faces ongoing challenges in maintenance. The Gallery’s last expansion was in 1996, while every other state government has invested in operating infrastructure in recent years. The promise of relief of storage pressures via the Cultural Institution Storage Facility (CISF), announced in 2021, has not delivered to date, and that space allocation to the Gallery has been revised and reduced during that period.
During the hearings, Smith also presented the ratio of collection works to operating grants by state governments, demonstrating that “we are almost $30 million behind a collection that is only half the size of ours. We come third in the scale of our collection (48,000 artworks), but we are last across the country with $8.5 million, so we are $2 million below the Art Gallery of Western Australia – which has a collection of 18,000. The next figure up is Queensland Art Gallery at $37 million, so we are almost $30 million behind a collection that is only half the size of ours.”
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While the vision for the satellite venue, Adelaide Contemporary, never manifested (despite seed funding), the plan for a First People’s Gallery – Tarrkarri – emerged. However, years later, the project remains stagnant.
The South Australia’s Cultural Strategic Plan is due to be released early this week. ArtsHub will report on its goals and vision at that time.
