A brief history of the Benalla Art Gallery collection

The collection of art at the Benalla Art Gallery tells stories about our place in the Australian landscape and culture. Public collections such as this provide a visible history of Australia's culture, and allow people to participate in the ongoing debate on Australian identity. Our collection asks the questions "What is Australian?", "Who are we?", "Where have we been?" and "Where are we going?". With these questions in mind, the Benalla Art Gallery collects examples of art that signify major points in our cultural development.

In the early 1970s, local resident Laurie Ledger offered the Shire Council works from his extensive pre-1960 collection of Australian art. This generous gift increased the historical scope of the collection and built a focus on Australian landscape painting and women artists. The Bennett Bequest, an acquisition fund donated in 1997 by Mrs Gladys Bennett has enabled the gallery to fill gaps in the collection and extend the story in other areas. Overall, the Gallery holds around nine hundred works which include paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics, porcelain and sculpture. The collections includes work from the early Colonial period, the Heidelberg School, works from the 1970s, work by women artists and watercolourists of the early 1900s, indigenous artists and contemporary practising artists. Well-known artists represented in the collection include Von Guerard, Streeton, Roberts, Proctor, Heysen, Williams, Dobell, Kngwarrey, Boyd, Nolan, Robertshaw, Durrant, Arkley and Davila.