Grand Courts

The Grand Courts in our historic south building, now known as Naala Nura, are home to artworks from our international and Australian collections – from 15th-century European Renaissance art to exceptional ceramics from across the centuries and around the globe, and 19th-century sculpture and painting.

While the displays in these magnificent spaces focus on the historical collections, a small group of contemporary artworks encourage moments of pause and offer new perspectives. Visitors can enter powerful conversations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous art; explore archival material that connects objects, memories and the fabric of history; experience rare works from the early colonial era and early film; and encounter cherished Australian paintings in vital dialogue with international art movements.

Highlights include a 2018 installation by Brook Andrew that introduces the Indigenous Australian perspectives that resound throughout, and recent acquisitions such as the early-17th-century painting Aesop by Jusepe de Ribera.

Edward John Poynter’s The visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon 1881–90 is shown in dialogue with Ethiopian Belachew Yimer’s painting of the same subject from 50 years later, and a 2012 sculpture by Cameroonian Pascale Marthine Tayou.

Chinese Jingdezhen ware and Kakiemon-style Japanese Arita ware are some of the Asian highlights, in dialogue with a selection of 18th-century European ceramics from the Kenneth Reed collection.

Beloved and contested colonial landscapes join the iconic paintings of Australian artists such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Violet Teague, and a recent acquisition by impressionist Jane Sutherland, shown alongside those by leading European moderns Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne.