Dr Sylvia Martin

Dr Sylvia Martin, in conversation with Frank Bongiorno, launches her new book about prominent Australian artists Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston, and their incredible 60-year creative partnership.

Award winning animators and artists Eleanor & Giovanni present a workshop for children based on their Enlighten Festival 2026 illumination The Page Turner, created for the National Library.

Ann Stephen and ADS Donaldson

Explore 2 different examples of artistic responses to the Second World War. 

Explore the artistic legacy and complex history of Donald Friend through diaries, letters, and personal papers. 

Papers including letters, newspaper cuttings, published caricatures, original cartoons, letters and literary manuscripts, mostly related to Australian and New Zealander writers, journalists, composers and artists.

The Deane Collection features 70 original caricatures and cartoons of federal politicians from 1915 to 1925, assembled by public servant and arts patron Percy Deane.

Oral history recordings by Barbara Blackman, mostly of Australian painters, sculptors, potters and others concerned with the visual arts.

Extensive personal papers and about 200 books and serials mostly relating to Chinese art but also including some works on Chinese history, language and literature and reprints of early travels. 

919 watercolours and gouaches of flowers and birds of Australia and Papua New Guinea painted between 1870 and 1920, plus a small quantity of personal papers.

About 350 photographs, including glass negatives, and a small number of pencil sketches, majority depicting paddle steamers sailing or moored on the Murray or Darling rivers.