Sidney Nolan: An Introduction

Sir Sidney Nolan OM AC CBE RA is an artist who has always inspired strong feelings among his admirers and detractors. In this lecture Jaynie Anderson AM OSI FAHA will challenge the conventional cliches of the biographies written about Nolan to date with reference to previously unknown archival evidence. Nolan’s relations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust will be discussed. New documentary evidence about his admiration for Leonhard Adam and Yosl Bergner will be revealed from the time he lived in St Kilda as a child, and in Parkville in the 1940s. Adam and Bergner inspired Nolan to create works of art about Indigenous subjects which remained a lifelong preoccupation for him. The early Jewish legacy to Nolan was of continual significance and resurfaces in his preoccupation with Auschwitz.

About the speaker:
Jaynie Anderson AM OSI FAHA is an art historian, biographer and curator. She was the Foundation Director of the Australian Institute of Art History at the University of Melbourne from 2009-2015 and Herald Chair of Fine Arts from 1997 to 2014. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and was president of the International Committee of Art History from to 2008 to 2012. In 2015 she became a star of Italy, a knighthood from the President of Italy. She is currently writing a book on Nolan with research that began in 1966.


Exhibition produced by: 

Research and Curation: Katharine Cousins with grateful assistance from Roslyn Sugarman, Emeritus Professor Konrad Kwiet & Professor Avril Alba.

This exhibition was made possible with sincere appreciation to our partners:

• Education Heritage Foundation Ltd 

• Richard and Jacqui Scheinberg

With additional thanks to our Sydney Jewish Museum donors and lenders:

• The Estate of Mary Nolan

• Neil and Kathy Miller

• Sharon Milch

• David and Jenny Goldstein

• Roland and Linda Gumbert

This exhibition follows the Museum’s 2022 exhibition ‘Shaken to His Core: The Untold Story of Nolan’s Auschwitz’, produced in collaboration with 'Nolan’s Africa' author, Andrew Turley. After its success in Sydney and with the acquisition of some 65 artworks from Nolan’s Holocaust series, the Sydney Jewish Museum is proud to present this exhibition featuring new insights and research into our Sidney Nolan Holocaust collection.

Image | Australian artist Sidney Nolan, taken by Albert Tucker. National Library of Victoria.

Please note this event may be recorded for our institutional archive.