Visiting Creatives Program - The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, INC.

In partnership with the National Gallery of Australia, the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia (AFNGA), has announced leading contemporary American artists Jeff Koons and Jeffrey Gibson as inaugural participants in the new AFNGA: Visiting Creatives Program.

The AFNGA: Visiting Creatives Program builds on four decades of close cultural ties between the National Gallery and the United States of America and is designed to deepen the transformational impact of cross-cultural exchange and creative collaboration between the two countries.

Developed to nurture creative exchange and enrich Australia’s cultural landscape, the program will bring influential American arts practitioners to Australia to engage with the national collection and the broader arts community.

Two of the United States’ foremost contemporary artists – Jeff Koons and Jeffrey Gibson – will be the first participants in the program and travel to Australia in 2025.

Koons is known globally for his bold works of art which challenge the limitations of fabrication while transforming everyday images and objects. He will be the first artist to visit the National Gallery under the initiative this August. Koons will participate in a special public program, an in-conversation with National Gallery Director Dr Nick Mitzevich, during his time in Kamberri/Canberra.

Celebrated for his vibrant, interdisciplinary practice that weaves together Native American aesthetic and material traditions with contemporary themes, Gibson will follow in October. During his visit, Gibson will present the National Gallery’s 2025 Annual Lecture, which invites leading art world thinkers to present new ideas in the field of art and art history.

Ranging from artists, curators, critics, academics, and other cultural leaders, one to two influential individuals will be selected each year to participate in the Visiting Creatives Program. Their visits, funded by the AFNGA through the generous support of the Pratt Foundation, will involve cultural exchange at the National Gallery in Kamberri/Canberra, with opportunities for interstate travel to deepen their understanding of Australian contemporary art practices.

Participants in the Visiting Creatives Program will work closely with National Gallery curators to explore the national collection, focusing on First Nations and contemporary Australian art. They will also engage with the National Gallery’s significant collection of post-war American art, including Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles and the Kenneth E. Tyler Collection, one of the most important bodies of American printmaking outside the U.S.

Participants are selected for their capacity to elevate the profile of Australian art internationally, particularly within the American art community. Their insights and experiences will help forge stronger ties between Australia and the United States.

Inaugural participants

JEFF KOONS

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955, studied art in Chicago, Illinois and now lives and works in New York City. Koons is known for challenging the limitations of fabrication while transforming everyday images and objects into works of art that engage the viewer in a dialogue with the time in which we live and our historical past. For four decades, Koons has created works that explore themes of self-acceptance and transcendence. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons’s work has been shown in galleries, museums, and cultural institutions throughout the world. Koons’s work is in numerous collections around the world. Koons is widely known for his bold paintings and sculptures, including Rabbit (1986), Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988), Puppy (1992) and Balloon Dog (1994). The smooth, mirror-finished surfaces of his iconic stainless-steel sculptures reflect and affirm viewers and their environments. A dialogue with the readymade is evident in his complex paintings that often employ bright, saturated color, communicating the artist’s interest in art history, the biological, and acceptance. Jeff Koons has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his cultural achievements and philanthropic efforts.

JEFFREY GIBSON

Jeffrey Gibson grew up in major urban centres in the United States, Germany, and Korea, and he now lives and works near the Hudson Valley region of New York state. For over two decades, Gibson has evolved an aesthetic that examines our armatures of meaning, from language and text to pattern and music, and how they act as interlocutors with the world around us. He is celebrated for his work in painting, video, performance, and installation, which combine vibrant color, complex pattern, and both sourced and original text with found objects and sound to invoke and interweave such disparate contexts as faith-based spaces of communion and night clubs. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others, and has been exhibited widely, including the 2024 U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, where he was selected to represent the United States with a solo exhibition. He holds an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London (1998) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995). Gibson has received many distinguished awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (2019) and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2012).