As reported in the Manly Observer the Manly Art Gallery and Museum (MAG&M) recently celebrated its Centennial Celebration. Established in 1930, our MAG&M is the oldest metropolitan-based regional gallery in NSW.

At the Centennial Celebration, the Society’s committee re-enacted a gift-giving ceremony performed by residents one hundred years ago. Nick Hollo, acclaimed local artist, presented the Gallery with his work of a modern ‘Manly Cove” showing the heritage harbour front buildings and the gallery in full view for the first time in decades with the aquarium removed. In 1924, a group of residents purchased a prize-winning painting of Middle Harbour by the artist James Jackson. They presented this to the Mayor of Manly and because there was no gallery, the work hung in the town hall of the then Manly Council for six years until the gallery was opened in 1930. It was the first artwork of the collection which now numbers more than five thousand works.

The MAG&M Collection includes over 5,000 items, with 400+ ceramics, 1,300+ Australian watercolours, prints, etchings, drawings and paintings and over 1,200 items of swimwear and beach ephemera. Much of this collection can be explored online. The MAG&M Collection includes donations from the MAG&M Society, artist gifts by Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor, Will Ashton, Lloyd Rees, Joshua Yeldham, Salvatore Zofrea and MAG&M’s founder Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo and the Theo Batten, Roger Pietri and Lady Askin bequests.