The John Kaldor Family Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales

In 2008 John Kaldor and his family announced their intention to give the John Kaldor Family Collection to the state of NSW. This was the catalyst for the government to provide funds to the Gallery to build a state-of-the-art offsite storage facility to allow space within the Gallery to display the collection.

This extraordinary gift, together with funds generously donated by the Belgiorno-Nettis family, enabled the re-development of the Gallery’s old storage area and existing display space to create an additional area of approximately 1200 square meters of new exhibition space. This floor now comprises the John Kaldor Family Gallery, a suite of contemporary and modern galleries, a dedicated photography gallery and a study room for the Gallery’s works on paper collection.

Fundamental to the design concept was the desire to increase the perception of greater height within the gallery space. Elsewhere in the building the concrete grid creates a ceiling plane at about 3.6m high. By extending the display walls to the soffit of the flange of the precast “T” beams the reading of the space was increased by a metre, creating a more appropriate setting for contemporary art.