In 2006 he was awarded Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the University of Adelaide for the entirety of books,booklets,articles,and catalogues authored or edited by him during his career as an art curator and gallery director up to that point.[3]
From 1980 to 1988 he was curator of European and Australian Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Gallery of South Australia.[2] As director between 1990[5] and 2004,he built up the collection of Australian art,particularly from the Colonial period,developed a strong holding in Asian art and expanded the Renaissance collection.[2]
Radford was appointed director of the NGA in 2004,[6] his term starting on 20 December.[citation needed] He announced his intention to lend out Old Masters (European art,prior to the 19th century) for long-term display to state galleries. He considers the collection of less than 30 paintings,put together by Mollison to give context to the modern collection,as too small to make any impact on the public. He has been quoted as saying that the gallery should concentrate on its strengths—European Art of the first half of the 20th century,20th-century American art,photography,Asian art and the 20th-century drawing collection,and to fill the gaps in the Australian collection.[7]
Radford served on many boards and committees,including the Australia Council (chairing its Visual Arts/Craft Board from 1997 to 2002). He was a founding member of the National Portrait Gallery's board from 1997 to 2005.[2]
In 2012,he was a trustee of the Gordon Darling Foundation,a member of the Board of Art Exhibitions Australia,a director of the Bundanon Trust,and a member of the Australia International Cultural Council. He was also an affiliate professor of the University of Adelaide.[2]
The historic Ordnance Store building at AGSA,now an historical museum for the display of early South Australian paintings and objects,was later renamed the Radford Auditorium.[5]
2012?:Honorary doctorate,University of South Australia,"in recognition of his significant contributions to the art community in South Australia and nationally"[2]
2015:Honorary doctorate,University of Canberra,"for service to arts administration,particularly as Director of the National Gallery of Australia and by initiating appreciation of Australian artists and their work within the community"[6]
Publications
Radford has written a number of books on art,mainly exhibition guides,including:[8]
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart was an expatriate Australian painter known for his precisionist depictions of urban landscapes that are "full of private jokes and playful allusions".
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east.
Ben Quilty is an Australian artist and social commentator, who has won a series of painting prizes: the 2014 Prudential Eye Award, 2011 Archibald Prize, and 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has been described as one of Australia's most famous living artists.
James Mollison was acting director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) from 1971 to 1977 and director from 1977 to 1989. He was director of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1989 to 1995.
Harold Septimus Power, usually known as H. Septimus Power or H. S. Power, was a New Zealand-born Australian artist, who was an official war artist for Australia in World War I.
Kathleen Petyarre was an Australian Aboriginal artist. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings. Petyarre's paintings have occasionally been compared to the works of American Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and even to those of J. M. W. Turner. She has won several awards and is considered one of the "most collectable artists in Australia". Her works are in great demand at auctions. Petyarre died on 24 November 2018, in Alice Springs, Australia.
Daisy Loongkoonan was an Australian Aboriginal artist and elder from the Nyikina people of the central western Kimberley region in Western Australia. Loongkoonan was born at Mount Anderson near the Fitzroy River. Her parents worked on cattle stations, and as she grew up, Loongkoonan followed them, mustering sheep and cooking in stock camps. Later she rode horses and mustered cattle.
Carol Jerrems was an Australian photographer/filmmaker whose work emerged just as her medium was beginning to regain the acceptance as an art form that it had in the Pictorial era, and in which she newly synthesizes complicity performed, documentary and autobiographical image-making of the human subject, as exemplified in her Vale Street.
Yanggarriny Wunungmurra (1932–2003) was an artist, yidaki player and leader of the Dhalwangu clan of the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Julie Robinson is Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia, where she has worked since 1988, and is also on the teaching staff at the University of Adelaide, where she offers supervision in Art History. Her curatorial projects include Candid Camera: Australian Photography 1950s–1970s (2010) and A Century in Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s (2007). Writing about the latter while national arts critic of The Australian, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Sebastian Smee said: "If you are at all interested in Australian photography, whether or not you are from SA, you will want to see this show, or at least get hold of the catalogue".
Udo Sellbach (1927–2006) was a German-Australian visual artist and educator whose work focused primarily around his printmaking practice.
Gerard Ronald Vaughan is an Australian art historian and curator. He was director of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1999 to 2012, and was director of the National Gallery of Australia from 2014 to 2018.
Robert Stewart Bell was an Australian artist and arts curator, best known for his focus on decorative arts. He also worked as an artist in ceramics and textiles.
Brenda L. Croft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, curator, writer, and educator working across contemporary Indigenous and mainstream arts and cultural sectors. Croft was a founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in 1987.
Mavis Ngallametta, née Marbunt, was an Indigenous Australian painter and weaver. She was a Putch clan elder and a cultural leader of the Wik and Kugu people of Aurukun, Cape York Peninsula, Far North Queensland. Her work is held in national and state collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Nici Cumpston, is an Australian photographer, painter, curator, writer, and educator.
Jacky Redgate is an Australian-based artist who works as a sculptor, an installation artist, and photographer. Her work has been recognised in major solo exhibitions surveying her work has been included in many group exhibitions in Australia, Japan and England. Her works are included in major Australian galleries including the National Gallery and key state galleries.
Neil Richard Balnaves was an Australian media executive and arts philanthropist. His production companies were responsible for bringing Big Brother and Bananas in Pyjamas to Australian television screens.
Nick Mitzevich is the director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra, Australia, a position he has occupied since July 2018. From 2010 until his appointment to the NGA in April 2018, he was director of the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide.
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