In 1938 Nora Heysen became the first woman to win the Archibald Portrait Prize and in 1943 was appointed the first Australian female war artist. What progress has been made to the profile of women in Australian art since Nora’s Archibald win over eighty years ago and what are the continuing challenges facing women artists today?

Moderator

Amanda Smith, broadcaster, ABC Radio National

Speakers

Louise Hearman is an artist from Melbourne who has been painting and drawing from a very young age. She first came to public notice in 1986 when she spent a year painting a mural on the inside of the concrete dome of the old gymnasium at the Missions to Seamen building in Flinders Street in Melbourne. Her portrait, Bill-1383, won the 2014 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize; while in 2016, she won the Archibald Prize for her portrait of entertainer, satirist, painter and Dadaist, Barry Humphries.

Angela Hesson is Curator of Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts to 1980 at the National Gallery of Victoria and curator of Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art.