The Johnstone Gallery Archive

The Johnstone Gallery was a commercial art gallery that operated in Brisbane for 22 years during a seminal time in the development of an audience for contemporary art in Australia. It opened in 1950 and closed in 1972. Its lifespan was predicated around the lives of its two founders - Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, who married a few months before the gallery opened. Despite the fact that neither had any previous direct involvement in visual art, the gallery was a great success. It brokered strong sales year after year for Australian artists of the period, including Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan, Donald Friend, Arthur Boyd, Ray Crooke, Margaret Olley, Lawrence Daws, Robert Dickerson and others.

The Johnstone Gallery Archive was donated to the State Library of Queensland's James Hardie Library of Australian Fine Art in 1994 following Marjorie Johnstone's death. It is an irreplaceable and immensely valuable resource of art, artists, commercial galleries and Australian social history. Its scrapbook collection traces the Johnstone's unique personal and professional interests for the 22 years of the gallery's life and during their retirement, providing a unique snapshot of the concerns and controversies of the times.

The Johnstone Gallery Archive also includes catalogues of gallery exhibitions and a host of intriguing ephemera related to the artists it represented, including newspaper, journal and magazine articles, other gallery exhibition catalogues, drawings, correspondence files and accounts. Extensive photographic documentation of exhibitions and openings, and press cuttings and reviews are also an integral part of the collection.

The entire collection is available for research and a Guide to The Johnstone Gallery Archive is available.