Celebrating anniversaries in 2025: the first wave of announcements

Visual arts organisations celebrating milestone anniversaries in 2025.
Birthday cake with glowing candles in blackened room. Arts anniversaries

While the year started by honouring the creative sector on the 50th anniversary of the Australia Day Honours, there are several arts organisations that are celebrating their own special anniversary in 2025.

For a small business or organisation the arts can be a difficult sector to sustain – let alone thrive and grow – so ArtsHub pays a nod to the companies that have tirelessly delivered their artistic programming, and continue to do so.

In this first wave, we take a look at the visual arts organisations celebrating milestones.

MUMA – Australia’s leading university museum turns 50

exterior view of art gallery with mirror facade at night. MUMA
Monash University Art Museum, celebrating 50 years. Image: Supplied.

Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) is Australia’s leading contemporary university art museum. The University’s inaugural Vice Chancellor Louis Matheson established a fund for the purchase of artworks by living Australian artists in 1961. And while the University had curatorial appointment from those early days to manage the collection’s display across the campus, it was not until 1975 that Patrick McCaughey established the Monash University Gallery and an artist-in-residence program.

The Gallery was relocated on campus in 1987, to what soon became known as the Gallery Building, where it remained until 2010. In 2002, under the directorship of Jenepher Duncan, it was renamed Monash University Museum of Art. The next milestone was in 2010, when MUMA moved to Monash’s Caulfield campus, initiated by Director Max Delany, and created its signature modernist building.

“Today, MUMA is a critically influential centre of ideas and a proponent of innovative art-led models of interdisciplinary teaching, learning and research across the University,” says the Gallery. In addition to producing thematic survey exhibitions, significant solo projects and publications, MUMA also commissions public artworks.

To celebrate its 50th year in 2025, MUMA is marking the occasion with the exhibition, Image Economies, featuring 18 artists and collectives from across Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Asia Pacific.

The exhibition opening-cum-50th birthday party will be held this weekend – Saturday 8 February from 2-5pm with a workshop by Sione Tuívailala Monū, a live performance by Scotty So, music by DJ Lucreccia Quintanilla, drinks by T.I.N.A., food by Flavours of Syria, and a specially commissioned 50th birthday cake by a guest artist. The exhibition continues through to 17 April.

Institute of Modern Art rolls out its 50th anniversary program

Brisbane’s home of independent, contemporary art, the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) recently launched is first quarter program (January – March) kicking off its 50th anniversary program.

For the organisation’s 40th anniversary in 2015, IMA created its anniversary online archive, tracking four decades of the organisation’s history.  For this milestone, it appears to be business as usual for the IMA, at the Judith Wright Arts Centre in the Brisbane inner city suburb of Fortitude Valley – more exhibitions, more research, more publishing.

Founded in 1995 and led by co-Directors Campbell Robertson-Swann and Lauren Harvey, Defiance Gallery is a Sydney gallery with an incredible history and a focus on the abstract, both across painting and sculpture. Celebrating 30 years, the “gallery’s stalwart support for sculpture has marked it as the leading Australian exhibition space for this form,” wrote Sophie Hopmeier, on the occasion of the gallery’s 20th anniversary.

She added, “Robertson-Swann saw that many of Australia’s most renowned and influential sculptors were without gallery representation. He sought to devote his energies to developing a greater understanding and recognition of sculpture in the wider public through the establishment of a permanent exhibition space.”

The gallery’s annual six-inch miniature sculpture exhibition has been a highlight in the Gallery’s program for three decades.

While the gallery space was based in Newtown, it ran a satellite space in Paddington from 2010-2012, the Defiance Sculpture Park at Wollombi from 2011-2014 – always pushing its ambitions wider. It also has staged pop-up exhibitions in venues including Seymour Centre (Sydney), the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Nock Art Foundation (Hong Kong), the Yellow House in Potts Point, and 12 Mary Place (Paddington) – an iconic arts venue since the 1970s, where it will stage its 30th anniversary group exhibition, Defiance 30 Years. It opens this weekend 8 February and runs through to 1 March.

Defiance has always fostered an intergenerational community of artists and serious conversations about art. Robertson-Swann is known to be “obsessed with quality,” saying in an earlier interview with Artist Profile, “No strugglers, no students, no second-raters,” adding he’d rather leave the gallery vacant than hang something just to pay the rent.

woman in black and white dress standing in gallery with glass art on display. Sabbia Gallery
Anna Grigson, Founder and Director Sabbia Gallery, with Kirstie Rea’s artwork. Image: Supplied.

The Sydney-based gallery, Sabbia will celebrate its 20-year anniversary throughout 2025, with the launch of a major exhibition and book in March 2025. Specialising in object-based work – ceramics, fibre and glass – it is the most respected gallery working in this area in Australia today.  It has presented the work of more than 100 artists, and held close to 250 exhibitions, playing an essential role in the advancement of contemporary art in Australia.

Gallery Founder and Director Anna Grigson tells ArtsHub: “The investment in artist and creative practice has been an integral part of Sabbia over its 20 years. We have offered a mentorship and solo exhibition prize to a ceramics graduate at NAS for the last 25 years and will soon be announcing the same to a glass graduate from Sydney University. With the enrolments in glass at Sydney University doubling over the last few years we wanted to encourage this development.”

The gallery opened in Surry Hills in March 2005 with the exhibition The Next Chapter featuring works by
artists including Cobi Cockburn, Mel Douglas, Jeffery Mincham AM and Nick Mount. Grigson launched Sabbia with her sister Maria Grimaldi (who retired in 2020). The gallery relocated to Paddington in 2009, and then to its current location in Redfern in 2019.

The anniversary exhibition twenty (8-29 March) will include currently represented artists, as well as artists that the gallery worked with in the past and had a significant impact on the sector, and the gallery’s history. A large component of the gallery’s other 2025 celebrations will be its Public Program, partnering with key craft and design organisations – such as Australian Catholic University in Melbourne and Sydney, Australian Design Centre Sydney, Canberra Glassworks in Canberra, JamFactory in Adelaide, National Art School Sydney, Powerhouse Sydney and Sydney University Sydney College of Arts – to host a series of workshops, a symposium, artist and curator talks, student lectures, panels and residencies from March to December.

Tarnanthi growing connections for a decade

Aboriginal dancers outside gallery. Tarnanthi
Tarnanthi 2021 opens. Kaurna dance group performing at the Tarnanthi 2019 launch. Photo: John Montesi.

2025 marks 10 years of Tarnanthi – Art Gallery of South Australia’s festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Pronounced tar-nan-dee, from the language of the Kaurna people, the Traditional Owners of the Adelaide Plains, the festival aims to share important stories through artistic excellence, illuminating the diversity and depth of art and culture in communities nationwide.

Over 6000 artists have been included in the exhibitions and the art fairs, and over 48,000 students and teachers have been welcomed into learning and understanding of First Nations’ cultures through Tarnanthi.

Inaugural Curator, Barkandji artist, curator, writer and educator, Nici Cumpston has shepherded the event. In an earlier interview she told ArtsHub: “We have a long way to go to break down the stereotypes of what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island art is, and sometimes people need to just happen upon things to learn in their own time.”

Cumpston believes that this is where legacy comes in, and that slow year-on-year build of a conversation. First, the mining giant BHP came to the table to secure the festival for five years with $17.54 million. In 2October 2021, it committed to another three years of support in the delivery of the festival.

Cumpston added: “Part of the legacy of Tarnanthi is that we can acquire [artworks] into the collection, especially if we have the long lead time to build into the acquisition strategy, so we can continue to tell that story through our education resources. It is not necessarily [just] about art, but ongoing learning and understanding of systems – maps, science, geology, geography, weather – that invest in that building our future.”

This year’s exhibition Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi, will be presented from 17 October – 18 January 2026.

Read: How a festival’s legacy shifts perception

Four decades of Gertrude

Gertrude’s 2025 Artistic Program, Past is Prologue: Four Decades of Gertrude, will span the year with four interrelated exhibitions, where contributing curators will chart the history of this organisation and its community, and commission new works by leading Australian visual artists. It all starts this weekend, with the opening of the first exhibition A Fictional Retrospective (8 February – 30 March).

The exhibition takes a speculative look at the span of artists’ works shown during Gertrude’s formative years. The exhibition will include artworks rarely seen in almost 40 years, yet which retain contemporary relevance through their diverse explorations of abstraction, cultural and artistic identities, the media and the cinematic. 

Gertrude Contemporary was established in 1983 as a series of artist studios at 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy (Melbourne) in a converted textiles factory. However, it was in 1985 that the organisation was founded, and led the way as Australia’s first combined gallery and studio complex, a model it continues to operate today.

Over the decades it has played a pivotal role in both supporting artists careers, and hosting conversations, publishing and advocating for the contemporary art sector. Past Directors include Alexie Glass-Kantor, Emma Crimmings, Louise Neri, Rose Lang, Max Delany and Samantha Comte, with Mark Feary, Artistic Director, and Tracy Burgess, Executive Director leading the organisation in this anniversary year.

Gertrude is running a Plus1 fundraising campaign to go towards funding its 40th anniversary exhibitions, and a new publication that celebrates the last 20 years of its work, following on from the 2005 publication A Short Ride in a Fast Machine (edited by Charlotte Day).

Two decades of Pilbara Aboriginal art

For two decades, the Colours of our Country exhibition has been an important platform for Pilbara Aboriginal artists to showcase their creations and honour their stories, ceremonies, culture and customs. Initiated by Rio Tinto, it has previously been an exclusively Perth-based exhibition. However, to celebration its 20th anniversary Colours of Country will tour to London (UK) and Busselton.

Each location will host an Artist in Residence, allowing visitors to gain a deeper understanding of that Pilbara artist’s culture and connection to Country.

Rio Tinto Iron Ore Chief Executive, Simon Trott says: “We are looking forward to celebrating the 20th Colours of our Country exhibition and are excited to see it showcased in our global head office in London for the first time, as well as on display in the Busselton region in Western Australia’s south-west, where many of our FIFO (fly-in, fly-out) workforce live.

“The exhibition continues to be an important avenue to show the unique creations of Pilbara Aboriginal artists. By taking the 20th anniversary art to new audiences, we can help build a deeper appreciation for Pilbara art and the rich culture of the region.”

The exhibition began as a pop-up event and has evolved into an opportunity for artists, with all proceeds from artwork sales going directly to the artists, art centres and their communities. More than 3080 artworks have been sold since the first exhibition in 2006, with more than $3.4 million going directly to Pilbara artists, art centres and their communities.

The London exhibition opens 14-18 July, Busselton in August and Perth in September.

If your arts organisation is celebrating a major anniversary this year, reach out to us at ArtsHub at editor@artshub.com.au

Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's National Visual Arts Editor. For a decade she worked as a freelance writer and curator across Southeast Asia and was previously the Regional Contributing Editor for Hong Kong based magazines Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Prior to writing she worked as an arts manager in America and Australia for 14 years, including the regional gallery, biennale and commercial sectors. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Twitter: @ginafairley Instagram: fairleygina