THE National Gallery of Australia is today (December 2) launching a book about its own building.

“Vision Art, Architecture and the National Gallery of Australia,” is seen by the gallery’s director, Nick Mitzevich, as a celebration of one of the nation’s most remarkable buildings, and without doubt it is itself a work art.

In 1982 the chair of the then Australian National Gallery, the late Gordon Darling, proclaimed: “It is our hope people will say that this gallery with its Sculpture Garden on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin is, in itself, a work of art.”

Designed by architect Col Madigan, of Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs, the National Gallery building has been considered to be part of the “Brutalist” style of architecture and is a combination of the sculptural and the functional.

The new book features an essay by architectural historian Prof Philip Goad alongside images from the gallery’s photographic archive, including those by renowned Australians David Moore and Max Dupain.

Mitzevich sees the book, releases as part of the gallery’s 40^th anniversary observances, as “a celebration of this significant building in the history of Australian architecture, exploring the building in its entirety – from its founding on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country to its status today as a world-renowned gallery.”

He says: “The National Gallery of Australia is unique among our major collecting institutions in that it was established during the 20th, rather than the 19th, century… This necessitated a modern approach to collecting and exhibiting works of art, which in turn led to the conception and design of an unconventional, even radical, building in which to house the national collection.”

The story of the conception, design, construction and controversial aftermath of the building, Goad writes, “has all the qualities of a Promethean struggle”.

Planned in the open-minded ’70s but opened in the more conventional ’80s, he argues, the NGA building has not always been understood or embraced.

“Now is the time to recognise the building for what it is, and celebrate the ambition of its creation, dare to uncover its bones and revel in its concrete presence and retrieve its vision,” he says.

Designed by John Warwicker and published in partnership with Black Inc., the book volume features an Introduction to place written by Bruce Johnson McLean and reflections from National Gallery curators Lucina Ward and Simeran Maxwell on the gallery’s first exhibition.