Nick Mitzevich

Nick Mitzevich (New South Wales, 1970) is the director of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra, a position he has occupied since July 2018.

Nick Jr is the eldest and only son, with three younger sisters, who all grew up on their parents' small farm[1] at Abermain,[2] outside Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales.

[3] His parents had no connection to art, but two things led the young Nick Mitzevich to his current occupation: his mother bought him a copy of Robert Hughes' book of his television series The Shock of the New when he was 15; and a few years later, a school excursion took him to a large exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, called Gold of the Pharaohs, that made a big impression on him.

Watching and listening to Betty Churcher working as a tour guide at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) when on a university excursion further inspired him.

During this time, he oversaw acquisitions including the digital projection of an AES+F video work onto the gallery's façade during the Adelaide Fringe in 2012, and acquiring 16 paintings from a single exhibition by Ben Quilty on the 130th anniversary of AGSA.

AGSA also acquired and exhibited We Are All Flesh, an epoxy resin sculpture of two headless horses by Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere, suspended from the ceiling of the gallery.

[1] Lindy Lee's 6-metre (20 ft) sculpture "The Life of Stars", which was presented for the 2018 Biennial, Divided Worlds,[12] was bought by the gallery as a permanent installation on its forecourt as a tribute and farewell "gift" for Mitzevich in April 2018.

Mitzevich travelled to London (where he met former arts minister and then high commissioner to the UK George Brandis) and Europe as well as Arnhem Land and Perth within a few months of being appointed, and then set about rehanging the Australian collection, converting it to a chronological rather than thematic sequence.

However, in November 2020, the NGA finally opened its Know My Name exhibition, which is part of a large project to recognise Australian women artists from the 20th century to the present, with the aim of addressing historical gender bias.

[3] In 2024, Mitzevich served on the jury for the $60 million revitalization of the National Gallery of Australia's three-hectare sculpture garden, alongside Philip Goad, Nici Cumpston, and Teresa Moller.