Patrick White's Choice - Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1981-c.1987

Component identifier:

Series 16

Content Summary:

As part of the 1982 Festival of Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales presented a number of exhibitions of works selected by a prominent individual. Patrick White selected 20 works from the Gallery's collections for the first exhibition, titled 'Patrick White's Choice', which ran from December 1981 to January 1982. This series includes letters to White from Barry Pearce of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1981, and Brian Adams of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1981, together with some draft material for the catalogue, copies of the printed catalogue, and papers relating to artworks that the Gallery acquired from White.

Immediate source of acquisition:

During White's lifetime, he asserted that he kept no manuscripts or personal papers, burning his drafts on completion of each work. For many years after his death, it was believed that a single manuscript draft of Memoirs of many in one (1986), donated by White to the anti-apartheid Canon Collins Education Trust for Southern Africa in 1988 and subsequently purchased at auction in 1991 by the National Library of Australia and the State Library of New South Wales, was the only surviving record of White's literary manuscripts. While White does appear to have destroyed a considerable portion of his manuscript material, he clearly retained many literary papers and personal papers until his death. The papers in this collection were in the custody of Manoly Lascaris (White's partner) who died in 2003, and of Barbara Mobbs, White's long-term literary agent and Literary Executor, who presented the collection to the National Library of Australia in 2006.

Names:

White, Patrick, 1912-1990

Contents

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