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When you support the American Friends, all Australians benefit from your philanthropy.

The American Friends donates important works of art to Australia’s national collection and supports the next generation of Australian artists and arts professionals through the US-based AusArt Fellowship.

Here are three ways to show your support for the American Friends’ mission to strengthen ties between the United States and Australia through artistic exchange.

Over the past four decades, the American Friends has played an important role in shaping the national collection through gifts of works by internationally renowned artists including Chuck Close, Philip Guston, Frank Lloyd Wright, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Larry Rivers, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.

The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia has also donated works by modern and contemporary Australian artists including Arthur Boyd, Virginia Cuppaidge, Russell Drysdale, Sally Morgan, Sidney Nolan and Imants Tillers.

The combined value of works donated to date is in excess of $US20 million.

Wherever possible, the American Friends has sought to build on the collection’s strengths, enriching existing works through the acquisition of others of note by the same artist.

Two figurative canvases – Bad habits 1970, and Pit 1976 – by the highly influential Canadian-American painter Philip Guston entered the collection in 1980. Thanks to the generosity of the American Friends, these were joined in 1992 by Prospects 1964, a sombre and superb example of Guston’s abstract practice, which he famously abandoned in the late 1960s upon returning to figurative painting.

The first work by Canadian-born American abstract artist Agnes Martin to enter the collection was the monochromatic, grid-like canvas Untitled #4 1977, in gesso, ink wash and graphite, purchased in that same year. Nine years later, the American Friends donated Untitled III 1982, a paint and pencil work that glows in the palest of pinks.

In 1986, the American Friends also donated an exquisite early work on paper by Mark Rothko. Untitled 1944-46 is a watercolour, pen, ink and pencil drawing inspired by musical notation and musical instruments. Hovering between lyrical abstraction and surrealist-tinged representation, the lively drawing offers insights into Rothko’s developing style and complements the two Rothko paintings acquired in 1981.

In some instances, a donation has fostered further acquisitions of works by an artist. Two outstanding paintings by celebrated American artist Robert Motherwell were donated to the national collection with assistance from the American Friends in 1994. Elegy to the Spanish Republic 1958 and The sienna wall 1972-73 have since been joined by a significant trove of Motherwell’s prints and drawings, many donated by Kenneth Tyler.

One of the most popular and significant paintings in the Australian collection was an early gift by the American Friends. The austere and commanding The drover’s wife c.1945 by the acclaimed painter Russell Drysdale (1912–1981) has been dubbed “Australia’s Mona Lisa”. It had been acquired by the American lawyer and venture capitalist Benno C Schmidt Senior, who travelled to Australia frequently during the 1960s following the co-purchase of a 5000-hectare/12,355-acre farm in Esperance, Western Australia.

Through the American Friends, Schmidt and his wife, Nancy, generously donated the iconic work in 1987, alongside two other paintings by Drysdale – one a portrait of the revered Australian artist Margaret Olley – and two canvases by Sidney Nolan.

The American Friends is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions received as donations, gifts of works of art and planned giving are tax deductible in the United States.