Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has continued her self-destructive saga against the portrait of herself she hates, by donating a new portrait to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). AKA the billionaire equivalent of trying to change your profile picture to something new so that everyone forgets the old one. Unfortunately, that never works.
After the news that she wanted to remove the portrait of her by Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira from the NPG made international headlines, including a cheeky roasting by Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, Rinehart’s media team has presumably been working triple overtime to try and fix this self-inflicted PR disaster.
And now after a week of everyone forgetting about the massive story, the billionaire has brought all the attention back to herself again, this time by donating a Gina-approved portrait to the gallery.
The NPG’s director Bree Pickering shared on Friday that a new portrait of Rinehart by artist Alix Korte had been gifted to the gallery, in the hopes it be hung there.
However, to display the new portrait the gallery must meet various unknown “conditions” laid out by Gina Rinehart, which has caused issues for the National Portrait Gallery.
The new portrait can be viewed here because just like the NPG, we can’t display it either.
“Those conditions are currently under negotiation, but because of those conditions we haven’t been able to formally accept and accession the work into the collection,” said Pickering.
Pickering did not confirm what the specific requests from Rinehart were, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one of them probably involved removing the portrait by Namatjira.
“We will work with an artist often to understand how they would like their artwork displayed, but the sitter does not normally have any say over how it is displayed.”
Pickering also acknowledged that she is aware that Rinehart is not a fan of the current picture of her at the gallery. Ya don’t say?
Fun fact, the ABC reported that the controversy around Rinehart’s original portrait has resulted in increased foot traffic at the NPG.
If anything, Gina Rinehart trying to stop people from seeing the artwork she didn’t like has actually resulted in an estimated 24 per cent more visitors at the gallery.
I hope she’s got enough $100 bills to wipe away her tears.
The post Gina Rinehart Has Donated A New Portrait — Like That’ll Make Anyone Forget The One She Hates appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
