Australian National Maritime Museum

On their own—Britain's child migrants

An international touring exhibition about the history of child migration from Britain to Australia and Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period about 150,000 children and youths were sent from the UK to British dominions across the world to work in various forms of labour—far from their parents and homes. Taken from poverty and disadvantage it was believed that they would have a better life working the expanses of the British Empire.

The ANMM is working in collaboration with the National Museums Liverpool, UK to create an exhibition that will travel in Australia and the UK.

Development funding: $35,000

Little shipmates—seafaring pets

Part of the ANMM's travelling exhibition program Sail Away, this exhibition features the work of Sydney photographer Sam Hood. Hood went on board thousands of ships between 1900 and the 1950s to take photographs of crew members to send home to their families or to keep as souvenirs. In a life far from home, pets provided a focus of emotion and affection for these people. These photographs record how people cherished various animals including cats, dogs, monkeys and birds on their long voyages.

The exhibition will tour to four NSW venues, as well as Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

Touring funding: $9,800

Saltwater Freshwater—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints

Part of the ANMM's travelling exhibition program Sail Away, this exhibition features a selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints with the common theme of water. Featuring everything from marine life, to water as a place to hunt and fish, to being the site of dreaming stories and also as a place of contact with non-Indigenous Australians. The exhibition will tour to numerous regional venues.

Development funding: $12,000

National Gallery of Australia

Robert Dowling: Tasmanian Son of Empire

This is the first major exhibition of this important colonial artist. As the first artist to be trained in Australia and as our first truly regional artist, Dowling holds a special place in the history and development of Australian art. The exhibition will draw on works from local and international collections.

Touring to Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT.

Touring funding: $221,987

Australian Portraits:1880–1960

The exhibition of portraits will provide a compelling image of Australians over the course of time, from the theatrical Victorians and Edwardians, through modern women of the 1920s to the angry Antipodeans of the 1940s and 1950s. During this period shifts in values and politics were matched by changing artistic movements: realism, tonalism, formalism, expressionism and surrealism. A real sense of these cultural and artistic changes can be realised from the selected portraits.

The exhibition will include a number of much loved works from the collection as well as works that have rarely been seen in public.

Development funding: $134,000

Roy Lichtenstein

This exhibition will feature the NGA's significant collection of over 250 works on paper by this American artist. Born in 1923, Roy Lichtenstein's name became synonymous with the Pop Art movement, and his works stand today alongside those of his contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, as icons of American art in the 60s and 70s. The artist's characteristic comic strip, benday dot imagery has entered the collective subconscious as an instantly recognisable graphic aesthetic and a style that has since had a wide ranging impact on image makers working in the visual arts, design and advertising.

The exhibition is being developed to tour the works to four venues across Australia.

Development Funding: $39,000

National Museum of Australia

Canning Stock Route (CSR) project

The Canning Stock Route exhibition is being developed in a collaborative partnership between FORM, the National Museum of Australia, and nine participating indigenous art centres and groups. FORM is an independent not-for-profit arts and cultural organisation, working in urban, regional and remote Western Australia.

The CSR Project is a pioneering, multi-faceted contemporary arts and cultural initiative, celebrating the lives, and stories of Western Desert Aboriginal peoples from countries surrounding the Canning Stock Route.

There are 105 Aboriginal artists, elders, countrymen and professionals contributing and collaborating as part of the CSR Project and 116 artworks and many supporting materials will be featured in the touring exhibition.

This exhibition will tour to national and international venues.

Development and touring funding: $115,520

Symbols of Australia

Symbols of Australia focuses on the role of symbols in the formation and promotion of Australian national identity. The exhibition will use both objects and multimedia. The exhibition's aim is to highlight the diversity of Australian symbology: the official and the popular, the organic and the imposed, the natural and the man-made, the old and the new. The chosen symbols include: the kangaroo, the wattle, the flag, Uluru, the boomerang, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the billy, vegemite, the Southern Cross and the Holden.

The exhibition will tour to regional and metropolitan centres across Victoria, Western Australia, NSW, Queensland and South Australia.

Touring funding: $68,830

From little things big things grow: the struggle for Indigenous civil rights 1920–1970

This exhibition has developed from an Australian Research Council Linkage project which included contributions from the National Museum of Australia, Monash University, the State Library of Victoria and the National Archives of Australia.

Using a chronological approach, the exhibition follows the history of the efforts of Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to improve the social and legal status of Indigenous Australians. It also highlights the personal stories of the activists, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, famous and not so well known, who fought to change Australian society.

This exhibition will tour to Queensland and another four venues TBC.

Touring funding: $14,883

Papunya Paintings

This exhibition is touring to China as part of the Australian cultural presence in China during World Expo 2010 and will be on display at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC). The NMA's Papunya Paintings was a hugely successful exhibition in Canberra in 2007–08. It records an important period in the history of Australian art in which the work of key Indigenous artists in the Northern Territory region of Papunya flowered. The exhibition incorporates multimedia and interactive elements, carvings, very large artworks, and a dedicated children's activity space called the Honey Art Trail.

Touring funding: $20,000

National Portrait Gallery

Inner worlds: portraits and psychology

This exhibition will engage key moments of intense connection between psychology and portraiture in Australian art and social history. The exhibition will draw heavily on other national and state based collections and original research will be undertaken which will draw together, examine and interpret these works.

Development funding: $74,500

Pre-Raphaelite portraits

This exhibition will focus on the highly passionate and unconventional lives of the talented men and women of the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite circle, through portraiture. The exhibition is tied to the NPG collection via portraits by Thomas Woolner and Julia Margaret Cameron. The exhibition will include works from key international, national and state collections and is planned to tour to major state venues in Queensland, Victoria and possibly South Australia.

Development funding: $23,580

National photographic portrait prize 2010

This annual event is intended to promote the best in contemporary photographic portraiture by both professional and aspiring Australian photographers. It will travel to four venues in NSW and Victoria until early 2011.

Touring funding: $19,000

National Film and Sound Archive

Touring the Sounds of Australia

The Sounds of Australia celebrates the unique and diverse recorded sound culture and history of Australia. Launched in 2007 with a foundation list of 10, public nominations are called each year and 10 new recordings are added to the Registry.

The registry includes recognisable Australian 'heritage' songs Waltzing Matilda, On the Road to Gundagai and the Aeroplane Jelly theme; contemporary selections from the Easybeats, Johnny O'Keefe, the Warumpi Band, Billy Thorpe; Gough Whitlam's 'Kerr's Cur' speech from 1975 and the voices of Don Bradman and Dad and Dave; and recorded Indigenous songs and language from Tasmanian recorded in 1899 and 1903 and more.

Development: $211,900