Conversations with NGV staff
A Zionist-infiltrated institution will always and inevitably be an abusive one.
NB: If this story is important to you but you’re only just tuning in, please read these two previous articles as background information:
The following points have been gathered from my conversations with many National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) staff members, who I am choosing to anonymise.
None of these allegations are attributable to a single staff member, and each testimony has been reinforced in more than one conversation:
• Staff say that the NGV maintains a clear curatorial directive against the representation of artists whose work is aligned with a Palestinian perspective. Principled staff are unable to put forward artwork engaging with the current context of Zionist aggression on Palestine and the region. Staff describe this as unambiguous censorship.
• Front-of-house staff say they are encouraged to be ‘political’, but with the specific exclusion of Palestine. For example, public-facing staff are actively encouraged to present as queer, wear pronoun badges, and display various other visible expressions of identity. However, these same staff members are pulled aside by management and ordered to remove small Palestine badges or pins.
• Staff are ever-conscious that their political expressions must not displease the NGV’s executive or Zionist donors. Many staff feel that they are ethically compromised as a direct result of donations from John and Pauline Gandel.
• NGV security has been instructed to prevent keffiyehs or any clothing or accessories signifying Palestinian solidarity from entering the building. Visitors to the gallery have been told to remove or cloak these items.
• The following extract from the NGV’s own website displays an absurd level of hypocrisy. This also provides an example (albeit a cartoonishly unsophisticated one) of the way in which a western imperialist cultural institution will inevitably mobilise to capture, absorb, aestheticise, commodify, and ultimately subdue any uprising for collective liberation:
• Staff describe their work environment as a toxic, unsafe, and abusive power structure, with an ever-present anti-Palestinian political agenda masquerading as political ‘neutrality’.
• While certain managers attempt to protect the exploited front-of-house teams, they are also abused and ignored by the executive and senior management. Staff express concern that even formal complaints about physical safety risks are ignored.
• Staff say they are regularly told not to put ‘sensitive’ things into writing or email. Those holding power are visibly anxious that no paper trail exists, particularly in relation to Zionism and Palestine. Staff describe this as a widespread culture of secrecy and fear. If explicitly denying staff the accountability of a paper trail, the NGV would be in breach of the Victorian Public Sector Code of Conduct.
• Director Tony Ellwood and deputy director Andrew Clark are paid oversized salaries and are said to maintain opulent, tax-deductible lifestyles, including premium-class flights, luxury accommodation, and Michelin-star meals. Ellwood is one of the highest paid arts executives in the Australian colony at an annual AUD 475,000 — although staff say that his additional travel expenses, which are used flagrantly, could easily total that amount again.
• Tony Ellwood arrived at the NGV — a supposedly publicly owned institution — with what staff describe as an observably nepotistic and neoliberal agenda. They say he immediately filled positions of power with his friends, and created new roles exclusively for their partners or spouses. Staff say that employed professionals with expertise are frequently ignored, while hand-selected favourites with no expertise are empowered. Staff also express concern over the misuse of bequeaths.
• There are multiple allegations of inappropriate conduct from executives and senior managers towards their staff. These staff then receive promotions, special treatment, or are compelled to leave their jobs — while the executives and senior managers face no consequences.
• NGV staff, meanwhile, say they are underpaid, insecure, devalued, increasingly casualised, and generally treated as a service class to the NGV’s ‘aristocracy’. The vast pay discrepancy is also highly gendered, with several male staff allegedly on higher salaries than women in equivalent positions.
In fairness to the NGV, though, they do provide a ‘wellbeing program’:
• While it is unclear how much the Gandels have spent in total to secure their new naming rights and long-term ideological influence, staff with access to records say that Ellwood and Clark have accepted at least AUD 20 million from the Gandels during the Zionist entity’s current genocide in Gaza. In addition to the renaming of the ‘Great Hall’ to ‘Gandel Hall’, it is alleged that a new entrance to the hall will be named ‘Gandel Pavilion’. Both the hall and the pavilion will begin with 30-year naming rights (the goal being perpetuity). The NGV’s trustees agreed to this in August 2023, and the minister confirmed it sometime between October and December 2023. View a list of current NGV trustees and board members here.
• The video below, posted by the NGV in May 2025, offers an embarrassingly hubristic digital reimagining of the renamed spaces, presumably catering to the Gandel’s appetite for self-aggrandisement:
• Administrative staff say that records of the NGV’s events and guest lists are ordinarily accessible to them as a matter of routine. The fact that the Zionist dinner of 31 May 2025 is entirely absent from these records is suggestive of its deliberate and premeditated secrecy.
• However, Tony Ellwood was certainly in attendance at the secret 300-person orientalist ‘Japanese-themed’ Zionist dinner with members of his executive and board, alongside the Gandels, the Schwartzes, their friends, and the Israeli ambassador (who was proclaimed as a guest of honour). It was at this dinner that Ellwood announced the renaming of the ‘Great Hall’.
• The NGV’s current executive team is:
Tony Ellwood, Director / Andrew Clark, Deputy Director / Don Heron, Exhibitions Management and Design / Donna McColm, Curatorial and Audience Engagement / Misha Agzarian, Fundraising and Events / Jane Zantuck, Marketing and Corporate Partnerships
• Senior staff working within the directorate have shared Instagram stories referring to Palestinians as ‘bloodthirsty’, and to Palestinian culture as ‘a culture of death and hate’.
• Alongside her Zionist ideology, Pauline Gandel’s obsession with Japan also appears to guide the NGV’s curatorial choices. In 2021—22, an exhibition of Japanese lacquer was given an unusually excessive budget. This, and the NGV’s current kimono exhibition, do not align with the NGV’s stated curatorial priorities. Staff say that these exhibitions were created to entice further donations from the Gandels. This offers a further demonstration of the relationship between ‘donations’ and curatorial influence.
• The NGV loves cops:
• On 27 July, following my first article on the NGV’s intractable complicity, a popular protest was held outside the gallery.
On 30 July, the institution sent an email to all front-of-house staff. While neither Palestine nor the protest were explicitly mentioned, staff members overwhelmingly interpreted the email as a threat. Employment scarcity, staff say, is here being manufactured and weaponised against them to ensure ‘compliance’:
As alarming as the mere handful of allegations in this post may be, they surely point to an even larger culture of corruption and cruelty at the NGV, with innumerable untold stories. I may have the opportunity to share more of these testimonies in future.
Zionism is a wholly poisonous, despicable, and inherently supremacist ideology. A Zionist-infiltrated institution will always and inevitably be an abusive one.
Let’s also remember that — in its relationship to Zionism — the NGV is a typical Australian cultural organisation, not an exceptional one.
Zionism is a deeply and thoroughly integrated component of the Australian ruling class, its creative industries, and its institutions.
“A Zionist-infiltrated institution will always and inevitably be an abusive one.” - Yes! Brilliant line, this multi-part exposé of the NGV has been excellent. Well done Matt.
Matt's previous articles discussed NGA connections to the Gandels and the disgusting covering of the Palestinian flag in a tapestry (see Palestinian flags and the NGA). Does anyone know if 'dress codes' apply at the NGA or other public institutions? What about the hypocritical exploitation of staff 'identity' while prohibiting Palestinian flag pins? What about Ukrainian flag pins? I have so many questions. So much for art belonging to the people. The great imperialistic con.