THE National Gallery of Australia will announce tomorrow that a curated exhibition of Sidney Nolan’s celebrated “Ned Kelly” series of paintings will travel to Ireland. 

Readers may recall the National Museum of Australia’s huge exhibition last year, “Not Just Ned: A true history of the Irish in Australia”.

Then there was the Canberra Friends of Ireland Society concert at the gallery’s James O’ Fairfax Theatre, called “Not only Nolan”, where Irish pianist Elaine Loebenstein improvised music to a screening of the Nolan images.

Irish ambassador, Noel White, and the NGA director Ron Radford will be at the announcement of this cultural coup, but doubtless some present will wonder why on earth the former NGA director Brian Kennedy, an Irishman, didn’t think of it when he was here.

The answer is, he probably did.

After showing in Dublin, the Kelly series will travel on to the US, where one of its stops will be the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio – Dr Kennedy is the director there.