A Very Rich Woman Doesn’t Want You To See This Painting

Gina Rinehart, pictured above, is widely believed to be the richest person in Australia. She’s the executive chairwoman of Hancock Prospecting, a mineral company founded by her late father in 1955. Under her leadership, the company — which is privately held — grew significantly over the past few decades, and as of 2020, she’s believed to have a net worth of about A$36 billion, or about $22 billion in American dollars. And like many ultra-rich people, Rinehart has spent a lot of money supporting arts and cultural institutions in her community.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone in the art world likes her. Just ask Vincent Namatjira, an award-winning Aboriginal portrait artist.

In 2020, Namatjira won the Archibald Prize, which is considered the most prestigious award given to an Australian portrait painter. His style is unique — his depictions are more like caricatures than what you’d typically consider a portrait and can seem almost childlike with their overstated features and lack of facial symmetry. For example, here’s “The Queen and Me,” a 2016 painting by Namatjira featuring Queen Elizabeth II and the artist himself.

In 2023, Namatjira created perhaps his most ambitious work to date — a series of 21 portraits of notable people, titled “Australia in Colour.” Among the three rows of seven portraits were Queen Elizabeth and Jimi Hendrix, so being Australian wasn’t a prerequisite for inclusion in Namatjira’s creation. But it certainly helped — the portrait array also included paintings of Scott Morrison, who was Prime Minister of Australia at the time; Ned Kelly, a famed Australian outlaw from the mid-to-late 1800s; and Cathy Freeman, a sprinter who won the gold medal for Australia in the 400 meters at the 2000 Sydney Games.

And “Australia in Colour” also featured a portrait of Gina Rinehart, seen below. (It’s the one in the middle.)

Not so bad, right? Sure, she has a double chin and doesn’t look very happy, but in context, it’s not awful — I mean, Adam Goodes, the Australian rule footballer pictured next to her, looks more ridiculous. (For comparison’s sake, here’s a photograph of Goodes in a similar uniform.) But Rinehart didn’t see it that way — she really hated the portrait.

We know that because on March 2, 2024, Namatjira’s work was put on display at the National Gallery of Australia. And six weeks later, according to the Guardian, Rinehart wrote to the Gallery’s leadership, asking that her portrait be removed from display. And, perhaps, the request wasn’t solely out of vanity (that’s left to the reader to decide): per The Art Newspaper, “Associates at Hancock Prospecting reportedly complained that the museum was ‘doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party’, prompting some media platforms to speculate that the controversial work risks discrediting Rinehart’s reputation in China where her company has substantial interests.” And she wasn’t alone in making this ask. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, members of the Australian national swimming team — an organization that had received millions of dollars in donations from Rinehart — had also asked the Gallery to remove the painting.

The gambit had the opposite effect of what Rinehart intended. First off, the Gallery rejected the request, as you’d expect, even though Rinehart was a large benefactor of the institution. But even worse (for Rinehart, at least), news of the request spread, ultimately making headlines in Australia and throughout the world. Google searches for her name skyrocketed as curious surfers wanted to see a picture of the portrait. And as Nick Mitzevich, director of the Gallery, told the Guardian, “the public had flocked to the national museum in droves to see the Namatjira exhibition since the story broke” and “visitor numbers had increased by 24% since the first story emerged about Rinehart’s displeasure about being included in Namatjira’s Australia in Colour exhibition.”

Oops.

Bonus fact: In 2003, photographer Kenneth Adelman took a series of pictures of the California coastline in an effort to document coastal erosion. One of those photos was ”Image 3850,” as seen here. It’s an aerial shot that happened to capture Streisand’s clifftop Malibu mansion, and Streisand wasn’t too happy about that. She sued Adelman and the company that hosted the image for $50 million — and lost miserably. The court not only found in favor of Adelman, but it also demanded that Streisand pay his attorney’s fees. And then it got worse.

Before the lawsuit, according to the court’s ruling (pdf), the image had only been downloaded six times prior to the lawsuit, and two of those were from Streisand’s attorneys. A month later, according to the San Jose Mercury News, 420,000 additional people viewed the image. The phenomenon of getting attention for something you’re trying to censor has since been known as the “Streisand effect.”

From the Archives: The Battle over Malibu’s Beaches: The fake “No Parking” signs near Barbra Streisand’s old home.