Scholarships

Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / Building the bridge 1931 / Watercolour and gouache over pencil on wove paper on cardboard / 25.3 x 30.3cm / Gift from the estate of Mrs Gladys Powell 1941 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image

QAGOMA facilitates scholarships that contribute to the career development of artists and art historians. Current and upcoming scholarships, made possible through grants, bequests and partnerships, are listed below.

Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / Wattle in a yellow vase c.1912-15 / Oil on canvas on plywood / 24 x 29cm / Gift of the Estate of Shirley Lahey through the QAG Foundation 2012 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA — Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / *Wattle in a yellow vase* c.1912-15 / Oil on canvas on plywood / 24 x 29cm / Gift of the Estate of Shirley Lahey through the QAG Foundation 2012 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image

Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship

The Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship gives young or emerging Australian artists or young Australian art history students or graduates an extraordinary opportunity to develop their practice or research through an itinerary of international or national travel that will contribute to an understanding of Australian art.

The scholarship is offered every two years. In 2027, the scholarship will expand from a single $40,000 award to two scholarships of $50,000 each.

Support for travel is offered in accordance with Australian and Queensland Government advice on international and interstate travel.

Apply now

Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / Monday morning (detail) 1912 / Oil on canvas / 153 x 122.7cm / Gift of Madame Emily Coungeau through the Queensland Art Society 1912 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA — Vida Lahey, Australia 1882-1968 / *Monday morning* (detail) 1912 / Oil on canvas / 153 x 122.7cm / Gift of Madame Emily Coungeau through the Queensland Art Society 1912 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image

About the Scholarship

The Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship is funded through the Estate of Shirley Lahey (1925–2011), the niece of eminent Queensland artist Vida Lahey, to honour Vida’s artistic achievements and the significance of travel in her life and art.

Vida Lahey (1882–1968), whose work is well represented in the QAGOMA Collection, maintained a highly successful artistic career while also campaigning for children’s art education and helping to establish the significant Queensland Art Fund with sculptor Daphne Mayo. In 1915, Lahey travelled to London for family reasons. Her unforgettable encounters there, from the turbulent to the tremendous, changed her views and aesthetic practices forever. From this point onwards, Lahey would cultivate her ongoing travel experiences to stimulate new ideas and compositions in her artwork.

Previous recipients

2025

Christopher Bassi

The 2025 Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship has been awarded to Meriam and Yupungathi artist Christopher Bassi, who will travel throughout the Torres Strait Islands and Europe to research and explore the interplay between traditional practices and modern influences in the Torres Strait.

2023

Shivanjani Lal

The 2023 Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship was awarded to Fijian-Australian artist and curator Shivanjani Lal, who travelled to Canberra, Queensland, Fiji and Bangladesh to research Australia's role in the history of Fijian indentured labour and undertook two printmaking residencies.

2021

Due to restrictions on international travel, the 2021 the Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling scholarship was awarded as two $20,000 scholarships to support domestic travel that furthered the development of an art practice or research project.

Debbie Taylor‑Worley
'My project tells herstory of women on the colonial frontier, focussing on Gamilaraay country and the relationships between my Yinarr (Gamilaraay women) and Wadjin (white women) ancestors.'

Kink (Tim Riley Walsh, Courtney Coombs and Callum McGrath)
‘Kink is a working group investigating and bringing together the diverse and disparate histories of Australian LGBTQIA+ art. Kink is a growing collective and our current work involves nationwide community consultation, with the goal of developing new and open resources on queer Australian art history.’

2019

Valerie Keenan PhD

The 2019 Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship has was awarded to Valerie Keenan. Valerie managed Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre in Cardwell and ran the arts program for the renowned Girringun artists for 11 years. The Scholarship enabled Valerie to travel to Norway to expand her research into the work of Norwegian naturalist, explorer and photographer Carl Lumholtz, who spent a significant amount of time living with Indigenous communities in Far North Queensland in the 1880’s. Valerie’s research aimed to discover and review pictorial imagery gathered by Lumholtz, and consider its effect on 19th century views of Indigenous Australia, and how this information has impacted on contemporary descendants and communities of those people he researched.

2017

Sara Morawetz

In 2017, QAGOMA awarded the second Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship to interdisciplinary artist and PhD candidate Sara Morawetz. The $40,000 scholarship has given Morawetz the opportunity to design an extensive itinerary of travel that informed both her artistic research and her practice. The scholarship enabled Morawetz to conduct a program of independent research that included developing two site-specific, durational performances that took her to France, Spain and the United Kingdom.

2015

Matthew Perkins

The inaugural scholarship was awarded to video art researcher Matthew Perkins. With the Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship, Matthew was able to investigate archives across Australia and visit institutions in Britain. Unearthing a range of articles, slides, photographs, tapes and ephemera, Matthew slowly pieced together a rich history of video art in Australia. During his scholarship, he also curated 'Resistance: Peter Kennedy' for the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and completed a series of interviews with artists and curators that are instrumental to his research.

Melville Haysom, Australia 1900-1967 / Albion Stacks  (detail) c. 1949 / Oil on canvas on composition board / 48.9 x 54.2cm / Purchased 1949 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA — Melville Haysom, Australia 1900-1967 / *Albion Stacks*  (detail) c. 1949 / Oil on canvas on composition board / 48.9 x 54.2cm / Purchased 1949 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image

Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship

The Gallery regrets that the Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship is not able to be offered at this time due to the terms of the grant which funds it.

The Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship, has been funded by a grant to the Queensland Art Gallery by Mrs Yvonne Haysom in memory of her husband, Melville Haysom, who died on 25 December 1967.

Melville Haysom was born in Melbourne on 17 August 1900 and studied art at the National Gallery School. In 1929 he came to Queensland, and in 1935 received the Godfrey Rivers Bequest Award. He was a member of the Victorian Art Society (President 1923–24), the Fellowship of Australian Artists, and a Life Member of the Royal Queensland Art Society (President 1952–55). His work is represented in the Queensland Art Gallery, the Darnell Collection of the University of Queensland and many private collections.

Previous recipients

2015

Brooke Ferguson

2014

Clark Beaumont (Sarah Clark and Nicole Beaumont)

2013

Ruth McConchie

2012

Catherine or Kate

2011

Tim Woodward

2010

Elizabeth Willing and Louise Bennett (joint recipients)

2009

Alice Lang

2008

Carly Scoufos

2007

Danny Ford

2006

Janice Kuczkowski

2005

Natalie Masters

2004

Michelle Oxenham

2002

Natalya Hughes

Calling for applications to the Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship