Sandra McGrath

Sandra McGrath was born in 1936 to Anne Woodward Burt (Lundbeck after her later marriage to Hilmer Lundbeck, resident director of the Swedish-American Shipping Line){{Cite news |last=Walford |first=Leslie |date=2 March 1969 |title=Party that glowed |work=The Sun-Herald |pages=108}} and James M. Burt, Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama with interests in the Bank of Alabama. Frequently mentioned in the social columns throughout her youth,{{Cite news |date=6 May 1952 |title=Opera stars leave stardust in music lovers' eyes: Glitter, glamor, gaiety mark Met's Lucia |work=The Birmingham News |pages=25}} Sandra enjoyed a privileged background. She studied at Brook HIll, Birmingham for two years where she was treasurer of the Theta Kappa Delta Sorority in 1950,{{Cite news |date=17 November 1950 |title=TKD Freshmen Elect Officers |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=26}} and wrote for the school yearbook the Brookelet Board.{{Cite news |last=Badham |first=Pauline |date=16 May 1951 |title=Annual picnic near, brings Brooke Hill students great fun |work=The Birmingham News |pages=20}}

The Birmingham Post-Herald of December 1953 featured her as 'Teen of the Week' with a brief profile of her as a senior student at Mount Vernon Seminary and College, Washington, D. C. and 'photography editor of Cupola, the yearbook and writer of a sports column for the school newspaper.'{{Cite news |date=31 Dec 1953 |title=Teen of the Week |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=12}} From September 1954 she attended Vassar College,{{Cite news |date=20 August 1954 |title=College exodus right at hand |work=The Birmingham News |pages=13}} where as a junior she was elected photography editor of its year book Vassarion.{{Cite news |date=22 May 1957 |title=Dashing Around: To Graduate |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=15}}

Sandra graduated with a Bachelor of Arts on 9 June 1958,{{Cite news |date=30 May 1958 |title=Dashing Around |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=26}} after which she traveled in Europe with her aunt.{{Cite news |date=4 September 1958 |title=Just a glimpse-they're gone again |work=The Birmingham News |pages=22}} Her uncle and aunt, the Woodwards, entertained her and her future husband Michael Anthony ‘Tony’ McGrath in June 1959,{{Cite news |last=Sutherland |first=Kitty |date=16 June 1959 |title=Scribblers: Party Honors Australian |work=The Birmingham News |pages=16}} before she set out to tour Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia on the SS Mariposa.{{Cite news |last=Dot |date=5 August 1959 |title=Dashing Around- What A Wonderful Time To Vacation! |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=6}}

On 20 October 1959, aged 23, Sandra married Tony, who had graduated in business studies at the Universities of Sydney and Stanford University and was director of Mascot Industries in Australia. The Sydney ceremony was attended by Sandra's parents and brother who traveled on a later sailing of the Mariposa.{{Cite news |date=15 September 1959 |title=In Sydney, Australia–Sandra Burt to wed Michael A. McGrath |work=The Birmingham News |pages=16}} She returned to see them for Christmas 1963 with her first child Eugenia.{{Cite news |date=8 December 1963 |title=At the airport |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=125}}

By 1967 and in her thirtieth year, McGrath was an active commentator on Australian art.{{Cite news |last=Dot |date=11 August 1967 |title=Dashing Around: Dickie Jemison |work=Birmingham Post-Herald |pages=14}} An affectionate 1967 profile in his column 'Our Town' in The Sydney Morning Herald by Leslie Walford reveals that McGrath was born in October 1936 and had started an art gallery in Jackson Square in San Francisco when she met Tony McGrath at a dinner party, and accompanied him to Sydney where they married and lived in an apartment in the Harry Seidler-designed 'Ithaca Gardens' in Elizabeth Bay, subsequently moving to a house in Woollahra, then to another flat with their children. Walford comments that:

Writing, in the way of critical analysis, is her passion, reading prolifically a daily habit and joy. For "Art in Australia" [sic] she has written essays on Brett Whiteley, Pop Art, and James Gleeson. Sandra knows Europe, loves Australia, where she finds a satisfying life. Collecting paintings is a passion--she worked at Clune Galleries too for a time. In the flat, she experiments with bold colours, good furniture, interesting ways to entertain. She is working for a Master's Degree in English, preparing a thesis on Nathaniel Hawthorne.{{Cite news |last=Walford |first=Leslie |date=22 October 1967 |title=People {{!}} like - Sandra McGrath |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=117}}

She now lives in the US, from which she came, and was married to an Australian, now sadly dead. She was very homesick when she came here to live but she loved cricket because, she told me, she would listen to broadcasts of matches played abroad and be lulled to sleep by the voices of treasures such as Richie Benaud. She was new to writing and was fondly referred to by the editor as the menopausal cadet.{{Cite news |last=Fraser |first=Jane |date=21 November 2009 |title=plainly jane |work=The Weekend Australian |pages=4}}

When Australia's economy was subject to the OPEC oil shocks, with a 17.7% annual CPI movement and ‘stagflation’ recorded in 1974, The Bulletin’s Daphne McGuinness in an article ‘Pulling in their Gucci belts,’ interviewed rich women for their reactions, including Lady Clarke of South Yarra, ‘Australia’s richest woman,’ and McGrath was another. Identified as ‘heiress and art collector’ she remarked that in New York, from where she’d just returned ‘Everybody is in the money, the art scene has never been more extravagant, really…Glad to be back? Oh God am I glad to be back. Never want to travel again. This is Lotus Land.’{{Cite journal |last=McGuinness |first=Daphne |date=23 November 1974 |title=Pulling in their Gucci belts |journal=The Bulletin |volume=96 |issue=4933 |pages=24 |via=TROVE}}

Walford notes in 1967 that the McGrath apartment was decorated with a painted ceiling (later sold and moved to serve as a mural in a house in Avalon){{Cite journal |last=Cox & Assoc. |first=Philip |date=June 1971 |title=Domestic Architecture in Australia |journal=Art and Australia |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=46–47}} and tapestry by John Olsen, The Cricket Match, a painting by Brett Whiteley, and a large sculpture by Colin Lanceley. In 1971 Art and Australia featured a Max Dupain photograph of the skylit dining room of their Bellevue Hill house painted on all walls with a Jeffrey Smart landscape of geometric forms seen through tall dry grass.{{Cite journal |last=Bell |first=Guildford |date=June 1971 |title=Domestic Architecture in Australia |journal=Art and Australia |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=66}} In 1975 Sandra auctioned some of her art collection of Australian, European and American paintings, and furniture, including the Whiteley Cricket Match through Ellenden Auctioneers at her Woollahra residence at 12 Trelawney Street.{{Cite news |date=29 November 1975 |title=Auction |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=82}} McGrath was generous in her donations of works to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.{{Cite journal |date=October 1972 |title=Some of the Galleries' Recent Acquisitions: Art Gallery of New South Wales |journal=Art and Australia |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=34}}

Sandra was art critic for The Australian from 1972, The Sydney Morning Herald from 1987 into the 2000s, and from 1966, wrote regularly for Art and Australia, and was a broker of relationships between artists, patrons, galleries and their public; in one instance in 1977 she visited Jeffery Smart in Tuscany to persuade him to join the 'stable' of Ann and Stuart Purves' Australian Galleries.{{Cite book |author1=Field |first=Caroline |title=Australian Galleries : the Purves family business, the first four decades 1956-1999 |publisher=Australian Galleries |isbn=978-0-648-11623-3 |location=Collingwood |publication-date=2019 |pages=196–7}} Of Smart, in 1969 she wrote:

...despite the twentieth-century trend to abstract art and Abstract Expressionism, a few painters continued to wrestle with the real world, to struggle with the forms and structures and problems of the twentieth century. One such notable painter is Jeffrey Smart.{{Cite journal |last=McGrath |first=Sandra |date=June 1969 |title=Jeffrey Smart |journal=Art and Australia |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=34}}

McGrath became closely associated with Brett Whiteley,{{Cite journal |last=McGrath |first=Sandra |date=September 1978 |title=Brett Whiteley's' Alchemy |journal=Quadrant |volume=22 |issue=9 |pages=32–35}} whom she 'met in the early sixties, when he returned to Australia to mount his first large exhibition which included the Christie paintings and the London Zoo Series.'{{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |title=Brett Whiteley |last2=Whiteley |first2=Brett |publisher=Bay Books |edition=1st |location=Sydney |publication-date=1979 |chapter=Introduction}} She records that 'it was Whiteley who inspired the second magazine article I published...which appeared in June 1967 issue of Art and Australia. With the election of Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1972 Sandra and Brett Whiteley drove 'through town in his Jeep with three of his funny-looking dogs and the music blaring, shouting and screaming and hitting the horn.'{{Cite news |last=Turner |first=B. |date=1 February 2025 |title=Sydney shows heart to world |work=Weekend Australian |pages=8}} She considered the 1970s:

a golden age of Australian art in Sydney and Melbourne. Everything was exploding culturally and politically. The era of Menzies and Dobell and Drysdale was finally over. Sydney was shedding its old colonial-backwater shell, as the Opera House was revealing new ones.

Joanna Mendelssohn advised that; 'As long as this book is accepted as being nothing more nor less than an interpretation of Whiteley by a friend, it can be seen as a valuable historical document. For it is a most successful evocation of Whiteley’s mannered hedonism, his sensuous pleasure in landscape and the human body and his eager exploration of the dark side of human experience.'{{Cite journal |last=Mendelssohn |first=Joanna |date=March 1980 |title=Book Reviews: Brett Whiteley by Sandra McGrath |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=69&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia-&url=#page=28 |journal=Art + Australia |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=28–29 |access-date=20 February 2025 }} In 1992 Annette Van den Bosch, who elsewhere calls McGrath a 'kingmaker',{{Cite journal |last=Van den Bosch |first=Annettte |date=Autumn 1993 |title=What is a Good Reputation Worth? Changing Definitions of the Artist |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=121&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia-&url=#page=74 |journal=Art + Australia |volume=30 |issue=3 |pages=74 }} observed that 'The major Sydney reputation forged in the late 1970s market was that of Brett Whiteley. After he won the Archibald Prize in 1977 for Double self portrait, Whiteley won a succession of prizes and had a string of sell-out exhibitions. Sandra McGrath’s practices as a critic quite explicitly linked concepts of masculine creativity, genius and international reputation in relation to Whiteley’s work.{{Cite journal |last=Van den Bosch |first=Annette |date=March 1992 |title=The Market for Contemporary Australian Art: The Formative Years |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=117&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia-&url=#page=58 |journal=Art + Australia |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=324 |access-date=20 February 2025 }} From the perspective of 1995 and against Barry Pierce's new book catalogue,{{Cite book |last1=Pearce |first1=Barry |title=Brett Whiteley: art & life |last2=Whiteley |first2=Wendy |last3=Hayman |first3=Charlotte |last4=Robertson |first4=Bryan |publisher=Thames & Hudson in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales |isbn=978-0-500-28548-0 |edition=paperback |publication-date=2004}} SMH reviewer Elizabeth Cross winced at 'unrestrained excesses' in McGrath's writing.{{Cite news |last=Cross |first=Elizabeth |date=14 October 1995 |title=Charting the comet's dazzling rise and terrible fall |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=152}}

Published in 1982, The Artist and the Desert, co-written by McGrath with artist John Olsen, on whose work she first wrote in 1976, was considered by reviewer Dr. Ann Galbally a 'worthwhile exercise' in its examination of twenty-two painters 'to confront and illustrate the question [of] what has the desert landscape meant to the Australian artist,' its thesis being 'that the desert is really the "soul" place for the Australian psyche.' Galbally identifies 'a perceptive piece of writing which stands out in the otherwise rather uneven text, [in which] we are told that:'{{Cite news |last=Galbally |first=Ann |date=16 January 1982 |title=Weekend review: The soul place for the psyche |work=The Age |pages=23}}

In European landscapes, man is always there, has been there, in the foreground, in the middle distance or in the background. By contrast, in the Australian desert there seems to be no place for man at all; there seems no past, no present and no future; only an overwhelming withering of will and a numbing sense of despair.McGrath, Sandra; Boyd, Arthur (1982). The artist & the river : Arthur Boyd and the Shoalhaven. Sydney: Bay Books. ISBN 978-0-85835-570-5.

In summer 1971-2, Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne visited the McGraths at their property Bundanon on the south coast of New South Wales, which they owned with art dealer Frank McDonald. The Boyds purchased nearby Riversdale on the banks of the Shoalhaven River in 1974 and then bought Bundanon from McDonald and the McGraths in 1979.{{Cite web |last=Peter Freeman Pty Ltd Conservation Architects + Planners For The Bundanon Trust |date=November 2007 |title=The Bundanon Trust Properties Heritage Management Plan - 2007 |url=https://www.bundanon.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Heritage-Management-Plan-Volume-1.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOoqK6vJ0hCSl2xUGV6nHFandQCxr1oY5liN5JvdiPY_5N2t25rSO |access-date=15 February 2025 |website=Bundanon Trust}} Sandra's son James McGrath began his art career as studio assistant to Boyd.{{Cite news |last=Turner |first=Brook |date=22 September 2011 |title=Unpacking the painted library |work=Australian Financial Review |pages=47}}

Over 1982-83, David Chalker, federal ministerial adviser to Tom Uren and manager of the Nolan Gallery at Lanyon in Canberra, with his wife Margaret assisted McGrath with research for her publication The Artist and the River,{{Cite book |last=Deutscher and Hackett |title=National Australia Bank Collection: Highlights Of Australian Art Auction, Melbourne, 22 February 2022 |date=24 January 2022 |publisher=Deutscher and Hackett |location=Melbourne}}{{Cite book | author1=McGrath, Sandra | author2=Boyd, Arthur, 1920-1999 | title=The artist & the river : Arthur Boyd and the Shoalhaven | publication-date=1982 | publisher=Bay Books | isbn=978-0-85835-570-5}} praised by Bernard Smith as 'a most valuable account of Arthur Boyd's work since his return to Australia after a period of almost 20 years abroad...[and] his preoccupation with the Shoalhaven River,' and as a 'particularly personal book in that it is, as the author tells us, her expression of gratitude to the artist for his work, in that it made her—an American—aware, for the first time, of the beauty of the Australian bush. "Where others see harmony, I have seen disorder, where others see beauty, I have seen ugliness; where others see grandeur, I have seen pettiness; where others see bright colors, I have seen dull greens and greys". Smith raises McGrath's reaction as an instance of the problem of 'to what extent is it possible to see scenery except through the eyes of other artists?'{{Cite news |last=Smith |first=Bernard |date=29 January 1983 |title=Boyd on the River |access-date= |work=The Age |pages=121}}

McGrath continued prominently as a member of the Sydney social set through the 1980s, protesting the encroachment of properties on Sydney Harbour,{{Cite news |last=Glascott |first=Joseph |date=27 November 1987 |title=Battle lines are drawn as board turns back tide |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=3}} itself the subject of her 1979 Sydney harbour paintings from 1794 a compilation of works by 38 painters,{{Cite news |date=12 January 1980 |title=Weekend review |work=The Age |pages=24}} and joining fundraising committees for charities.{{Cite news |last=Patrick |first=Mark |date=8 March 1987 |title=Out with Mark: Swinging for the opera |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=144}} She was on the special committee to select works of art for the Darling Harbour redevelopment chaired by Neville Wran with the State Gallery director Edmund Capon, journalist Lenore Nicklin, stockbroker and art collector Rene Rivkin, and Bob Pentecost, general manager of the Darling Harbour Authority.{{Cite news |last=Schofield |first=Leo |date=12 April 1988 |title=Flower-power and cat-nap, but is it art? |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=1}}

Through her reviews, McGrath promoted the work of a number of then lesser-known Australian artists including Tony Coleing,{{Cite web |last=Edwards |first=Deborah |date=22 April 2015 |title=Art Gallery of New South Wales Archive: Balnaves Foundation Australian Sculpture Archive Project. Interview with Tony Coleing 20 July 2011 and 22 April 2015 |url=https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/downloads/files/Coleing_Tony_interview_v2018-12-14.pdf |access-date=19 February 2025 |website=Art Gallery of New South Wales}}{{Cite journal |title=Tony Coleing |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=43&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia&url=#page=54 |journal=Art and Australia |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=344–351 |via=Art + Australia}} Vivienne Pengilley,{{Cite news |last=Grant |first=Jane |date=5 October 2017 |title=Yellow House artist embraced the fabric of the times in her work |work=The Australian |pages=14}} Peter Taylor,{{Cite news |last=Van den Bosch |first=Annette |date=4 July 2019 |title=Peter Taylor 1927-2019: Artist carved coat of arms which watches over Senate |work=Sydney Morning Herald |pages=41}} the 'reticent' Tony Tuckson,{{Cite journal |last=McGrath |first=Sandra |date=October–December 1974 |title=Tony Tuckson |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=49&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia&url=#page=36 |journal=Art + Australia |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=156–166 |access-date=20 February 2025 }}{{Cite news |last=Catalano |first=Gary |date=13 May 1989 |title=Reflecting on a patriarchal artist: Remembering painter Tony Tuckson on the occasion of his current exhibition at Heide. |work=The Age |pages=170}}{{Cite news |last=James |first=Bruce |date=20 Jan 2001 |title=Larrikin I and II equal personality plus |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=237}} and Peter Tully.{{Cite news |date=12 August 1992 |title=Obituary: Peter Tully 1948-1992. Maker of the mardi gras. |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=8}} In 1982 on what The Bulletin slated as a 'bear' market for art,{{Cite journal |last=Nicklin |first=Lenore |date=19 October 1982 |title=Cover Story: Rhinoceroses Succeed In Art's Bear Market |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1656978317 |journal=The Bulletin |volume=102 |issue=5336 |pages=80–82 |via=TROVE}} she scolded:

I don’t see any young artists that anyone is excited about. Buyers are rediscovering expatriate artists such as Colin Lanceley and William Delafield Cook but there are no young ones around who excite the public the way Brett Whiteley and Tim Storrier did. There are some good photo-realists around but while...admired, it is not bought.  No one is buying adventurously and even in good times the people who do are rare birds. Dealers [are] increasingly being knocked by the sale of art at auction. Another problem for the dealer was that the number of serious collectors had not increased...[and] very few obsessive collectors who will get something from every show that an artist has.  

A 1992 updated edition of the Whiteley book, with an interview with the artist that McGrath recorded in 1990 and Whiteley's own thoughts on his art,{{Cite news |last=Sullican |first=Jane |date=27 Jun 1992 |title=Shelf Life |work=The Age |pages=141}} then being released as a paperback two months after his death, was the subject of a 24 September hearing in the Federal court to examine whether allegedly offensive material–letters and notes made by Whiteley in Sydney and while holidaying in Morocco–infringed the copyright of R.D.Laing, Charles Baudelaire, Albert Einstein, Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Rimbaud, Plato and Rembrandt, as claimed by solicitors for stakeholders in the artist's estate.{{Cite news |last=Sutton |first=Candace |date=30 August 1992 |title=The Diary: Man of letters, too |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=151}} They also asserted that Whiteley's assent for colour reproduction of his works in the first, hardback edition would not cover the monochrome reprints in the new paperback.{{Cite news |last=Schwartz |first=Larry |date=30 August 1992 |title=Legal wrangle over Whiteley 'cash-in' book |work=The Age |pages=6}} The publicity attracted such attention that the new edition required five print runs to meet demand, though the publisher's agent Tom Thompson challenged journalist Andrew Main to 'let us know' if he found any 'offensive' passages.{{Cite news |last=Main |first=Andrew |date=28 August 1992 |title=Stay in Touch: On the Offensive |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=25}} Ensnared in the controversy and after the court in October 1992 ordered the withdrawal of the paperbacks,{{Cite news |last=Dennis |first=Anthony |date=16 May 1993 |title=Books and a movie: there's still life in Whiteley's death |work=The Age |pages=3}}{{Cite news |date=9 October 1992 |title=Judge recalls book on Whiteley |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=4}} Thompson resigned under pressure from Angus & Robertson.{{Cite news |last=Schwatz |first=Larry |date=4 December 1994 |title=Still Life |work=The Age |pages=42}} Crime writer Susan Geason in 1996 considered that:

Sandra McGrath's book – Brett Whiteley – is as good as you'll get on the paintings, I suspect, and it's a complete mystery why the Whiteley women had the revised edition pulped. Apart from a paragraph or so about the existence of The Mistress, it's totally harmless. Hell hath no fury...{{Cite news |last=Geason |first=Susan |date=7 July 1996 |title=Books: Behind the Whiteley myth |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=123}}

In 1994, Sandra had released her biography of Patrick Hockey,{{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |last2=Hockey |first2=Patrick |title=Patrick Hockey : his life and work |publication-date=1994 |publisher=Beagle Press |isbn=978-0-947349-09-7}} completed after his death in 1992,{{Cite news |last=Loane |first=Sally |date=19 September 1992 |title=Life after Patrick |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=178}} and with husband Tony, holidayed in her American home town. Nevertheless, she remained still high in the attention of the Australian art world; in 1998, when Timothy Potts was appointed director at Forth Worth's Kimbell Art Museum, Susan McCulloch, advising arts editor Deborah Jones at The Australian, rumoured that Potts had benefitted because McGrath was on the board of the Kimbell, though Sandra had never held such a post.{{Cite news |last=Sheehan |first=Paul |date=10 November 1998 |title=NGV Boss Starts His Dream Job: Urbane cowboy takes on Texas |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=13}}

Sandra's husband Tony died on 5 August 1999 in Sydney and in March 2000, McGrath returned to her home town to attend the reception celebrating the naming of the Eivor and Alston Callahan Gallery of Indian and Southeast Asian Sculpture at the Birmingham Museum of Art.{{Cite news |last=Strickland |first=Susan |date=19 March 2000 |title=Scribblers: Callahan Gallery |work=The Birmingham News |pages=57}} Since then, she has resided 2008-2017 in Park Avenue New York and 2007 onwards in parts of Stuart, Florida.

In February 2002, the McGrath daughters, Eugenia Korrosy and Julia Colman, opened their McGrath Gallery in a renovated brownstone at 9 77th street, Manhattan opposite Leo Castelli Gallery, and near Gagosian Gallery and Central Park, the first Australian gallery to open in the Madison Avenue art district after Maureen Zembera's Tambaran Gallery and others in Soho and Chelsea.{{Cite news |last=Ingram |first=Terry |date=4 April 2002 |title=Art dynasty lives on in New York |work=The Australian Financial Review |pages=57}} Charles Sheard, was their first exhibitor,{{Cite news |last=Petley |first=William |date=24 February 2002 |title=Big Apple show |work=The Sunday Telegraph |pages=124}} and also showed at the Tim Olsen Carr Gallery run by the John Olsen's son Tim and Michael Carr, in Paddington.{{Cite news |date=18 Sep 1998 |title=Art |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |pages=68}}{{Cite web |title=Olsen Carr Art Dealers |url=https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/galleries/599/ |access-date=19 February 2025 |website=Centre for Australian Art: Prints and Printmaking}}

In 2011, the year marked by the death of Bundanon associate Frank McDonald,{{Cite news |last=Strecker |first=Jacqueline |date=4 February 2012 |title=Obituaries: Dealer who found masterpieces |work=The Age |pages=35}} Sandra, then aged 75, flew to Sydney for the opening of her son James's exhibition at Tim Olsen Gallery,{{Cite web |last=Centre for Australian Art |title=Tim Olsen Gallery |url=https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/galleries/2437/ |website=Centre for Australian Art: Australian Prints + Printmaking}} joined by her eighty-three year old friend John Olsen just recently recovered from heart surgery.{{Cite news |last=Horton |first=Shelly |date=25 September 2011 |title=James McGrath exhibition dinner |work=Sun Herald |pages=17}} Sandra's brother James Marshall Burt Ill died in 2016.{{Cite news |date=19 October 2016 |title=Obituaries: James Marshall Burt, Ill, Feb 25, 1932 - October 17, 2016 |work=The Birmingham News |pages=10}}

• Councillor of the Art Gallery of New South Wales{{Cite journal |date=April 1973 |title=Contributors to this issue |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=43&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia&url=#page=27 |journal=Art and Australia |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=317 |access-date=20 February 2025 |via=Art + Australia}}
• Member of The Museum of Modern Art International Council
• Member of special committee on art for the Darling Harbour redevelopment
• Advisor to the Regional Art Galleries Association of Victoria{{Cite journal |date=April–June 1974 |title=Prizewinners: Victoria |url=https://artandaustralia.com/archive/web/index.php?id=47&q=mcgrath&title=art-and-australia&url=#page=38 |journal=Art and Australia |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=332 |via=Art + Australia}}

• Colin Lanceley (1964) Gemini, sculpture, painted wood, metal, mixed media. Gift of Mrs M A McGrath 1968. [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/SA3.1968.a-c/ Art Gallery of New South Wales]
• George Baldessin (1969-1970) Banquet for no eating no 2 with singular seating arrangement, Gift of Mr and Mrs M A McGrath 1970. Art Gallery of New South [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/SA8.1970.a-f/ Wales]
• Richard Larter (1965) Dithyrambic painting no 6, Gift of Mrs M A McGrath 1972. [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/52.1972/ Art Gallery of New South Wales]
• John Peart (1965) The aspects regard one another, synthetic polymer paint, oil on canvas and hardboard. Gift of Mrs M.A. McGrath 1968. [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA24.1968/ Art Gallery of New South Wales]
• John Olsen (1964) Entrance to the Seaport of Desire, Acrylic on canvas

• McGrath, Sandra, 'Times Square is Pop Art', Art and Australia, Vol. 4 Issue 1, 1966, 66-69
• _________, 'Profile: Brett Whiteley,' Art and Australia, Vol. 5 Issue 1, 1967
• _________, 'Profile: James Gleeson,' Art and Australia, Vol. 5 Issue 3, 1967
• _________, Jeffrey Smart,' Art and Australia, Vol. 7 Issue 1, 1969
• _________, 'Where I am up to - an article on Colin Lanceley, Art and Australia, Vol. 7 Issue 2, 1970
• _________, ‘The return of Robert Hughes’, The Australian, Canberra, 1 July 1972
• _________, {{Cite journal |title=SPORT The fastest is the most beautiful |journal=The Bulletin |publication-date=21 July 1973 |publisher=Haynes and Archibald |volume=095 |issue=4863 |pages=51 |issn=0007-4039}}
• _________, ‘Two City Schism’, The Australian, 3 November 1973
• _________, 'Sold short at the Biennale', The Australian, 1 December 1973
• _________, 'At Coventry Gallery', The Australian, March 8, 1975, p.4
• _________, 'Is there a female aesthetic?' The Australian 2 July 1975: 18.
• _________, 'Less urgent', The Australian, 21 September 1977
• _________, 'A tough intellectual stringency.' Australian Weekend Magazine 17-18 June 1978
• _________, 'Portrait of the artist on the wagon.' The Australian, August 5-6, 1978
• _________, 'Satire that goes to the Heart', The Australian, 23 August 1978
• _________, ‘Gruesome thoughts on the individual’, Weekend Australian, Canberra, 16 Sept 1978
• _________, ‘On the State of the art …’, Weekend Australian, Canberra, 23–24 Sept 1978, p 6
• _________, ‘Golden veteran of abstract art’, The Australian, 16 June 1979
• _________, ‘Hangovers and Gunfighters' in The Australian, 19 February 1980
• _________, ‘Marriage of Minds—50 Years On.’ Australian, 21-22 June 1980, p 12
• _________, ‘A gentle eye from Rome’, The Australian, Canberra, 27 Oct 1980, p 10
• _________, ‘It’s a question of horses for courses,’ The Weekend Australian, 8 November, 1980
• _________, 'Nolan's love affair with China', The Weekend Australian, 7 March 1981
• _________, 'Perspecta ’81.' The Weekend Australian 30-31 May 1981
• _________, ‘French unveils his sinister circus’, in The Australian, 15 August 1981
• _________, 'Turning the banal into the sensational', The Australian, 29 May 1982
• _________, 'Colorful Change in Landscapes.' The Weekend Australian 18-19 June 1983, Magazine p.12
• _________, 'Space-aged without being spaced out', The Australian, 11 December 1983
• _________, 'Place Conveyed as State of Mind', The Weekend Australian, 18 February 1984
• _________, 'Art World’s Fluctuating Fortunes.' The Weekend Australian (magazine) 12-13 May 1984: 10.
• _________, 'Melbourne gives an Olympian salute to Nolan', The Bulletin, p.78, 16 Jun 1987
• _________, 'Brett Whiteley’s ‘Alchemy.’” Quadrant 22 (9): 32–35. 1978
• _________, 'Unsung Olympian’, The Bulletin, November 1988
• _________, ‘Image maker explores a freudian landscape,’ The Australian, 19 March, 1995

• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |last2=Gunn |first2=Grazia |last3=Catalano |first3=Gary |first1=Sandra |title=The work and its context: six attitudes in Australian art |location=Sydney, New South Wales |publication-date=1978 |publisher=Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/14231246 |access-date=}}
• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |title=Brett Whiteley |publication-date=1979 |publisher=Bay Books |isbn=978-0-85835-369-5 |last2=Whiteley |first2=Brett}}
• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |last2=Walker |first2=Robert |title=Sydney harbour paintings from 1794 |publication-date=1979 |publisher=Jacaranda Press |isbn=978-0-7016-1254-2}}
• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |last2=Olsen, John |first2=John |first1=Sandra |title=The artist & the desert |location=Sydney |publication-date=1981 |publisher=Bay Books |isbn=978-0-85835-497-5}}
• {{Cite book |last=McGrath |first=Sandra |title=Tony Tuckson, a Retrospective Exhibition |publisher=Watters Gallery and Margaret Tuckson |year=1982 |location=Sydney}}
• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |last2=Boyd |first2=Arthur |title=The artist & the river : Arthur Boyd and the Shoalhaven |location=Sydney |publication-date=1982 |publisher=Bay Books |isbn=978-0-85835-570-5}}
• {{Cite book |last1=McGrath |first1=Sandra |last2=Hockey |first2=Patrick |title=Patrick Hockey : his life and work |publication-date=1994 |publisher=Beagle Press |isbn=978-0-947349-09-7}}
• {{Cite book |last=McGrath |first=Sandra |title=Patrick Hockey, his life and work |publisher=Beagle Press |year=1994 |isbn=9780947349097 |location=Sydney}}

{{reflist}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:McGrath, Sandra}}

Category:1936 births

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Category:Wealth in Australia

Category:Date of birth missing (living people)