The Power Institute of Fine Arts is a teaching and research department, encompassing the fields of art history and theory, within the University of Sydney

University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...

. Founded in 1968, the institute was established out of a bequest from the expatriate Australian abstract artist John Wardell Power. The bequest provided for the establishment of a teaching department, a research library, and a gallery for contemporary exhibitions. The institute has been especially active in developing and promoting the study of Australian art.

Scholars associated with the Power Institute include Bernard Smith

Bernard William Smith

Bernard William Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic.-Biography:Smith was born in Balmain, Sydney to Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney on 3 October 1916. In 1941, he married his first wife, Kate Challis, who died in 1989. Smith married his second wife, Margaret Forster,...

, Terry Smith

Terry Smith (art historian)

Terry Smith is an Australian art historian, art critic and artist who currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, New York and Sydney....

, Virginia Spate and Roger Benjamin.