Presented as “one of Australia’s biggest cultural projects since the Sydney Opera House”the Powerhouse Parramatta will have required an investment commensurate with its ambition. The total budget, financed mainly by the New South Wales government, amounts to 915 million Australian dollars, or approximately 560 million euros, including the construction of a new conservation center. The result of a project in the making for more than 10 years, the art and science museum has announced its opening on November 7, 2026, on the banks of the Parramatta River west of Sydney.
With eye-catching architecture, designed by the Franco-Japanese firm Moreau Kusunoki – in particular in charge of one of the construction sites of the Center Pompidou in Paris, the opening of which is planned for 2030 – the future place aims to be a “museum-forum” or a place of lively and participatory exchange. On the menu, a space dedicated to culinary demonstrations, a large roof terrace with a botanical garden and an observatory offering a view of Sydney’s business district. Entrance to the museum and access to most of the exhibitions will be free, in line with the desire to make the museum an unmissable place in the city, attractive to all Sydney residents, art enthusiasts or fans of panoramic rooftops.
Five exhibitions are planned for the opening, reflecting a program at the intersection between fine arts, design, industry and sociology. Articulating global themes and concerns rooted in the history and daily lives of local communities, they will bring together a selection of more than 3,000 objects, coming from both Australian and international loans, and from the vast Powerhouse collection. The new antenna thus seems to extend the group’s model by developing routes already used by its predecessors: the Sydney Observatory, the Powerhouse Ultimo and Castle Hill.
Thus the “Overflow” exhibition presents projects commissioned from Aboriginal communities, raising awareness of the preservation of the environment in connection with the notion of “Water Country”, fundamental in Aboriginal culture, which refers to an understanding of aquatic systems as living entities. While “The Mall” traces the global history of the shopping center and explores Australia’s pioneering role in the emergence of the model, returning to the origins of the Westfield company. The epitome of consumer society, the exhibition studies it from a sociological angle, as a space of human circulation and capital.
The Parramatta project was initially intended to replace Ultimo’s Powerhouse Museum, housed since 1988 in a former power station in central Sydney. Its closure and the dispersal of its collections had provoked strong opposition, while the cost of the new museum was contested. In 2020, the NSW government finally changed course: Parramatta would be built, but Ultimo retained and renovated, creating two large complementary sites.
Leading Australian museum group, Powerhouse is opening its fourth site with this new branch on the banks of Parramatta. Its collection, made up of more than 500,000 objects, revolves around the arts and sciences. Established at the end of the 19th century, the history of this public institution is intrinsically linked to Sydney’s major industrial exhibitions, a common thread which still appears in its programming. The inaugural exhibition “Task Eternal” will echo the origins of the group, by exhibiting the achievements of engineers and artists, to highlight the links between the two disciplines based on the still very current theme of the conquest of space.
