Sydney’s AUD$915m Powerhouse Parramatta Announces Opening Date and Programme

Powerhouse Parramatta, Western Sydney’s long-discussed AUD$915 million (£478 million) museum development, has revealed its opening date and programme: the space will launch on 7 November with five inaugural exhibitions spanning contemporary art, retail culture, aerospace, science and technology.

Situated on the Parramatta River, the 30,000-square-metre museum is the first state cultural institution in Western Sydney and forms the centrepiece of the Powerhouse museum group’s wider AUD$1.3 billion (£678 million) infrastructure renewal. It is also Australia’s largest public investment in cultural development since the Sydney Opera House, which opened in 1973. 

Powerhouse chief executive Lisa Havliah described the space as “a museum built for the future, where local knowledge meets global perspectives”. In 2021, when the museum’s development was given the green light, Powerhouse trustee and former arts minister Peter Collins said it would be “Australia’s very own Smithsonian”.

Designed by Franco-Japanese architects Moreau Kusunoki with Australian practice Genton, the building is distinguished by a complex steel exoskeleton that creates vast column-free exhibition spaces. Seven presentation spaces will accommodate more than 3,000 objects, including 1,600 from the Powerhouse Collection, alongside international loans and more than 45 new commissions from 14 countries.

Among the opening exhibitions is The Mall. Co-curated and designed by architecture firm OMA and its research studio AMO, the show will examine the shopping centre as a form of architecture and civic life. Its 18 new commissions include a work by South Korean artist Ayoung Kim, co-commissioned with the M+ museum in Hong Kong. 

Meanwhile, The Dark, developed by theatre director Kip Williams and designer Elizabeth Gadsby, will place younger visitors inside a vast meteorite-like structure to explore darkness and perception. A statement described the experience as “an experiment in unlearning, a radical proposal for how young people might be engaged: not as passive audiences, but as explorers of difficult knowledge”.

Task Eternal is an expansive exploration of humanity’s attempts to take flight, moving from First Nations sky knowledge and early aviation to contemporary aerospace technology. More than 850 objects and loans from NASA, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the British Museum, MIT and the Australian Space Agency will appear alongside James Turrell’s monumental immersive installation Shangri La (Over the Hump) (2026).

First proposed by former New South Wales Liberal premier Mike Baird in 2015 as part of a push to shift cultural investment westward, the museum was initially intended to replace the Powerhouse at Ultimo. Following sustained opposition, both sites were retained, with the current NSW Labour government committing AUD$250 million (£130 million) to renew Ultimo.

The Parramatta development itself also faced criticism from local Dharug custodians. In 2020, the Dharug Strategic Management Group said key decisions had been made before meaningful consultation had taken place, and argued that planning documents effectively treated Dharug land as terra nullius.

Speaking at the time, members of the Indigenous group told the Guardian they had been left “sickened” and in “utter dismay” by the experience, while a Powerhouse spokesperson told the paper that the museum had an “unwavering commitment to celebrating and paying respect to the Dharug yura [people]”.

In June this year, Infrastructure NSW, the public agency tasked with delivering the project on behalf of the New South Wales government, received an official caution from the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for failing to prepare an Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Management Plan before construction began. The required plan was subsequently prepared.

Powerhouse Parramatta’s opening programme, developed with Western Sydney communities and other collaborators, includes seven Community Commissions supporting First Nations practices, with the full exhibition and festival programme still to be announced.