With the completion of its Sydney Modern Project--encompassing a
beautiful new building designed by award-winning Japanese architects
SANAA and a unique art garden along with transformed displays of art
across its campus--the Art Gallery of New South Wales stands at the
forefront of an international movement to create museums for our times.
Like many other art museums, the Art Gallery was founded in an era when
collecting ambitions were inseparable from a Eurocentric, colonialist
worldview. Today, this 150-year-old institution is forging a
cosmopolitan future inspired by its historical context, its location in
Sydney, and the diversity of its audiences, following the guiding
principle of "From here. For all."
In this important new book, director Michael Brand and colleagues from
across the Art Gallery consider what is unique about presenting art from
the perspective of Sydney and Australia, bringing to their work a
consciousness of the past as a continuing presence and the future as an
open possibility.