On Saturday 7 November 2026, Powerhouse Parramatta opened on the bank of the Parramatta River. The New South Wales government describes the undertaking as its largest cultural investment since the Sydney Opera House, which opened in 1973. After four years of construction and the work of more than 4,000 people on the site of a former car park, Western Sydney now has its first state cultural institution — and what reports call the largest museum ever built in the state.
A lattice above the water
The building was designed by the Franco-Japanese practice Moreau Kusunoki with the Australian firm Genton. Two large volumes sit inside a white steel lattice that some locals already call “the milk crate”. That open framework makes possible broad, column-free galleries: more than 18,000 square metres of exhibition space, together with a rooftop garden, an observatory and rooms set aside for students, artists and scientists. The wider A$915 million project also pays for a new storage facility at Castle Hill and the digitisation of more than 371,000 objects from the Powerhouse Collection.
Five shows, more than 3,000 objects
The opening programme places more than 3,000 objects across five inaugural exhibitions. The Dark, created with Kip Williams, Elizabeth Gadsby and Marg Horwell, is meant for children aged four to twelve. It recasts bedtime as a crystal tunnel and a gateway to a land of giants, and it gathers more than 800 objects, among them minerals from the Australian Museum and treasures lent by children across Western Sydney.
Es Devlin: The Turning is the British artist and stage designer’s first major exhibition in Australia. Five immersive works include the mirrored maze Forest of Us, the chronological landscape Memory Palace, and Collective Portrait, in which strangers sit down and draw one another. “You are a performer in these works — the works aren’t complete until you arrive,” Devlin told the ABC earlier in the week.
Overflow is a First Nations-led exhibition about the care of salt and freshwater systems across New South Wales. It was made with seven Aboriginal organisations and is seen through the films of Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen. Task Eternal, the ticketed centrepiece in the museum’s largest gallery, follows humanity’s wish to fly and to leave the Earth. Among its loans are a historic Qantas Avro 504K, drawings of flying machines by Leonardo da Vinci from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a NASA Moon rock, the spacesuit of Australia’s first female astronaut, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, and a light installation by James Turrell, Shangri La (Over the Hump). The Mall, developed with the architecture studio OMA/AMO, treats the shopping centre as a cultural form and includes the archive of planner Victor Gruen, shown in public for the first time.
Open doors, unfinished questions
Entry to the museum is free, as is access to four of the five exhibitions. Task Eternal costs A$30 for adults and A$20 for concessions; visitors under sixteen go in free. A 23-day opening festival of talks, workshops and performances accompanies the launch. Premier Chris Minns formally opened the building. Acting chief executive Abbie Galvin — the New South Wales government architect, who took over after the departure of Lisa Havilah — called the museum a future “cultural backbone for Western Sydney”.
The celebrations follow a difficult year. In August, chief executive Lisa Havilah, who had led the Parramatta project since 2019, stood aside over allegations of misconduct. She denies any wrongdoing and says she has always acted with integrity. Arts minister John Graham has said that chief operating officer Mark Wilsdon is also on leave while the law firm Lander & Rogers examines claims, brought by a whistleblower, that touch on governance and procurement. A petition launched on 27 October by Kon Gouriotis, editor of Artist Profile, and signed by more than 750 people — among them the artist Ben Quilty, the architect Penelope Seidler, gallerist Anna Schwartz and former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull — has called for Havilah’s immediate reinstatement. For visitors crossing the new riverside plaza this weekend, that dispute remains outside. Inside, after years of argument about cost, flooding and the fate of the old Ultimo site, the galleries are at last open.