The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s new building, featuring Yayoi Kusama’s Flowers That Bloom in the Cosmos (2022).
Photo: Iwan Baan; Courtesy of the artist and art gallery of New South Wales
Take a Look Inside the $237 Million Sydney Modern Museum Expansion Project
Designed by architects from Pritzker Prize–winning firm SANAA, the project features collection of glass pavilions that cascade down the hillside toward Woolloomooloo Bay
Here Comes Everybody (2022) by Francis Upritchard. Photo: Giada Paoloni
An extraordinary marriage of art, architecture, and nature, the Sydney Modern Project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is the culmination of a $237 million expansion that doubles the size of the museum. Designed by architects from Pritzker Prize–winning firm SANAA, the building responds to the unique site with a collection of glass pavilions that cascade down the hillside toward Woolloomooloo Bay.
Here, visitors will encounter site-specific works by New Zealand–born artist Francis Upritchard, Yayoi Kusama, and more. But the most unforgettable experience is surely the abandoned World War II–era oil tank that was repurposed during the renovation. Transformed into a subterranean gallery, it currently hosts an exhibition by Argentinean sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas.
See more photos below.
Installation view of Adrián Villar Rojas The End of Imagination (2022) in the Tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo: Jörg Baumann
Installation view of the "Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter" exhibition in the new building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring Samara Golden Guts (2022). Photo: Iwan Baan
Installation view of the "Making Worlds" exhibition in the new building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring Mikala Dwyer The divisions and subtractions (2017) (foreground) and Tom Polo The most elaborate disguise (2016), (2019). Photo: Zan Wimberley
Installation view of one of the interstitial spaces in the new building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring works by (left to right) Ugo Rondinone, Frank Stella and Sol LeWitt. Photo: Zan Wimberley
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2023 Spring Issue under the headline “Modern Marvel.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s new building, featuring Yayoi Kusama’s Flowers That Bloom in the Cosmos (2022).
Photo: Iwan Baan; Courtesy of the artist and art gallery of New South Wales
