The Sydney Modern Project: Transforming the Art Gallery of New South Wales

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.

Michael Brand is director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Ross Gibson is centenary professor in creative and cultural research at the University of Canberra.