In addition to historic glass facades, the building includes art installations, rooftop gardens, and a converted World War II fuel tank that has been converted into a gallery. Sydney Modern is regarded as one of the most important cultural additions to Sydney in the last 50 years. There is something inspiring about this museum.
In anticipation of the unveiling of the plans for the New National Archeological Museum of Athens, we want to see how the Australians do it - or, more precisely, the Japanese on Australian soil. Kazuyo Sejuma and Ryue Nishizawa's architectural firm SANAA has been commissioned to bring something new into the Art Gallery of New South Wales and design an expansion. An expansion that cost no more and no less than 216 million euros and took almost eight years to complete. The new project was named Sydney Modern.
When it was inaugurated at the end of 2022, it was clear that they had won the challenge: 17,000 people flocked to admire the new gallery building up close, as well as the 8,000 m² of gardens, terraced gardens and courtyards created around and on top of the building, also housing works of art.
This museum is the most significant cultural addition to the city of Sydney in nearly 50 years, since the city's landmark Sydney Opera House was built in 1973.
Built on a hill, the Sydney Modern dominates the city's harbor, a fact the architects took into account during the planning process. "We wanted to create an art space that harmonizes with its surroundings, that breathes together with the city, the park and the harbor," the architects said.
This new building doubles the Gallery of New South Wales' exhibition space. The permanent collection includes more than 30,000 works of European and Asian art from the 15th century to the present, as well as Australian and Aboriginal art. On display are works by Wassily Kandinsky and Joseph Beuys, as well as important Aboriginal artists such as Richard Bell and Brooke Andrews. The entrance to the new wing is adorned with a colorful, large-scale sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama entitled "Flowers Blossoming in the Universe" which is becoming increasingly trendy around the world.
The "camouflaged" Sydney Modern
The impressions are undoubtedly favorable by the impressive architectural design, which does not exaggerate. Rather the opposite, as if it blends into the hillside. Given the existence of the Opera House and another modern art museum in the city, Ryue Nishizawa, one of the two partners in the architecture firm, explains how they envisioned it: "There are two ways to create a landmark, depending on where you want it to be. If we are in a place where there are no other monuments, a landmark can appear with a clear outline, such as a rock. But if we are in a forest with all its trees, that does not work. We need to create a clearing and let the sunlight in, without a specific outline.
However, if we want to see what is special about this museum, we have to go underground. A state-of-the-art white spiral staircase leads us there.
Descending it, we find ourselves in the "tank", a huge space of 2,200 square meters littered with columns and used during the World War as what its name suggests: a fuel tank. It is both an example of reuse and an open invitation to artists to engage with its raw image.
The Tokyo-based architectural firm SANAA has been in business for 28 years and has completed major projects in many parts of the world. The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Lower Manhattan, New York, is one of their most distinctive and important projects. On Japanese soil, the Omicron Museum in Nagano and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa stand out.
In 2010, they were awarded the International Pritzker Architecture Prize - the so-called "Nobel Prize of Architecture" - which is given to architects who distinguish themselves through "groundbreaking architectural thinking".
