Country Always

Caring for Country

A Corner of the Empire

The Garden Palace

The Holding Pen

The Agricultural Hall

Regional Networks

Across New South Wales

A Museum of Doing

Technological Museum

Expanding Stories

Evolution of the Castle Hill site from botanical research station to Museum Discovery Centre

Transforming the Tramsheds

Powerhouse Stage 1 and the Harwood Building

A Symbol in Time

Sydney Observatory

Ongoing Transformations

Powerhouse Ultimo

Applied Arts and Sciences

Defining the terms in the 21st century

Powerhouse Renewal

A transformative renewal program across four sites

We Rise

Blak Powerhouse

Powerhouse-1 Mission Launch to the ISS

An initiative of the Powerhouse: Future Space program

2024

Exoskeleton

Powerhouse Parramatta

Neilson Foundation

Leadership Circle – Powerhouse Parramatta

2025

First Nations

The First Nations Directorate serves as a transformative force within the museum, ensuring that our cultures and knowledge are authentically represented and integrated into its practices, fostering inclusive and culturally respectful ways of working.

We are actively integrating First Nations ways of working across every part of Powerhouse — from collections and exhibitions to administration and governance. By transforming systems that once excluded us, we honour historical truths and living cultures, shifting from ownership of objects to relationships with their makers and custodians. We recognise First Nations peoples as enduring, living cultures deserving time, space and self-determination.

First Nations Initiatives

An open naturally lit room with a grey floor and white walls. There is a spiral staircase in the centre of the room and two grey arm chairs.

galang Residency

Powerhouse Parramatta and Cité internationale des arts (Paris) offer an opportunity for two Australia-based First Nations creative practitioners to travel to Paris for a fully supported 12-week residency.

Crowd of people holding lights up towards the people on stage.

Blak Powerhouse

After a huge year of Blak arts, music and culture that has witnessed mob taking things to new heights, an era of Blak brilliance is here, and with it, the rising of new kings and queens.

Photographic negative, Aroma coastline, glass / silver / gelatin, published by Kerry and Co,

Talanoa Forum

First presented at the 59th Venice Biennale, the Talanoa Forum extends the themes of the Paradise Camp exhibition by bringing together 24 artists, curators, scholars, activists and policymakers.

A woman’s brown hands on top and in between the opening of a blue shirt with a white vertical pattern.

Deed Of Deposit

An initiative enabling First Nations communities to place cultural material in Powerhouse’s care while keeping full ownership.

Silhouette of a barbed arrow in front of a sunset over the ocean.

Right Of Reply

A unique opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander photographers to undertake a photography commission that responds to the Powerhouse Collection.

A silver gelatin dry plate glass negative in landscape format.

Country Always

Caring for Country

'In Indigenous culture, Country is vast, all-encompassing and limitless and transcends western notions of property and land ownership.

Country is multifaceted and includes all tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It means the lands, waters, seas, and skies and everything on it, including people, plants, animals and landscapes.

Country also is the song lines, stories, language, cultural expressions and knowledge. It is all parts Australia, the deserts, rainforests, mountains and plains.

Urban areas, the streets, parks, and the buildings are situated all on Country.

Country is holistic and living.

Country is spiritual belonging.

Country shapes individual and communal identity and wellbeing. It is the ‘people, family, mob, who walk on Country.’ Country is kin. The relationship between people and Country must include reciprocity.'

Terri Janke, Powerhouse Taking Care of Country Principles, Terri Janke and Company, 2022.

Powerhouse acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which the Powerhouse stands. We recognise their continuous connection to Country and extend our respect the diverse First Nations peoples that now call these places home.

In consultation with First Nations peoples of the Country on which the Powerhouse sites are situated, Caring for Country Principles now form the foundation of the Climate Action Plan, they are our Acknowledgement to Country in practice.

True acknowledgement is not just a sentiment or a proceeding, but an ongoing behaviour and responsibility. Through the stories we tell, our care for cultural belongings and collaboration with Community – we remember and respect Country, Always.