A silver gelatin dry plate glass negative in landscape format.

Country Always

Caring for Country

A Corner of the Empire

The Garden Palace

Sepia photograph of the Technological Museum and a cow in the foreground

The Holding Pen

The Agricultural Hall

Sepia photograph of the Technological College and Museum in Broken Hill

Regional Networks

Across New South Wales

A Museum of Doing

Technological Museum

Black and white photograph of man walking through eucalyptus plantation

Expanding Stories

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

Colour photograph of red corrugated iron building from a high vantage point

Transforming the Tramsheds

Powerhouse Stage 1 and the Harwood Building

A Symbol in Time

Sydney Observatory

Powerhouse Museum, Stage 2 exterior from high angle, city skyline in background

Ongoing Transformations

Powerhouse Ultimo

Blurred image from film with museum object number

Applied Arts and Sciences

Defining the terms in the 21st century

A figure stands in suburban garden wearing a maroon jumper and black jeans.

Majid Rabet – Engineer, Inventor and Artist

Object Lesson

Powerhouse Renewal

Two people standing next to a cow in a field of cows.

Powerhouse Food: Producers

Across Western Sydney24 Aug 2024 — 25 Jul 2025

We Rise

Blak Powerhouse

A tall rocket with a long trail of burning fuel lifts off from a launchpad at Cape Canaveral.

Powerhouse-1 Mission Launch to the ISS

An initiative of the Powerhouse: Future Space program

Photofields

Across Sydney6—7 Dec

Exoskeleton

Powerhouse Parramatta

A woman stands on stage in front of a large audience. She has her left hand raised in the air and a microphone in her right hand. The audience are holding their phones up recording the woman.

Blak Powerhouse

Powerhouse x We Are Warriors

Slider thumb2023

Stories

Majid Rabet – Engineer, Inventor and Artist

Object Lesson

‘I like to create … to make people happy and do something positive.’

Majid Rabet

A microphone made of a long black coiled chord sticky taped to a blue handle with a ping pong ball for the mouth piece. — Handmade microphone
Object No. 2016/48/6

Majid Rabet is a mechanical and electrical engineer, inventor and artist whose natural curiosity has pushed him to constantly create. He has made his own tools and gadgets in the most challenging environments, and in his workshop has designed and manufactured everything from street art to a wind and solar energy capture device. After fleeing Iran to seek asylum in Australia, Rabet found himself in detention, but continued to draw from his skills and imagination to create objects to improve the comfort and enjoyment of those around him.

I started in the detention [centre] to become [an] artist, because I find that only art can help. Art help[s] you escape from the moment.

Figure sits at a desk writing on an illuminated surface, at a birds eye view

Object Lesson

Object Lesson is a Powerhouse digital content series that upends and inverts the legacy of a set of lesson cards held in the collection since 1880. Named for English educator. Elizabeth Mayo’s 1831 publication Lessons on Objects, the series is underpinned by a desire to learn more about the objects in our collection from people and communities who have special relationships with them.

‘Knowledge stems not only from teacher or institution or object alone — but at the intersection of all.’
Agatha Gothe-Snape, Powerhouse artistic associate