There is a way of opening up exhibits for the public to get close to, but it has to be done in a professional way Former Powerhouse director Dr Lindsay Sharp Kylie Winkworth, who sits on the board of the National Trust (NSW) and is a member of the Powerhouse Museum Alliance, a group fighting to save the Ultimo site as a museum, said she believed the business case showed that the museum’s management and trust no longer regarded the Powerhouse as a public museum and it had already transitioned into a “commercially focused events business with some museum exhibitions fitted in around gaps”. Questioned in budget estimates last September, the Powerhouse’s chief executive since 2019, Lisa Havilah, put forward a business case for the Ultimo and Parramatta operations combined at $38.8m in commercial revenue per annum by 2028 – $10m more than the National Gallery of Victoria, which is currently the most visited museum in Australia. Staff who spoke to the Guardian said they believe the institution’s focus has noticeably shifted over the last five years towards prioritising commercially driven arts events.
In February, “museum” was formally dropped from the institution’s title. While the former power station in Ultimo became home to the Museum of Applied Arts and Science’s extensive science and technology collection 35 years ago, the Powerhouse no longer has a curator of transport and engineering, or aviation.
Its current exhibitions include Unpopular, about the 1990s alternative music scene a Carla Zampatti fashion retrospective an exhibition featuring new Australian designers and Absolutely Queer, which shines a spotlight on Sydney’s leading LGBTQI+ creatives. The Powerhouse’s new direction – fashion and design over science and technology, and moving away from the family market – is well under way. ‘You just don’t believe what you’re looking at ’ Such a finding would have prevented the government’s plans to demolish at least one-third of the museum’s existing buildings and significantly modify others.
On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed heritage architect Alan Croker’s allegations that the former NSW government had “buried” his company’s work on a conservation management plan (CMP) for the Ultimo museum after it found the entire site should be heritage listed. In coming weeks, the majority of Powerhouse staff will be relocated from the Ultimo site to the institution’s storage facility at Castle Hill while a new Powerhouse museum is built in Parramatta – a $915m project scheduled for completion in 2025. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads One former Powerhouse board member told the Guardian the museum had been reduced to “a half-empty neglected mess”, while a written statement from the museum board’s former long-serving president, Nick Pappas, accused the former state government of conducting “a miserable land-grab under the guise of supporting the cultural needs of western Sydney”, resulting in the “unjustified and catastrophic destruction of a beloved and award-winning public edifice and cultural institution”.
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