Revealed: The five exhibitions to open the Parramatta Powerhouse, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 2026

All five opening exhibitions at the billion-dollar Powerhouse Parramatta will be free to visitors aged 16 and under when the landmark museum opens on November 7 – a debut the state is hailing as its biggest investment in the city’s cultural life since the Sydney Opera House.

The NSW government confirmed first details of the ticketing structure as the final three temporary shows have been unveiled – a dedicated children’s exhibition flipping the script on darkness as a place of fear and nightmares, a dive into Indigenous perspectives on water management and Australia’s first show of the works of British designer and artist Es Devlin.

Read full story: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/revealed-the-five-exhibitions-to-open-the-parramatta-powerhouse-20260818-p60pay.html

Ministerial media release, 15 August 2026

The first exhibition, Task Eternal, will include the historic Qantas Avro 504k aircraft and explore the intersection of design, innovation and technology and trace humanity’s quest to human ambition to defy gravity, take flight and journey into the sky. The second major exhibition, The Mall, has today been announced as the next opening exhibition, one of five groundbreaking exhibitions which will premiere at the opening.

The exhibition examines the history, evolution and cultural significance of the shopping mall, one of the most influential and ubiquitous forms of architecture in modern life.

Western Sydney played a foundational role in the development of global urban shopping centres with Blacktown the location of the very first large-scale, transport-integrated Westfield shopping centre, opened in 1959.

From Blacktown and later Parramatta, Westfield grew to export the urban shopping malls concept to stores across Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Italy.

Unfolding across two storeys, the exhibition explores Australian and global innovation across architecture, design, technology, engineering and fashion with over 560 objects from the Powerhouse Collection, presented alongside more than 280 loans, ephemera and personal stories collected from the local community.

Highlights include:

• Victor Gruen’s archive. The archive of Austrian-American architect and urban planner and a mastermind of modern American mall design, presented for the first time.
• Rare archives from Australian brands including Le Specs, Hot Tuna, Mambo, Globe, Crumpler, Above the Clouds and Song for the Mute.
• The art of visual merchandising: a reimagining of a 19th-century arcade, featuring a series of window displays developed in collaboration with leading Australian brands Breville, David Jones, Oroton, R.M. Williams and Sportsgirl
• The signature Levi’s 501 jeans worn by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and the Predator Boot prototypes, conceived by former Liverpool player, Australian Craig Johnston and worn by David Beckham.
• An Australian premiere of acclaimed South Korean artist Ayoung Kim an animated film, co-commissioned with M+ in Hong Kong
• The iconic Raindrop Fountain from Southwest Sydney’s Roselands which has been reimagined and created by industrial design studio Vert.
• Japanese artist yang02 presents an autonomous ballet of warehouse robots, developed with KNAPP.