Powerhouse Museum Move?

Source: Powerhouse Museum

Extract from Leesha McKenny, ‘Powerhouse Museum resists push to move it to Sydney’s west’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 2014

The Powerhouse Museum would move to Parramatta under a radical proposal to boost the cultural offerings outside central Sydney.

Infrastructure NSW, the body responsible for setting the direction for major projects across the state, wants to uproot at least some of the museum’s collection from its current Ultimo base, under a 20-year plan to be handed to the state government next month.

The idea is being resisted by the museum, which is putting the final touches on a masterplan to redevelop the existing building to better integrate it with Darling Harbour.

“You can’t just pick up a museum and move it,” said its director Rose Hiscock, who confirmed Infrastructure NSW’s proposal involved moving “certain functions and collections to Parramatta”.

“We would be really open to considering something [in western Sydney], but it would need to be a satellite from this site, and a feasibility [study] needs to be done on what that might be.” …

Ms Hiscock said the museum’s current location – in close proximity to Sydney’s tourism centre, educational institutions and digital start-ups – was “vital” to its future plans, set out in a 2020 strategy released this year.

She said establishing a new interactive science centre as a secondary western Sydney location for the museum would be a better idea, noting Melbourne’s Scienceworks operated as a venue of Museum Victoria.