Top Art Museums in Australia

Located in Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is among the largest art galleries in Australia. It was founded in 1872 as the New South Wales Academy of Art. Presently the museum offers 40 exhibitions per year. It has a collection of Aboriginal, Asian, Australian, and Pacific art. There are also displays of European and contemporary artworks.

Located in Adelaide, the Art Gallery of South Australia has one of the largest collections of artwork in Australia. The collection of art consists of 47,000 pieces, among them paintings, sculptures, photographs, ceramics, and jewelry. The art represented is European, Asian, and North American. The gallery is known for its rotating exhibitions and contemporary installations.

The Australian National Gallery is a museum located in the Australian capital, Canberra. It has the largest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in the world.

The collection consists of more than 155,000 artworks created by over 15,000 artists. It has Australian, Asian, and Pacific art as well as modern art, particularly from Europe and America.

The Heidi Museum of Modern Art is located in Bulleen, Victoria. (pictured above) The museum has modern and contemporary art with exhibitions in three buildings. There is also a sculpture garden and heritage-listed gardens. The museum sits on the site of a former dairy farm. Its name came from the Heidelberg School in Heidelberg, Germany, which developed the Impressionist art movement in the 1880s.

The sculpture park has over forty sculptures, and the gardens have a diverse range of exotic trees, unusual roses, herbs, flowers, and vegetables.

At the Sydney Harbor you’ll find the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The art collection consists of more than 4,000 artworks by Australian artists. There are displays of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

Among the works of art are paintings, photography, sculpture, artworks on paper, and moving images. The cafe on the rooftop offers great views of the harbor, bridge, and opera house.

Hobart, Tasmania, offers the Museum of Old and New Art, which is a privately funded museum that opened in 2011. The museum has ancient, modern, and contemporary art from the private collection of its founder, Australian art collector David Walsh.

The building is very impressive with a spiral staircase leading to three levels underground and a tunnel complex, and there are no windows. Visitors can use “the O”—a device that provides information about the artworks on display.

In Melbourne the National Gallery of Victoria was founded in 1861, making it the oldest art museum in Australia. The museum consists of two sites with an art collection of more than 75,000 works of art.

NVG International has an extensive collection of art from Europe, Asia, America, and Oceania.

The Ian Potter Center has displays of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian art.

The Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum is located in a sandstone cottage that was once the home of the Australian artist Norman Lindsay. It is located in Faulconbridge, Australia, in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia.

The collection includes artwork created by Lindsay, such as paintings, watercolors, etchings, and ship models. There is a lovely garden with fountains and sculptures by the artist.

In Launceston, you’ll find the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

It consists of two sites—the Museum at Inveresk with natural science and history collections.

The Art Gallery at Royal Park has a collection of fine and decorative arts. The gallery has been recently reinterpreted to explore the many facets of Northern Tasmania and its communities (focusing on local Aboriginal cultures, colonial history, and modern diversity).

Located in Healesville, Victoria, is the TarraWarra Museum of Art, with a collection that consists of modern and contemporary Australian art. It includes figurative, abstract, and landscape painting from the 1930s to the present. The museum is impressive with floor-to-ceiling windows.