Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Encyclopedia
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
is an Australian museum solely dedicated to exhibiting, interpreting and collecting contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
, both from across Australia and around the world. It is housed in the Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
-style former Maritime Services Board Building on the western edge of Circular Quay.
History
The establishment of the MCA was manadated in the will of Australian expatriate artist John Power (1881–1943), who bequeathed his personal fortune to the University of SydneyUniversity of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
with the express purpose of informing and educating Australians in the contemporary visual arts.
With the relocation of the Maritime Services Board (MSB) to larger premises in 1989, the former MSB Building was donated by the NSW
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
State Government to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Funded by the University of Sydney and the Power Bequest, restoration and refurbishment of the building commenced in 1990 under the direction of Andrew Anderson of Peddle Thorpe/John Holland Interiors and in November 1991 the Museum of Contemporary Art officially opened.
Extensions were commenced in 2010 to a design by Sydney architect Sam Marshall. The new extension, to be called the Mordant Wing, is due to open in March 2012.