Queensland Art Galleries Transform Brisbane Into Cultural Powerhouse

The Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), occupying adjacent buildings on the South Bank arts precinct with a combined floor area that makes them the largest art museum complex in Australia outside of NSW, provide Queensland with the institutional public art resources that the state's growing population and its cultural ambitions demand. The two buildings' different architectural characters and collection emphases complement each other: the 1982 Queensland Art Gallery provides the historical collection from pre-modern to mid-twentieth century, while GOMA's 2006 building holds the modern and contemporary collection that has been built with the collecting ambition that the gallery's resources and international connections have enabled.

The Gallery of Modern Art's Children's Art Centre, one of the most significant museum education facilities for children in Australia, provides the early arts engagement that the gallery has committed to as an expression of its belief that arts participation formed in childhood sustains the adult audience that cultural institutions depend on. The centre's program, combining the gallery's collection-based education with artist-led workshops and the play-based learning that young children engage with, provides the most visited part of GOMA on school holiday weekends.

The QAGOMA collecting program's focus on Asia-Pacific contemporary art, reflecting the gallery's geographic position as the major collecting institution closest to Asia in Australia, has given the Queensland collection a distinct identity from the European-focused historical collections of the southern galleries and the international contemporary collections that the major Sydney institutions have built. The Asia-Pacific Triennial, QAGOMA's signature recurring exhibition that surveys the contemporary art production of the Asia-Pacific region, is the most significant recurring exhibition program in Australian public art museum life.

The gallery's connection to the South Bank arts precinct, through the walkways that connect it to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the State Library, and the Queensland Museum, provides the institutional clustering that makes the South Bank precinct one of the most significant concentrations of public cultural infrastructure in Australia. The walkable connection between these institutions sustains the cross-institution visitor patterns that the combined precinct generates.