This list of museums in the Northern Territory, Australia contains museums which are defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific, or historical interest and make their collections or related exhibits available for public viewing. Also included are non-profit art galleries and university art galleries.
Name | Location | Type | Summary |
---|---|---|---|
Adelaide House | Alice Springs | Medical | website, information, bush nursing hostel designed by John Flynn and operated by the Australian Inland Mission |
Adelaide River railway station | Adelaide River | Railway | Preserved historic railway station and railway artefacts |
Araluen Arts Centre | Alice Springs | Art | Includes four galleries |
Australian Aviation Heritage Centre | Winnellie, Northern Territory | Aerospace | website |
Batchelor Museum | Batchelor | Local history | website, museum under development |
Battery Hill Mining Centre | Tennant Creek | Mining | information, information, includes underground mine tour, gold stamp, minerals museum, social history museum |
Black Point Culture Centre | Cobourg Peninsula | Local history | information, located at the Black Point Ranger Station within the Garig Ganuk Barlu National Park |
Central Australian Aviation Museum | Alice Springs | Aerospace | website, includes early flying doctor planes, historic aircraft and aviation memorabilia |
Charles Darwin University Nursing Museum | Darwin | Nursing | |
Darwin Military Museum | Darwin | Military | Artefacts from Darwin's military history during World War II |
Fannie Bay Gaol | Darwin | Prison | |
Fred McKay Museum | Alice Springs | Biographical | website, information, part of St Philip's College, life and work of Rev. Fred McKay to bring medicine and education to the bushlands |
Hartley Street School | Alice Springs | Education | website, operated by the National Trust North Territory, early 20th century school |
Jones Store | Newcastle Waters | Local history | information |
Katherine Museum | Katherine | Local history | website |
Katherine Railway Museum | Katherine | Railway | information |
Larrimah Museum | Larrimah | Railway | information, railway during World War II and post-war transport history |
Lyons Cottage | Darwin | Local history | website [ permanent dead link ], information |
Mbantua Art Gallery and Cultural Museum | Alice Springs | Art | website |
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory | Darwin | Multiple | Main museum in the Northern Territory, region's art, history, culture and natural history |
Museum of Central Australia | Alice Springs | Natural history | website, Central Australian birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, rocks, minerals, fossils |
Women's Museum of Australia and Old Alice Springs Gaol | Alice Springs | Women's history, Old Gaol history | Women in Australia's heritage, Old Gaol and Labour Camp stories |
National Road Transport Hall of Fame | Alice Springs | Transportation | Trucks, military vehicles |
National Trust Museum Pine Creek | Pine Creek | Local history | information |
Never Never Museum | Mataranka | Local history | information, information |
Northern Territory Chinese Museum | Darwin | Ethnic | website, operated by the Chung Wah Society, Chinese work and achievements since they first arrived as indentured labourers in 1874, located on the grounds of a Chinese temple |
Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre | Tennant Creek | Art | website, Aboriginal art and culture |
O'Keeffe Residence | Katherine | Local history | information |
Old Ghan Heritage Railway and Museum | Alice Springs | Railway museum | Includes a tourist railway |
Old Police Station Museum | Borroloola | Local history | information |
Old Timers Traeger Museum | Alice Springs | Local history | information |
Pine Creek railway station | Pine Creek | Railway | Preserved historic railway station and railway artefacts |
Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum | Alice Springs | Medical | website, history of the Royal Flying Doctor Service |
The Residency, Alice Springs | Alice Springs | Historic house | Home to former administrators of the Northern Territory |
School of the Air Visitor Centre | Alice Springs | Education | website, history and methods of the School of the Air |
Strehlow Research Centre | Alice Springs | Ethnographic | Artefacts from the Strehlow Collection of indigenous central Australian ethnographic objects and archival materials |
Timber Creek Police Station and Museum | Timber Creek | Law enforcement | information, also includes local history displays |
Tuxworth-Fullwood House | Tennant Creek | Local history | information, information, former hospital building with local history displays |
WWII Oil Storage Tunnels | Darwin | History | website, tours of the tunnels |
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections.
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early-twentieth-century painters, print makers, photographers, and sculptors influenced by European modernism, Contemporary art. The visual arts have a long history in Australia, with evidence of Aboriginal art dating back at least 30,000 years. Australia has produced many notable artists of both Western and Indigenous Australian schools, including the late-19th-century Heidelberg School plein air painters, the Antipodeans, the Central Australian Hermannsburg School watercolourists, the Western Desert Art Movement and coeval examples of well-known High modernism and Postmodern art.
The Australian War Memorial (AWM) is a national war memorial and museum dedicated to all Australians who died during war. The AWM is located in Campbell, a suburb of the Australian capital of Canberra. The grounds include five buildings and a sculpture garden. Most of the museum galleries and commemorative areas are contained in the Memorial Building.
The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultural precinct of the Adelaide Parklands. Plans are under way to move much of its Australian Aboriginal cultural collection, into a new National Gallery for Aboriginal Art and Cultures.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), formerly the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, is located on George Street in The Rocks neighbourhood of Sydney. The museum is housed in the Stripped Classical/Art Deco-styled former Maritime Services Board (MSB) building on the western side of Circular Quay. A modern wing was added in 2012.
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east.
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia is an art gallery that houses the Australian part of the art collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries of the Government of Western Australia. The current gallery main building opened in 1979. It is linked to the old court house – The Centenary Galleries.
The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) is a museum located in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. The QVMAG is the largest museum in Australia not located in a capital city.
The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest regional art gallery in Australia. It was established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by a company of interested citizens led by James Oddie. It initially rented out the first floor of the Ballarat Academy of Music; the current building on Lydiard Street North opened in 1890. The gallery was privately owned until financial insecurity led to the building and collection being handed over to the Ballarat City Council in 1977. In 2008, the gallery adopted its current name and became a free-entry venue. Louise Tegart is the gallery's current director.
The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) is the main museum in the Northern Territory. The museum is located in the inner Darwin suburb of Fannie Bay. The MAGNT is governed by the Board of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and is supported by the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory Foundation. Each year the MAGNT presents both internally developed exhibitions and travelling exhibitions from around Australia. It is also the home of the annual Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Australia's longest-running set of awards for Indigenous Australian artists.
Danie Mellor is an Australian artist who was the winner of 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Born in Mackay, Queensland, Mellor grew up in Scotland, Australia, and South Africa before undertaking tertiary studies at North Adelaide School of Art, the Australian National University (ANU) and Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He then took up a post lecturing at Sydney College of the Arts. He works in different media including printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture. Considered a key figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, the dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
Ah Xian is a Chinese-born artist based in Sydney, Australia.
The Manly Art Gallery and Museum (MAGAM), located in Manly, New South Wales, Australia, was the first metropolitan-based regional gallery in New South Wales and holds an extensive collection of Australian ceramics and 130 works by Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. Since 1982, MAGAM has also been a museum of beach culture and the history of Manly and the Northern Beaches. The permanent collection numbers over 6,000 objects in a range of media including paintings, works on paper, ceramics and museum objects, documents and photographs.
Castlemaine Art Museum is an Australian art gallery and museum in Castlemaine, Victoria in the Shire of Mount Alexander. It was founded in 1913. It is housed in a 1931 Art Deco neo-classical building constructed for the purpose, heritage-listed by the National Trust. Its collection concentrates on Australian art and the museum houses historical artefacts and displays drawn from the district.