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  1. Exterior view of MCA building with Sydney Harbour Bridge in background.
    Photograph: Anna Kucera | Museum of Contemporary Art
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  2. Exterior view of MCA entrance and forecourt
    Photograph: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia/Brett Boardman
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  3. Exterior view of MCA forecourt with Lindy Lee sculpture installed
    Photograph: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia/Ken Leanfore | Lindy Lee, Secret World of a Starlight Ember, 2020, installation view, Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop.
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Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)

Sydney's home of contemporary art is at stunning Circular Quay
  • Museums
  • The Rocks
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Written by Darryn King
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Time Out says

Perched on Circular Quay and open six days a week, the MCA is Sydney's year-round destination for new-age and left-of-centre art. 

Once the administration offices of the Maritime Services Board, this harbourside museum was overhauled head to toe (well, almost) with light, airy, uncluttered interiors, more floor space and a boxy new facade. Thankfully, they kept the building clad with sandstone that was long ago quarried at Maroubra.

Inside, the gallery spaces themselves are clean, logical and open – with long vistas to entice and draw you in further. While the design of the exterior is about drawing attention, the opposite is the case for the interior – the look and feel is simple, so the art can shine. “The most important thing is the art,” says architect Sam Marshall. “In the perfect gallery there would be no architecture visible. For most of the MCA’s exhibitions they install walls, change colours and put different surfaces in. That requires a really simple space with a really simple circulation system.”

The restaurant on the rooftop is also worth checking out – even if you're not hungry, the views from up there are some of the best in Sydney, since it looks over the water across to the Sydney Opera House.

It's easy to get to the MCA, considering it's a short walk from Circular Quay Train Station and ferry wharves. 

General entry is free, though some exhibitions, events and programs are ticketed.

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These are the best museums in Sydney.

Details

Address
140 George St
The Rocks
Sydney
2000
Opening hours:
Mon 10am-5pm, Tue CLOSED, Wed-Sun 10am-5pm

What’s on

Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory

Julie Mehretu is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters of her generation, acclaimed for her large-scale paintings which erupt with colour, line, energy and movement. This summer, the first major survey of the New York-based artist’s work ever exhibited in Australia is coming exclusively to the MCA Australia on Sydney's Circular Quay.  Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and now based in New York City, Mehretu has exhibited extensively at major institutions across the US, UK and Europe. Most recently, Mehretu was commissioned to create an 83-foot tall glass mural for the Obama Presidential Centre in Chicago. She was named one of the “100 most influential people in 2020” by Time magazine; and in 2024, The New York Times described her as “one of today's most original and thought-provoking painters.”   Opening on November 29 and running until April 27, the much-anticipated Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory addresses urgent concerns of our globalised world including revolution, migration and climate change. Featuring 13 new works created especially for the exhibition, the presentation will include more than 80 powerful abstract paintings, prints and drawings dating from 1995 to the present. The exhibition will also feature a series of talks and tours, with extended hours for Art Up Late for Sydney Festival on Wednesdays, January 8, 15 and 22 until 9pm.  Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory is part of the Sydney International...
  • Galleries

Julie Rrap: Past Continuous

If you’ve ever heard the words “feminist” and “Australian contemporary artist” in the same sentence, then you’ve probably also heard the name Julie Rrap. With a career spanning more than 40 years, she’s a major figure in the art world who is known for stripping down and incorporating her own body into her multidisciplinary art practice – in which she examines representations of the female nude in art and popular culture over time. You have the chance to have an intimate encounter with Rrap’s work at the the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) with Past Continuous, a new exhibition featuring both new and past work.  “When I looked in art history books, particularly, there were lots of pictures of women – nude women mostly – and not a lot of women artists,” said Rrap, when speaking with Time Out Sydney’s Alannah Le Cross.  “At the same time I was reading people like Simone de Beauvoir, and I was just beginning that little journey of my own about what it is to be a woman in the world,” she said, also adding that at the time she was studying literature and was quite active in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement. “So I guess this show, for me, represents that back history for me… there was always this way in which the female body was always the subject, but they were never themselves a subject.” Rrap’s landmark 1982 installation work – ‘Disclosures: A Photographic Construct’ – has been drawn from the MCA Collection for the exhibition, and this is where your journey begins. The...
  • Sculpture and installations

Primavera

In its 33rd year, the MCA’s Primavera is back in Circular Quay to showcase the brilliance of young artists under 35. This year’s exhibition, curated by Lucy Latella, revolves around the generational struggle Australians face to maintain their diverse cultures.  Two of the selected artists hail from Victoria, one from each of NSW, the ACT and SA, but their backgrounds, and the cultural stories they have to share, extend well beyond (colonial) Australian borderlines. Here’s a rundown of the art on offer... Chun Yin Rainbow Chan is a Hong Kongese-Australian artist from. Her background in music bleeds into her art, where she explores the mistranslation of women’s folk songs from the Weitou people.  Walgalu and Wiradjuri man Aiden Hartshorn hails from Wagga Wagga and Canberra. He works with modern materials like aluminium to reference the man-made industries that play havoc with his peoples’ ancestral connections to the river systems.  Teresa Busuttil splits her time between Adelaide and Malta, where she salvages materials like seashells to pay homage to her father’s migration from Malta to Australia. Her other works traverse the experience of young people under various colonial and contemporary powers in Malta. Sarah Ujmaia draws on her family’s experience of migrating to Melbourne from northern Iraq. Her interactive piece And thank you to my baba for laying the timber floor is an array of pavers that represent both the marketplace back home, and the evolution of oral...
  • Galleries
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