The art ecosystem of Australia’s South Coast region got a significant boost over the weekend after the official unveiling of the new Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects.

The Melbourne-based firm worked with landscape architects Wraight Associates, Craig Burton, and sustainable design engineers Atelier Ten to create a multifaceted arts destination on an important 1,100-hectare (2,718-acre) property located in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales.

Designed to be a weather-resilient education center as well as an art museum and retreat destination, the entire development consists of a 500-square-meter (5,382-square-foot) museum, paddock-to-plate café, an education center, and lodging for up to 64 people. All this is inspired by the art of landscape painter Arthur Boyd, who, together with his wife Yvonne, gifted the property to the Australian people in 1993.

The museum is split into two parts with a 160-meter (525-foot) long elevated “art bridge” set above a subterranean storage and exhibition space built into the hillside to protect its 4,000-piece holdings in modern, contemporary, and Indigenous Australian art from the devastating consequences of wildfires and flooding that have gripped the country in recent years. 

Bundanon already featured a Glenn Murcutt-designed education center and will now operate at net-zero thanks to a mixture of solar power, passive temperature controls, rainwater collection, and black water treatment facilities that are incorporated throughout the scheme. Its architect sees it as an elevation of both art and nature placed within a rural setting that has so much significance to the history of art in the country. 

“The design is driven by Bundanon’s main imperative, as established by the Boyd family, to foster an appreciation for and understanding of landscape and art,” Thompson said in a statement. “We have placed the site’s ecology at the center of the design with the new suite of buildings and landscapes responding to Bundanon as both subject and site of Arthur Boyd’s work, seeking to heighten the visitor’s appreciation for the sights, sounds, textures, and ecological workings of the landscape."

An official ceremony will be held on March 5th to mark the grand opening of the $34 million project. Information about the museum's programs can be found here.