One of the fascinating things about postmodernism and postmodern architecture is that the ways in which it self-consciously disassembles and reassembles itself are really nothing more than the ways in which culture (and society) conduct exactly the same process of dissolution and synthesis. I had the very recent pleasure of visiting the thoroughly postmodern building of the National Museum of Australia for the first time in several years. This building is a pertinent example of the eclecticism and plurality evident in so much postmodern philosophy and architecture.

The building was officially opened in March 2001 on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. At the site of the new building a hospital previously stood and the day of it’s demolition saw an enormous debacle where too much explosive agent was used and a 12 year old girl was actually killed by the flying shrapnel. It was a miracle no one else was injured or killed. This is not, however, to denigrate the National Museum in any way but stands to remind us that any history is built upon many stories - not just those we choose to place on a pedestal and that whenever we shine a light on something in celebration, we will inevitably also cast shadows.

The building itself is quite fantastic, in the true sense of fantasy. The shell of the building has gigantic brail dots all over its surface and as expressed in several different architectural manners; it is in this building that Australians are quite literally to touch their own history and to read meaning into their shared past. The actual architecture has, perhaps unfortunately and for reasons of it’s own history, the spatial dynamic of an exploded structure, in places. The main building forms a semi-circle around a central “Garden of Australian Dreams” rich with symbolic intent and with the word “home” written in 100 different languages. It would be very easy to take this building as an exercise in over-intellectualised postmodern wittiness but the internal design and layout of the museum brings everything back to an organic concrescence of artefacts, experiences and identities.

The exhibits and displays are very well laid-out and the regular exhibits (covering things such as Aboriginal Australia or the kitsch Australiana of the 1950’s and onwards) are complemented by alternating exhibitions, for instance the Eternity exhibition, the First Australians exhibition and The Great Sandy Desert Canvas exhibition (- at 8 by 10 metres this is the largest painting I have ever seen).

The Ngurrara Canvas. (”The Great Sandy Desert Canvas”) Painted by Ngurrara artists and claimants, coordinated by Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, 1997.

It is an interesting museum, a little ostentatious but not at all conservative or traditional and certainly stuffed to the gunnels with exhibits and artefacts. I can also highly recommend the current (May, 2008) Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert online exhibition of the artwork of Indigenous Australians from the Western Desert.

In any discussion of the history of this country it a sacrosanct principle of discourse that the traditional owners and inhabitants of the land around the Canberra region, the Ngunnawal people, are recognised.