Australian National Maritime Museum, Maritime museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia
The Australian National Maritime Museum is a national maritime museum on the waterfront in Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia. The complex includes several exhibition halls and an outdoor area with historic ships moored at the wharf.
In June 1985 the federal government announced a national maritime museum, sited at Darling Harbour after lobbying by NSW Premier Neville Wran as part of the area's bicentennial redevelopment. Philip Cox, Richardson Taylor & Partners designed the building, whose corrugated metal roof rises over 25 metres on the west side to suggest billowing sails. Construction finished on 17 November 1989 at a cost of $70 million, and the museum opened on 30 November 1991.
The museum's name is often shortened to ANMM, and its galleries trace how Indigenous Australians used the sea, including the Dhaŋaŋ Dhukarr video installation by the Mulka Project at the centre of the Shaped by the Sea gallery. The building's roof was shaped to suggest billowing sails, standing over 25 metres tall on the west side and dropping toward the east.
The museum occupies a waterfront site at Darling Harbour, with the exhibition building and the moored vessels reached on foot from the surrounding precinct. Four museum ships can be boarded, while the smaller historic vessels berthed outside are view-only. Entry to the galleries was free from 2004, but fees were reintroduced in December 2011, and ship access is charged separately.
The restoration team works on boats in open workshops where visitors can watch wood repairs and sail maintenance. The destroyer warship Vampire sits next to the submarine and shows engine rooms from the 1950s.
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