Phone +61 3 9817 2300 | ||
Address 219 Cotham Rd, Kew VIC 3101, Australia Similar Villa Alba Museum, Justin Art House Museum, Alexandra Gardens - Melbourne, Culloden Battlefield, Museum of Steel | ||
The Lyon Housemuseum is a hybrid residence and contemporary art museum located in Melbourne, Australia. The Housemuseum displays the Lyon Collection of Australian contemporary art in a purpose designed building.
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The building is open to the public for pre-booked guided tours, school visits and other events on designated days each year.
The Housemuseum also hosts a series of public talks and lectures on contemporary art, architecture, art history and museology which are open to the public. The annual Housemuseum Lecture is published in the form of a small book. The first book in this series, Meaning in Space by Leon van Schaik, was published in 2011.
Lyon housemuseum premier s design awards
Collection
The Lyon Collection has been developed by Melbourne collectors Corbett Lyon and Yueji Lyon over a more than 20-year period. It represents key aspects of Australian contemporary art practice from the early 1990s to the present. It comprises over 300 artworks including paintings, sculpture, installation works, photography and video work. There are more than 50 artists currently represented in the Collection including internationally recognised Australian artists Howard Arkley, Patricia Piccinini, Callum Morton, Brook Andrew, Shaun Gladwell and Daniel von Sturmer.
Building design
The Housemuseum building was designed by architect Corbett Lyon and his architectural firm Lyons between 2003 and 2005. The building was completed in November 2008 and opened to the public with its first exhibition in 2009.
Inspired by visits he had made as a student to the Sir John Soane's Museum in London and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Lyon designed the new building to explore the relationship between art and living and ideas of public and private space.
The design juxtaposes museum spaces with domestic spaces to create a blurring of conventional readings of museum and house, and creates a scenographic setting for the display of works from the Collection.
The interior of the building is lined with timber panels onto which texts created by the family have been printed. The exterior of the building is clad in black zinc.
The front fence displays the two street names of the building's corner address. These are rendered in 2 metre high letters using decorative corbelled brickwork.
In 2010 the Housemuseum won the Australian Institute of Architects' Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award, Victoria's highest design award for residential architecture.