Our 2026 program groundwork honours five decades of art, artists, education and community at UQ Art Museum.
groundwork is the necessary preparation for a future task. Marking our 50th anniversary, and coincident with the envisioning of a new purpose-built space opening in 2027, groundwork reflects on all facets of the museum: its site and form, its processes, its ethic and its creative program. groundwork asks us to locate ourselves on Country, and in place; to acknowledge our past and to imagine our future, and to gather and contemplate our material and relational responsibilities to one another.
Through dialogic and convivial gatherings, groundwork attends to contexts largely unimaginable for art museums and their communities 50 years ago, grappling with networked technologies and climate crises alongside massive shifts in social ideas about inclusion, representation, equity and justice.
We celebrate this milestone by embracing a responsive program across our campuses and our region. groundwork is a prologue and invitation to UQ Art Museum’s next chapter. In deep collaboration and celebration with campus and community, we will host conversations, workshops, pop-ups, masterclasses, events, live performances, training and professional development, opening spaces for thinking, sharing and learning together.
2026 program
Come with Wet Hair, Leave with Wet Feet: Summer Workshop – Minjerribah, February
Access Lab and Library – in person + online, May + June
UQAM x Brisbane Portrait Prize – May
First Nations Art from the Collection: Campus Walking Tours – July + more dates to be announced
50th Birthday Party – August
UQ Arts Block Party
UQAM x MAGSQ Professional Development Workshop – Rockhampton Museum of Art, October
+ artists and more programs to be announced
