Sydney Opera House collections

The Sydney Opera House’s collections allow us to immerse ourselves in the history and legacy of one of the world’s most admired buildings. Spread across seven decades, the collections span the history of construction through to the performances, events and historic moments on its stages. 

Material collected by the Opera House includes artwork, objects, models, archives and building elements. These items, an important part of our collective heritage, are designed to understand our past as well as to preserve these stories for future generations. As a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site and a collecting institution, the Opera House has an important role to collect, preserve and share content relating to our history and culture. The archives include paper materials — programs, posters, letters, photographs — as well as a large collection of audio-visual items, including oral histories, live footage and imagery featuring individual performances, events and the evolution of the building itself. 

As a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site, the Sydney Opera House has built a collection that represents a significant part of our collective cultural history.  Preserving the collection and improving public access  are essential to ensure the history and stories of the Opera House remain available to future generations. Conserving these items takes many different forms, from storage, display and transport to the cleaning and restoring.  Digitisation has become a valuable way to update old formats. The Opera House is continuing to to digitise content on old forms of media and hard-to-see image formats, including VHS, Betacam, reel-to-reel film,, slides, negatives and transparencies. 

Digitising our content  allows more people than ever to engage with these remarkable, historic stories. Some of our items have also been made available to view in the Google Arts and culture exhibitions.