Anna Schwartz Gallery is closing and reopening as Anna Schwartz Projects, a new venue for installations, performance and music in Melbourne.
After 40 years in Melbourne’s contemporary art scene, the Flinders Lane gallery will wrap up with a John Nixon exhibition closing 13 December, before relaunching in 2026 as something entirely different. Anna Schwartz Projects will present occasional events across installation, performance, publishing and music, moving away from the traditional gallery model.
It’s a shift driven by changes in Australia’s art landscape. Artist-run initiatives have mushroomed across the city, occupying garages and found office spaces, while the culture and commerce of collecting has evolved.
Anna Schwartz Projects in Flinders Lane
- When: Opening 2026
- Where: Level one, Flinders Lane, Melbourne
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Engagement with design and craft has proliferated, taking up attention previously devoted to visual, installation and performance art. Anna Schwartz Projects will work more with commissions and collaborations, facilitating projects rather than representing artists in the conventional sense.
Since opening in its current Denton Corker Marshall-designed space in 1993, Anna Schwartz Gallery has hosted hundreds of artists and exhibitions that have crossed forms and continents. Before that, Schwartz operated City Gallery at 45 Flinders Lane from 1986, back when Melbourne’s CBD was mainly offices and doctors. Her first engagement as a gallerist came in 1982 with artist-run project United Artists.
Over the years, the gallery championed avant-garde artists who went on to become major voices in Australian visual art, including John Nixon, Jenny Watson, Callum Morton, Shaun Gladwell, Mike Parr, Marco Fusinato, Daniel Crooks, Emily Floyd and Angelica Mesiti. Anna Schwartz Gallery Carriageworks operated in Sydney for 14 years, working with international artists like Chiharu Shiota, Antony Gormley, Joseph Kosuth and El Anatsui.
Now it’s making room for a different kind of cultural programme, one that’s entirely project and event based.
Anna Schwartz Projects will occupy level one of the same Flinders Lane address when it opens next year.
For more information, head here.
