THE VIEW FROM SHEPPARTON ART MUSEUM’s fourth-floor terrace frames the natural landscape it faces: water, forest, a big open sky. It offers an unfamiliar perspective for a low-rise city that lies spirit-level flat, eliciting an emotional response in guest curator Ian Wong. From this sky-scraping spot on the shores of Victoria Park Lake, its wetlands blurring into the Goulburn River, we can gaze out towards neighbouring Mooroopna, where, on the riverbank in 1877, his ancestor Ah Wong established the area’s first market garden, and to the river red gums of the Barmah Forest beyond. In a place famous for its industry, the view anchors us back to Yorta Yorta Country. And in doing so articulates something of the essence of this major new cultural destination that rises small and tall out of the floodplain, two hours north of Melbourne in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley.
“We’re elevated and presented with the forest,” says Wong, an industrial designer by trade, of this view that makes him look at his hometown differently. “It is not pointing towards the rooftops: the architects have controlled our vista and brought to us this vision of the beauty of the natural environment.”
Designed by internationally acclaimed Denton Corker Marshall, the 50 million new SAM – as it’s dubbed – opened its doors in November 2021: a place-making landmark on the road into town that’s destined to put Shepparton on the map. At a time of regional renewal and growth across the country, its significant social and economic impact will no doubt be felt in the years to come, and we only need to look at the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or Hobart’s avant-garde Mona to see
