Best Gallery In Australia: Canberra Glassworks / 2026 WORLD ART AWARDS

10 min readMay 3, 2026

The World Art Awards has announced the 20 Best International Galleries for the year 2026, with Canberra Glassworks receiving the award for the Best Gallery in Australia. Selections are based on years established, industry reputation, location, size, aesthetics, socially relevant exhibits, motivational and educational programs, online presence, represented artists — and references from artists, clients, and visitors.

World Art Awards: “For twenty years, Canberra Glassworks has presented an annual program of curated exhibitions of work by Australia’s finest glass artists. The stunning colossal structure, formerly the heritage-listed Kingston Powerhouse, contains state of the art workshops for all forms of creating studio glass. Canberra Glassworks participates in many Australian Capital Territory festivals and events such as the Heritage Festival and Science Week.”

Canberra Glassworks is an ACT Arts Centre. It opened in 2007 in the heritage-listed Kingston Powerhouse.

The building contains state of the art workshops for all forms of creating studio glass, a gallery that presents an annual program of curated exhibitions of work by Australia’s finest glass artists, and a retail shop with an extensive range of beautiful handmade glass objects.

Visitors can access a public viewing platform to watch artists at work in the Hotshop, Cold Shop, kiln forming and flame working studios or book into a class to learn how to make their own piece of glass art, take a guided tour or undertake group activities. The Glassworks participates in other ACT festivals and events such as the Heritage Festival and Science Week with a range of complementary special events and demonstrations.

Glass artists come from all over the country, joining the resident studio artists to create their work in the well- equipped facility.

Canberra Glassworks runs an annual program of artists’ residencies for artists to experiment, research and create new work. It can undertake a broad range of special commissions for artists, government bodies and businesses to create special orders including trophies, exhibition work and public art works as well as producing a range of bespoke wholesale products.

Kingston Power House

The Power House and its neighbouring building, the Fitters’ Workshop, were designed by architect John Smith Murdoch who also designed Old Parliament House and several other early Canberra buildings. Completed in 1915, the Kingston Power House was a coal fired electricity station built to generate electricity for the new city of Canberra. It is Canberra’s oldest permanent public building and has an ACT and National Heritage listing.

Its location created problems for Walter Burley Griffin as it interfered with his original plans for a grand axis within the city. Despite his objections, building began in 1912 on the present site. This positioning was ideal for generating electricity by producing steam with water from the nearby Molongolo River to drive the Power House turbines. The other key aspect of this positioning was the proximity to the southern railway line which delivered coal to a point below the ash hopper.

A hydroelectric power station became the main provider of power for Canberra in the late 1920s but the Kingston Power House continued to be used throughout the 1930s on an intermittent basis. During World War II it provided power to the naval transmission stations operating in the ACT. After the war the Power House still operated occasionally but it was decommissioned in 1957. After considerable consultation, the building was converted in 2007 into Canberra Glassworks, the only cultural centre that is wholly dedicated to contemporary glass art.

Website: https://canberraglassworks.com/

Address:

Canberra Glassworks

11 Wentworth Avenue
Kingston ACT 2604
Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country

World Art Awards: “This year we awarded revered historical art establishments having the highest standards of curatorial excellence presenting endless inventories of blue-chip Old Master originals, placing works in top collections across the globe. We also selected many newer hot-spot galleries setting trends with hyperrealism, digital and AI works, demonstrating community-focused workshops and panel discussions bridging the gap between aesthetic expression and pressing societal issues.

“All our Top 20 Galleries have rotating schedules of diverse exhibitions, a few partner with corporations, a number also publish annual catalogues of their exceptional international rosters and the majority actively participate at significant global gatherings akin to Art Basel, Frieze and TEFAF Maastricht.

“We opted for many high-rated private galleries in disparate countries representing important young work, from painting to digital to photography to sculpture. All these galleries are a vital part of the international art forum while focusing on advancing their regional artists, be they Austrian, Bulgarian, Cypriot, Israeli, Mexican, Moroccan or from the American Southwest.

“We honored the largest gallery in Arizona, a 20,000 square foot Sedona mystical temple displaying the finest of every style with emphasis on cutting-edge spiritual art, as does our Bulgarian winner.

“We chose a renowned three-story London showplace exhibiting heralded contemporary Eastern and Western art and also Australia’s premier glassworks facility. We selected a Florida institution which has expanded to four locations, equaling 20,000 square feet giving it the largest exhibition space in South Florida with close proximity to Art Basel & Art Miami.

“We selected the only gallery in Taiwan that has focused on the art of photography for over 17 years with high-ranking photographers from the region as well as from Germany, Britain, France, Poland, Japan, South Korea, USA and China. We also decided on large, modern art facilities in Denmark, England, Morocco and USA with influential international presences.”