The National Museum of Australia was established in 1980.
The National Historical Collection, which is the core of the museum's collection, includes more than 210,000 items illustrating the history and cultural heritage of Australia. The museum has the world's largest collection of Aboriginal bark paintings and stone tools. In the museum you can see, among others: navigation instruments used by Captain James Cook and Holey Dollar, the first currency minted in Australia.

National Gallery of Australia (NGA) founded in 1967, opened to the public in 1982.
Some NGA collections:
- Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art (the largest in the world)
- Australian art (non-Indigenous), works by e.g. Sidney Nolan, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston, Arthur Boyd, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin
- Western art, works by e.g. Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, David Hockney
- Pacific art
- Asian art
- Sculpture garden, works by e.g. Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore
The NGA has over 155,000 works of art.
The NGA building has 23,000 square meters of floor space.

The Australian War Memorial opened in 1941.
The Australian War Memorial combines a sanctuary including the Memorial Hall with the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier, a national military museum, and a Research Center. The Memorial also has an open-air sculpture garden.
It commemorates the victims of those Australians who died in the wars and expresses gratitude for the sacrifice of Australian soldiers.
It covers 14 hectares.

The National Portrait Gallery has been operating as an unassisted institution since 1998.
The national collection of portraits includes about 3,000 photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings and multimedia.