
I head towards Tin Sheds Gallery on my lunch break, before Sydney Buries its Past officially opens. To get there I pass the University’s Gothic Revival architecture, built during the second half of the nineteenth century from always-damp sandstone, as well as the newish glass buildings, where management work and where I sometimes go to use the toilets. If the founding architecture of the University aspired to Oxbridge, the new buildings glimmer like any other corporate headquarters (instead of gargoyles there’s CCTV). I was told once that the University sold a Picasso from its collection to pay for one of its newer buildings. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it prompts an image of a building suddenly turning back into a cubist painting. What else would we see in the city if buildings revealed their financial sources?