Director’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Life and Community of the Museum 2021

Matthew Grady is central to the life of the Museum and how we provide our services to the public. He works across all business units and is always there to help anyone to do their work well.

Matt joined the Museum in 2006, following a career in the private building maintenance sector, where he worked across a number of key departments including DFAT, Attorney-General's, Treasury, the Canberra Theatre and ACT Legislative Assembly.

As soon as Matt joined the Museum, he started to make a difference for us all. He worked on coordinating building contractors and services, made improvements to our facilities – particularly at Mitchell – and he ensured our grounds were well maintained. But Matt went beyond doing his job and over the last 14 years and has been central to the work of all business units. He has helped many exhibitions teams to prepare temporary, travelling and gallery redevelopment projects. He has worked closely with events, front of house, education and public programming. He has worked on key redevelopment projects such as the shop redesign and the Atrium redevelopment. Matt was critical when the Museum exited its lease of the Annexe and returned the space to original conditions to hand over to the NCA. Whenever there has been an out of hours emergency, Matt is there regardless of the time, working to sort out whatever the Museum needs to get back up and operating.

In 2020, during the year of bushfires and Covid-19, Matt played a central role and was conscientious and hardworking. He remained onsite throughout the pandemic helping to ready the Museum with new Covid-safe operating measures. He also used the opportunity of the Museum’s temporary closure to undertake a range of periodic maintenance works that would have been challenging at other times due to the Museum being open 364 days a year, and in doing so helped save the Museum financial expense.

Matt Grady is a special person for all of us and is at the centre of the Museum. He is committed, every day, to the Museum’s work and often goes above and beyond to deliver results.

Matt’s relationships are a hallmark of his special nature. They extend far and wide. He is a steadfast friend to many and is an exceptional professional colleague. He mentors and coaches other staff to achieve their best.

He is a tremendous asset to the Museum, whose value is fully appreciated in the nomination for this new Director’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Life and Community of the Museum.