In 1943, Ayn Rand invented Ellsworth Toohey, a cultural intellectual who preached devotion to the people while systematically destroying their standards of excellence. In 2026, the New South Wales government appears to have found him his ideal commission.
The setting is the new Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta, Sydney, scheduled to open on 7 November. Its $915 million price tag includes $80 million in philanthropic contributions. The rest was paid for by you and me. Among its attractions are thirty apartments for visiting artists and experts, furnished with custom rugs costing approximately $4,000 apiece. A documentary about the museum's construction has cost at least $1.7 million, while a thousand-page cookbook reportedly cost more than $1.5 million.
There is also the small matter of the museum itself.
A $2.6 million program employing nine artistic associates was discontinued in June. A celebrity chef reportedly received a $440,000 ambassador contract. Meanwhile, museum professionals have complained about the preference for fashionable artistic consultants over specialist curators.
The disturbing thing is how familiar this all seems.
The March of the Centuries
In The Fountainhead, a committee of distinguished civic leaders organises a grand international exposition called The March of the Centuries. Eager to demonstrate their progressive credentials, they appoint eight prominent architects to design it collectively. Among them is Howard Roark, Rand's individualist hero, who offers to design the entire exposition himself. The committee is horrified. Surely the finest results must come from consultation, cooperation and the combined wisdom of eminent professionals?
Roark refuses.
"I don't work with collectives."
Ellsworth Toohey, the novel's villain and influential socialist critic, condemns Roark's antisocial arrogance. The remaining architects, led by Peter Keating, proceed without him. They hold conferences. They exchange suggestions. Each compromises his independent judgment to accommodate the others. They achieve precisely the harmonious collective undertaking their organisers desired.
The finished exposition is hideous.
One critic compares the buildings to squashed toothpaste tubes and stylised intestines. The fair is a humiliating failure. Even Toohey ridicules it. The architects had worked conscientiously, compromising at every opportunity. Every one of them had produced better work alone than the eight could produce together.
They had followed the principles of collectivism perfectly. The result was an aesthetic monstrosity.
Art for the People
Toohey's genius lies in turning mediocrity into a moral ideal by leveraging false moral notions. He denounces independent artistic judgment as selfishness and the pursuit of greatness as an affront to the common man. The artist must subordinate himself to the collective, whose wishes he exists to serve.
"Architects are servants, not leaders," Toohey declares. Their purpose is to express the collective spirit, seeking the lowest common denominator rather than asserting an independent vision.
Under this morality, the genius becomes morally suspect, while the mediocrity who dutifully surrenders his judgment acquires the prestige of virtue.
Consider the Powerhouse. Its collection of more than 500,000 objects documents extraordinary achievements in science, engineering, technology and design. Among them is a working eighteenth-century steam engine, a monument to the ingenuity that transformed human civilisation.
One might expect an institution housing such treasures to be devoted to explaining and celebrating their creators. Instead, specialist curators have found themselves competing for authority with artistic consultants, while the museum advertises immersive experiences, collaborative activities and elaborate contemporary commissions.
An institution devoted to the achievements of great minds risks becoming a playground for those employed to reinterpret them.
There is an entire class of cultural intellectuals whose authority depends upon persuading the public that their interpretations are more important than the works themselves. Unable to create anything great, they seek to destroy the standards by which greatness is recognised. Toohey understood this perfectly. His aim was to obliterate independent standards of artistic excellence, leaving the public dependent upon cultural authorities to tell them what to admire.
And what better institution to capture than a museum?
The Greater Monstrosity
The financial extravagance is outrageous. But the economic waste is the least disturbing part.
A museum teaches visitors what deserves admiration. It communicates a vision of man and his possibilities. A child standing before a steam engine ought to discover the power of human reason, the ingenuity of its inventors and the extraordinary achievements made possible by the conquest of nature.
What will that child learn when these achievements become mere props for fashionable artistic experiments, and the people employed to interpret them eclipse the people who created them?
When artistic standards are replaced by collective approval, mediocrity gains the prestige of excellence. When the state finances the enterprise, the public is compelled to pay for the degradation of its own culture. The supreme irony of the Powerhouse controversy is that an institution created to celebrate the achievements of the human mind should become a monument to the intellectual premises that deny their greatness. The tragedy is greater than $915 million. It is the spectacle of a civilisation handing its greatest achievements to cultural mediocrities, who proceed to explain why greatness is morally suspect.
Ellsworth Toohey would have approved.
References
Powerhouse. (n.d.). Powerhouse. https://powerhouse.com.au/