Our lives are filled with screens. Everyone is spending hours looking at one, and some others are spending hours uploading something to be shown on a screen. The thing is, most of us know very little about the actual art of the moving image. From analog to digital, screen content has shaped societies and birth cultures.
After a two-year, $40 million redevelopment project, the ACMI – Australia’s national museum of screen culture, now welcomes audiences through their doors 7-days a week. Architecturally and digitally transformed to enable a new museum experience, the ACMI is curated by humans and enabled by technology. With a brand new 1,600 sqm permanent exhibition space, a media preservation lab hosting education and events, cinema spaces, and even a restaurant, the museum provides visitors with a multi-faceted contemporary experience.
Inspired by Melbourne’s laneways and the ancient Freek agora, award-winning Melbourne architects BKK and experience design firm Publicis Sapient/Second Story was appointed to collaboratively work on the entire redevelopment, including the redesigning of the museum’s functional layout and the public spaces.
One of the key highlights is the centerpiece exhibition, The Story of the Moving Image, an interactive and experiential journey that travels through the past, present, to the future of moving image with over 900 objects. The whole museum also features First Peoples’ art throughout the exhibition, creating a connection between First Peoples’ storytelling and today’s moving image. The museum now houses 60% of works that have women in a lead creative role and 70% of works that are by Indigenous artists.
The museum also features a collection of costumes from films such as The Favourite and True History of the Kelly Gang; new and retro videogames in the Games Lab by Big Ant Studios; splice movie scenes on the Edit Line; an opportunity to make your sound effects in the Foley Room; and includes the film season Love & Neon: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai in its launch program, to name a few. The museum has developed a free device, the Lens, that allows visitors to collect their favorite objects and artworks in the exhibition and explore more after their visit. The Lens activates a large-scale human-curated collection of moving image works called the Constellation. It links each object on the visitor’s Lens back to its moving image.
ACMI
Fed Square, Melbourne
Museum
Mon-Tue: 12pm-5pm
Wed-Fri: 12pm-7pm
Sat: 11am-7pm
Sun: 11am-6pm
Hero
Open 7 days, 11.30am to late
Grab and go open 7 days from 8am
Cinemas
Open 7 days, 11am to late
acmi.net.au
