The Tasmanian Government is committed to supporting the State’s important cultural and creative sector.
I am pleased to announce that thanks to a $1 million funding commitment from our Government, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery will open an exciting new exhibition in 2021.
The new long-term interactive Children’s Exhibition has been designed in recognition of the importance of family learning at the heart of the museum experience.
TMAG aims to inspire a sense of wonder and discovery in everyone, especially young people. It’s exciting to see the plans develop for a new experience designed especially for this audience.
The new exhibition is intended to be a space where young people and their families can learn and play together, and plan to visit regularly. The intended target audience is children aged 0-7 and their carers.
Following a tender process, Thylacine Design has been engaged as the exhibition designer. Thylacine has successfully created place-based experiences for TMAG in the past such as the award-winning ningina tunapri exhibition. They have also undertaken work for Hobart’s world-renowned MONA. Thylacine have been undertaking concept design throughout April and have now provided TMAG with an early conceptual visualisation of the design for the new space.
The delivery of the project will employ Tasmanian based fabricators and installers during the construction and installation phase, and Tasmanian products where possible, commencing later this year.
The early concept plan released today aligns with the overarching theme for the exhibition of Little Big Home as well as important sub-themes of homes, habitat and Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, and the placed-based features of the natural environment including island geography and our mountains and rivers.
The design also shows how Thylacine intends to make use of physical height in the gallery to facilitate the active and tactile nature of children’s learning.
The TMAG Children’s Reference Panel, involving 20 Tasmanian children aged from 7 to 17, has played an integral role in the development and planning of this new exhibition space to ensure that children’s voices are central to both the concept development and its implementation, and I thank them for their substantial and important contribution.
The new exhibition is still scheduled to open at TMAG in April 2021.