Time Out Arts & Culture Awards 2024: Best Museum Exhibition Nominees

The world's most extensive and authentic exhibition about the famed (and doomed) Titanic sailed into Melbourne Museum in December 2023. Coming directly from a sold-out run in Paris, Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition transported visitors inside the famous ship more than a century after its demise via an intricate recreation of its hallowed grand staircase. It also featured more than 200 genuine artefacts retrieved from the site of the shipwreck in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, many of them possessions of the passengers and crew onboard. 

Opening in April 2023, ACMI's Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebllion exhibition celebrated daring and disruptive women on and off the screen. The landmark showcase unveiled and examined the shifting representation of femininity across film history through provocative cinematic moments. It featured never-before-seen costumes, original sketches, interactive experiences and cinematic treasures from the icons of the silent era to classic Hollywood heroines and the stars of Bollywood blockbusters. 

Italian polymath, painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most celebrated artists and scientists of all time, yet seeing his works is typically out of reach for the average Aussie. Well, that has all changed thanks to the Lume’s new immersive experience. Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius features massive projections of some of the world’s most famous works of art (including the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘The Last Supper'), groundbreaking inventions recreated to scale by Italian artisans and – for the first time in history – original pages of the Codex Atlanticus right here in Melbourne. 

*Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius is showing now at the Lume until September 15, 2024.

The Immigration Museum on Flinders Street has scored its first major exhibition in several years and it’s all about leaning into what makes us happy. Joy features seven brand new commissioned installations from leading Victorian-based creatives, each expressing the artists’ own personal joy. We're talking a 'joy generator', a full-scale replica of a nineties video store and a life-size toy bunny. You can expect an emotive adventure where colour and storytelling combine, and big happy moments that sit alongside more reflective ones.

*Joy is showing now at the Immigration Museum until August 29, 2025.