How do you be all things to all people? The old Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) was a nexus of screen industry and audience, at once collecting and preserving screen culture while running talks and films that kept pace with changing media. But how do you re-think a museum designed to get couch potatoes and screenagers into a physical space?
A museum’s collection is both its biggest challenge and biggest draw for visitors. Only a small amount of any collection can be shown and there’s a universe of objects that make up a collection. Displaying the collection online seems like a good way to showcase it but collection management systems are often clunky and designed for back-end research rather than an audience. The new ACMI puts a Lens over their collection – linking everything you see in the revamped exhibition spaces to other media, including films outside their collection.
