The Victorian Government has aims to turn Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) into “one of the world’s leading museums for screen culture”, announcing today that it will provide an additional $31.6 million towards the renewal of the museum in the upcoming state budget. This funding is on top of $5 million already allocated to upgrade the museum, and another $5 million that is to be raised from philanthropic sources.
The government has said it will be the biggest transformation of ACMI in its 16 years, and is expected to increase visitors by 50 per cent to 2 million a year.
The renewal will involve:
- redeveloping ACMI’s permanent exhibition
- expanding the Learning Centre to cater for double the number of students
- a new Audience Lab where the screen industry can prototype and test ideas
- a Digital Preservation Lab to showcase film and digital content
- new interactive and immersive technologies embedded across the centre
The project is due to be finished by late next year.