/ Current Exhibitions

Signs of the Times
Until 25 June

Over 150 years of Melbourne street signs, billboards, posters and typefaces form the basis for this revealing and colourful journey through the secret history of Melbourne’s visual culture.

Signs of the Times presents fragments and objects from Melbourne’s past, once revered and considered integral to the spirit of the city, but now abandoned, lost, destroyed or simply forgotten.

The exhibition includes neon signs, historical signage, council signs, over 150 photographs, and various sign ephemera. The exhibition also explores the changing use of typeface, and documents the fight to save Melbourne’s historical signage.

Featured in the exhibition are a variety of works by six contemporary artists – each with a very different perspective on the function and value of signs: Geoff Hocking, Kiron Robinson, Steve Proposch, Lkae, Patrick Jones and Bill Hay.

Lenders and other participants in the exhibition include Stephen Banham from Letterbox Design Studio, Simon Reeves, City of Melbourne, City of Yarra, Ash Keating, David Wixted, Adam M. Dimech, Mimmo Cozzolino, Ben Spencer-White, Martin Zweep, Murray Walker and principal Exhibition Partner, Delta Neon.

Exhibition Partner

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Making Melbourne

Tracing the story of the city from early settlement to the present day.

Through Autumn Making Melbourne focuses on Melbourne’s espresso culture. Melbourne has long been renowned for its coffee culture. A legacy of the city's early immigrants who developed the espresso coffee industry and introduced tea-sipping Melburnians to the pleasures of the bean, coffee connoisseurs today can still tour many of the original cafes and roasting houses around Melbourne such as the famous Pellegrinis Espresso Bar in Bourke Street.

Until June 30 Making Melbourne also features Landmark by Charles Robb, an inverted statue of Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe, installed in Gordon Reserve opposite Old Treasury.

Built on Gold

The story of Victoria’s gold, its journey and legacy in the years 1852-1862.

Growing Up in the Old Treasury

Recreating the caretaker’s apartments, as occupied 1916-1928.

Gold and Prosperity

The Vizard Foundation collection of colonial gold and silver.

/ Coming Up

RE:Built Environment: Imitating Melbourne Architecture
From 8 July

Melbourne architecture has a tradition of eclecticism and openness, which the arrival of Post-Modernism in the 1970s served only to intensify. Today the city brims with buildings which quote freely from history, incorporate a blend of styles, and which embrace homage, pastiche and irony.

Presented in Melbourne’s Old Treasury Building, itself a nineteenth century reinvention of Classical and Italian Renaissance architecture, RE:Built Environment surveys recent and historical tendencies to emulate in Melbourne architecture.

The exhibition features work by Melbourne artist Glen Walls, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with texts by Peter Andrew Barrett, architectural historian, and Simon Gregg, Curator, City Museum at Old Treasury.

/ Events

Friday 21 April
2.00pm
Charles on Charles
Join artist Charles Robb for an informal talk about Landmark, a work celebrating the life of Charles LaTrobe currently installed in Gordon Reserve.
Free event.

Thursday 11 May
2.00pm
Simon says
Join Curator Simon Gregg for an short talk about the St Moritz skating girl neon sign on display in Signs of the Times.
Free with entry.

Tuesday 16 May
11.00am
Secrets of the Signs
Join Dean Phillips from Delta Neon for an informative talk about the production of neon signs.
$10 (includes museum entry)

Thursday 25 May
7.00pm
Mysteries of the Old Treasury Building
Join tour leader Cassie May for peek into the hidden rooms and haunted passageways of the Old Treasury Building.
$22 / $15 (includes champagne).