Touring exhibitions

How cities work

Enter an immersive cityscape full of magical, tactile experiences to discover how the city works. Peek inside buildings, duck underground, and explore the streets to find out what’s going on above your head and beneath your feet

Street Photography

Before the days of Instagram, personal cameras, copyright and privacy laws, street photographers were a familiar part of city streets during the 1930’s to the late 1950’s, inadvertently creating a vast archive of black-and-white, postcard-sized candid images

Underworld: Mugshots from the roaring twenties

Welcome to the dark side of the Roaring Twenties. Descend into a seedy underworld where the only rules were never squeal to the police and always, always shoot first

Marion Hall Best: Interiors

This exhibition colourfully charted the work of Marion Hall Best (1905-1988), one of Australia’s first and most influential independent interior designers

Iconic Australian Houses

A behind-the-scenes exploration of 30 of the most important Australian homes of the past 60 years

52 suburbs

When photographer Louise Hawson realised she was a stranger in her own city, she set herself a mission to photograph one Sydney suburb a week for a year

Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO® bricks

This exhibition celebrated tall and extraordinary buildings from Australia and Asia

A convict in the family?

A convict in the family? is the latest travelling exhibition from Sydney Living Museums showcasing the rich, large-scale photographs of documentary photographer Mine Konakci

The Force: 150 years of NSW Police

The NSW Police Force was formed on 1 March 1862. It is the oldest and largest police force in Australia with operations on land, on sea and from the air

Margaret Olley: Home

This exhibition was the first to focus on the artist’s home in Duxford Street, Paddington

Sand in the city

Dive into the sun, fun and adventure of Sydney’s iconic coastline

Smalltown

Smalltown is a dialogue between photographer Martin Mischkulnig and author Tim Winton, travelling through out-of-the-way parts of Australia

Femme Fatale: the female criminal tour

Wicked women, seductive sinners, vicious vixens – the female criminal is portrayed in many guises in popular culture, myth, literature and history but what do these stereotypes tell us about women and crime?

Built for the Bush

The green architecture of rural Australia

Joseph Lycett: convict artist

Joseph Lycett: convict artist, will be the first exhibition to examine the life and work of one of Australia’s earliest accomplished artists, Joseph Lycett, born about 1775, died 1828

Cook's sites

Hero or anti-hero? It’s an ongoing argument. This exhibition sheds some new light on the perennial question

Drugs: a social history

Australian doctors once prescribed heroin for the relief of pain in childbirth, cannabis cigarettes were promoted as an asthma cure and opium-laced syrups were sold to parents to calm teething infants

Rex & Max Dupain's Sydney

For the first time, the work of prominent Sydney photographer Max Dupain is exhibited together with that of his son Rex Dupain, at the Museum of Sydney

Law and order: regional police and court buildings 1850-1920

This exhibition featured images of police and court buildings and their surrounds and traces the expansion of settlement from the 1850s and the towns that sprang up following gold, timber and mining booms

Cops on the Box

Cops on the Box, an exhibition at the Justice & Police Museum focused on the portrayal of police and police work on television

Leunig animated

Some of Michael Leunig’s magical cartoons were brought to life through one of Sydney’s most creative animation teams, Andrew Horne and Deborah Szapiro, in the exhibition at the Museum of Sydney entitled Leunig Animated

Radical architect: John Horbury Hunt

Canadian born, Boston-trained architect John Horbury Hunt arrived in Sydney in 1863 and for the next 40 years was renowned for the distinctive radical architecture he introduced to Sydney and rural New South Wales

Crime scene: Scientific Investigation Bureau Archives 1945-1960

Bush lives: bush futures

This evocative exhibition highlighted the triumphant stories of eight remarkable NSW families who have found innovative and sustainable solutions for their land and their heritage