‘Inside out’ museum

Through the new portal ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’, the Australian Museum (AM), the nation’s first, has opened its doors virtually by curating virtual tours, online exhibitions, school resources and podcasts from scientists and other experts.

The AM’s new award-winning website offers an extraordinary world of virtual tours, online exhibitions, citizen science initiatives like FrogID, and educational activities to engage and inspire people of all ages.

“We’re thrilled to be able to share our content, developed against a backdrop of 193 years of collecting, in a new virtual way through ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’, hosted on our popular website,” Kim McKay, director & CEO of the AM said.

“While people are learning from home or working remotely, ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’ provides a free window into the behind-the-scenes experiences that only the AM can offer,” she said.

The AM’s new portal, is supported with detailed information and fact sheets to complement teachers and parents wanting to utilise more resources, becoming a one-stop-website for learning requirements.

Teachers, and home-schooling and supervising parents, will be able to engage with a variety of 3D images of priceless collections; witness birds-eye footage of daring expeditions; experience the very latest in scientific research and view online exhibitions, events and podcasts.

While the Australian Museum closed its doors in August last year for the $57.5m Project Discover renovation, its 250+ staff only moved to remote working from home three weeks ago when the impacts of COVID-19 hit Australia.  The AM plans to reopen to the public in Spring this year once the public is able to once again visit.

The AM’s newly launched website recently won the Museums Australasia Multimedia Publication Design Award, (MAPDA) for Best Website.  

Australian museum inside out highlights

Curated for the curious
The Australian Museum’s long history of research and discovery over the decades online.

Homeschool help
Fun and informative online resources for teaching curious kids about science, nature and culture.

Collections in 3D
See some of the AM’s rare and unique specimens and cultural objects using 3D photogrammetry capture.

Fact Sheets
A huge variety of student and teacher friendly fact sheets for discovering more about fossils, bugs, minerals, culture, habitats, animal lifecycles and science.

Podcasts
Get behind the scenes and onto the floors of our galleries and listen in to some incredible stories and histories in 45 minute podcasts. 

Citizen Science
The AM has a large number of Citizen Science projects, everyone is invited to be a part of important scientific research.

• Digivol – world leading crowdsourcing online platform invites volunteers to transcribe data from natural history collections and archives so it is discoverable for anyone in the world to see. 
• FrogID – the award winning first national frog count and scientific rescue mission which uses smartphone technology to enable citizen scientists to record frogs for identification by AM scientists

 Online Exhibitions

• #CapturingClimateChange – an arresting, dynamic online photographic exhibition where the public are invited to submit photos that symbolise the impacts of climate change in their environments – and the solutions they see.