Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on just one branch: the blockbuster exhibition. It argues that large-scale temporary exhibitions at that time served as a testing ground for exhibition design and management, enabling increasingly ambitious projects as the years passed. It focuses on historical exhibitions also reveals the emergence of infrastructure: exhibition buildings and other support systems to ease the financial burden of staging these events. The book develops a more complex understanding of the format’s origins, positioning blockbusters in a richer social-cultural context. Focused on Australia, it offers a sustained examination of the circumstances that have contributed to the current dominance of large-scale temporary exhibitions. The book considers the arrival of the official blockbuster in the 1970s. This period saw museums shift away from individual patrons and instead incrementally take on the role of managing and hosting large-scale exhibitions.