Celebrating 50 Years
In 2025, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) celebrates 50 years of presenting ambitious exhibitions of Australian and international art.
Established in 1975 as the Exhibition Gallery (Department of Visual Arts), on Level 7 of the Menzies Building at the University’s Clayton campus, MUMA has grown into a leading institution committed to artists, ideas and critical engagement. This milestone is a chance to reflect on the radical and influential history that continues to shape MUMA today.
Throughout 2025, we’re celebrating with three major projects: a suite of digital initiatives, a landmark publication and special programs and events.
Looking ahead
As we honour our past, we’re also looking to the future. Our mission remains grounded in supporting artists, generating new knowledge, fostering teaching and critical inquiry and building deeper connections with our audiences.
Read on to explore how you can get involved.
Digital Public Art Guide
Discover Monash University’s public art collection on campus or from anywhere in the world with our new Digital Public Art Guide, now available on the free Bloomberg Connects app. This guide opens access to one of Australia’s most significant collections of contemporary art in the public realm. Explore now
Online Exhibition Archive
MUMA’s full exhibition archive, from 1975 to today, is now available online for the first time. This new platform traces 50 years of exhibition making, from the Gallery’s early days to the dynamic and research-driven program of the present. It’s a major step in making MUMA’s history accessible to artists, students, researchers and art enthusiasts worldwide. Explore the archive
50 Years / 50 Works: A MUMA Collection Index
This forthcoming publication highlights 50 key works from the Monash University Collection, each paired with a unique reflection from a diverse group of contributors, including artists, curators, historians and writers. Blending personal, poetic and critical responses, the publication considers how art history is written and remembered. With a focus on acquisitions since 2010, it also re-evaluates how themes and movements in Australian art have been represented.
MUMA 50th Tote Bags
Celebrate 50 years of MUMA with our limited-edition cotton canvas totes, featuring iconic works by Vivienne Binns, Professor Brian Martin and John Nixon from the Monash University Collection. Shop the totes
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50th Reflections
D Harding
'As a practicing artist, I value the depth of professional engagement that the MUMA staff and project-based collaborators generate in exhibition making and in publishing. Further, I would anticipate that the reach of MUMA’s public interactions extends well beyond Monash University campuses, because the reputation of MUMA’s exhibition programs and print publications are each internationally significant in the field. After working on Through a Lens of Visitation from 2019-22 with MUMA, I can reflect on the enthusiasm offered by the team to make the best possible representations of my work in the galleries and in the associated book.'
— D Harding
Rex Butler
'Many years ago, I had the honour of opening Juan Davila’s The Moral Meaning of Wildness at the Queensland College of Art Gallery, after its original showing at the Monash University Museum of Art. I thought I had prepared, reading everything about Davila the great gay post-modern appropriator with his hard-edged cartoonish style. But when I walked into the space I was blown away by the soft impressionist colours, the delicate feathery brushstrokes and the decision to paint mostly women not men. Davila had upended himself brilliantly and started over again. It made me realise that he was undoubtedly the most “transgressive” artist in Australia, mostly because he was self-transgressive, unafraid to question himself. And if the early works are repellent, rebarbative and pornographic, the works in The Moral Meaning of Wilderness are sensual, attractive and erotic. Davila has a beautiful hand. His works are captivating to look at. He can really paint in a way that justifies the practice carrying on into the twenty-first century.'
— Rex Butler
Shelley Lasica
'There is something about the scale and positioning of MUMA that particularly functions for exhibitions made with the rigour that the various curators have brought to that site.
Making a trip to see the work implies an investment and engagement which is met with the quality of the offer.'
— Shelley Lasica
MUMA 50th Tote Bags
MUMA 50th Party Views
