Almost 65,000 visitors visited the world premiere exhibition, to experience RELICS’ playful and thought-provoking imagining of a post-human world. These numbers mark the best performance by a paid exhibition in the Museum’s history, eclipsing the previous record set by 2018’s Dinosaur rEvolution (57,579 visitors).

These latest numbers follow the strong November 2022 – February 2023 response to another world premiere, Six Extinctions, which drew 34,060 visitors across its three-month run.

The combined result makes the 2022-2023 financial year one of the Museum’s busiest on record with a total 786,064 visitors and signals a remarkable recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Created by artists and LEGO® Masters Winners Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler, the mixed media exhibition RELICS: A New World Rises blended found objects, from an antique grandfather clock to a disused Volkswagen beetle, with LEGO® bricks and minifigures (largely recycled or repurposed) to create a intricate set pieces that imagine Earth in a distant future, where new civilizations have emerged in the discarded ruins and debris that will outlast humanity.

Upon opening in March RELICS saw queues snake out the Museum’s North Terrace entrance, with opening hours extended for the exhibition’s final weeks in late July alongside larger-than-life light installation Affinity by Amigo & Amigo, hosted on the Museum front lawns as part of Illuminate Adelaide’s City Lights.

Dr David Gaimster, South Australian Museum Director, said the result showed what the Museum was capable of achieving, engaging audiences in new and imaginative ways through programming while always embracing its core values of science and wonder.

“This world premiere exhibition captured the public’s imagination with its ingenuity and fun, drawing on popular culture and science fiction while encouraging visitors to think deeply about our world and humanity’s place in it,” said Dr Gaimster. “RELICS appealed to everyone from buzzing school holiday crowds to LEGO® enthusiasts in their 90s.”

Co-creator Jackson Harvey said the Museum’s early backing of RELICS was instrumental in making the exhibition, which will open at Melbourne Museum in September, a success. “It was an honour to hold the world premiere of RELICS: A New World Rises in Adelaide at the South Australian Museum. The success of the exhibition proves that the power of play knows no age, uniting generations and bringing stories to life.”

On Thursday 24 August the South Australian Museum will reveal its next exhibition, and the winners of the 2023 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition, with the South Australian Museum owned and produced competition now in its landmark 20th year. This breathtaking exhibition of the winners and finalists will open to the public on Saturday 26 August until Sunday 29 October 2024.

Image: Sia Duff / South Australian Museum