Festival Hub @ TMAG
Friday 4 August, 6pm – midnight
Saturday 5 August, 5pm – midnight
FREE
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
The Beaker Street Festival Hub at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is a pop-up science bar, a parlour of curiosities, an inn for inquiring minds. Here, at the bustling Festival centre, you’ll find live music, zoological oddities, photographic inspiration, amiable wandering scientists, seriously good food and drink, and such a bounty of distractions that you may forget to go home. If you’ve never explored TMAG after dark, here’s your chance.
This year, every single thing at the Festival Hub will be free and unticketed — and expanded!
Our ever-popular Roving Scientist Bar will take over the Central Gallery. Pull up a bar stool and chat with a seemingly endless variety of local and visiting scientists. Here you’ll also find live music, dancing, scientific performances (think geek talent show), exhibitions, and of course a bar serving up the best boozy and boozeless beverages Tassie has to offer.
What else? Oh, SO much. Here are some highlights:
- The Sonic Pavillion in the Watergate Courtyard, featuring a stellar program of local live bands all night long. Grab a G&T, a whisky, or a hot mulled cider and dance the night away.
- The Science Photography Prize finalists exhibition. Come along to vote for the People’s Choice Winner.
- An outdoor installation of Duncan Meerding’s stunning Stump Lights.
- The Microscopy and Oddities Booth, teeming with curious specimens and the scientists who study them
- The Co-Lab exhibition in the Bond Store. We’ve teamed up high school arts students with research scientists for the past few months, in an open-ended experiment. Check out the results.
- The Speakers Table, where our featured presenters will be joining us for a chat after each performance at the Theatre Royal.
- The Young Tassie Scientists after hours. Drop in for 15-minute lessons. It’s like school but with beer.
- Interactive AI
- Much, much more.
Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult
AI-generated image using prompts, 2023. Midjourney. Courtesy of Beaker Street.
Live Music Schedule
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Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Located on Hobart’s historic waterfront, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) is the second oldest museum in Australia. The museum incorporates more than 2,000 square metres of public and exhibition spaces with a rich blend of permanent collections, touring and temporary exhibitions and special displays.
Eat and drink
The Festival Hub at TMAG will have a range of excellent local food and drink options, catering for everyone. Plan to eat dinner at the Hub! Why would you go anywhere else?
Accessibility
There is level access to all public areas of our site and elevators are available for movement between levels. Loan wheelchairs are also available from the Visitor Information desk. For particular accessibility concerns please contact [email protected]
The entrance to TMAG is via Dunn Pl, which includes a carpark. TMAG is down from the corner of Macquarie Street and Campbell Street and the corner of Davey Street and Campbell Street.
There is an info booth to the right of the pathway as you go to enter TMAG. This info booth is staffed by Beaker Street Festival volunteers who have programs and know the layout of the festival. Behind the info booth, in the Welcome Garden to the left of the museum there is a light installation by Duncan Meerding.
As you enter TMAG there is a food truck called Chan Bao on your left selling bao and hot chips. Once you’ve entered through the gates there is a large tent to your left with music and the main bar- at the bar you can get wine, beer, hot cider and a raspberry and peach cocktail.
Straight past the tent you can turn left to go to the Bondstore Basement to see the CoLab exhibition and hear stories about Wardian Cases. You can continue straight there are three steps up onto the veranda which take you to the automatic doors which are the entry to the main museum building. Or turn right to use the ramp up onto the veranda
Once you go up the ramp the Fab Coats and Merch are on your right, your next right are the glass doors to the cafe and straight ahead are the Migrant Resource Centre doing a vegan soup, malaysian arancini and curry puffs. Follow the veranda to the left and turn right after the dinosaur to gain entry into the main museum
One inside the glass automatic doors the front desk is to your left with cloaking and information. Continue straight down the ramp and turn left to get to the lifts and toilets, including accessible. Or turn right to go up two flights of stairs to get to level 1
Level one has another info booth, and the entry to the central gallery.
Central Gallery is straight ahead from the lifts, one in the central gallery the Roving Scientist Bar and Speakers Tables is immediately on your right. The Science Photography Prize is on your left along the silver wall. There is a band stage straight ahead with jazz bands playing all night, and in the centre right hand wall is the stage with Powerpoint Karaoke at 9pm and live dissections during the night.
You leave the Central Gallery the same way you came in and straight ahead in are the stairs up to the Lab- workshops until 8:30 then a theatre performance called Spaceclock1 from 8:30-9pm- and the Speakers Lounge- short scientific talks. You can also access the Lab and the Speakers Lounge via the lift, go to level 2.
On Level 2 there is also a bar selling cans of beer and glasses of wine.