MAGNT’s Cyclone Tracy exhibit opens for selfie day before facelift

The Museum and Art Gallery of the NT is giving its Cyclone Tracy exhibit a revamp ahead of this year’s 50th anniversary. Here’s how to get a unique experience with some of the outgoing displays.

Caddie Brain (Cyclone Tracy Exhibition Project Manager), Kellie Josig (Exhibitions Manager) and Nicole Ogilvie (Marketing and Communications Manager) dressed in their 70s-themed outfits ahead of MAGNT Selfie Day. Picture: Georgina Campbell

The Northern Territory’s museum has planned a major facelift for its Cyclone Tracy exhibit so the well-loved display can “tell some more stories”.

The Museum and Art Gallery of the NT’s curator of Territory history, Jared Archibald, said a lot of the displays visitors “know and love” would stay, but the gallery was 30 years old and needed to be refreshed.

Curator of Territory History Jared Archibald at the Cyclone Tracy exhibition at MAGNT.

By way of example, Mr Archibald said the sound booth and 1960s-themed house diorama would stay, but the other houses would be replaced with more imagery to better tell Darwin’s history.

“We’re going to have two walls which are going to be basically full of imagery,” he said.

“We’re going to have not very much text – we don’t want to do lots of writing that people have to plough through and read.

“(Instead), they have a look at an image you go, ‘okay, that tells that story about the army clean-up, the Navy clean-up, what was happening in the suburbs, what’s happening in town, all those sorts of things.”

Aside from minor changes here and there, the last big upgrade to the 30-year-old exhibit was around the 40th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy.

Georgina Campbell, Caddie Brain, Kellie Josig, and Nicole Ogilvie dressed in their 70s-themed outfits ahead of MAGNT Selfie Day.

But before the museum goes out with the old and in with the new, Territorians will have their chance to snap a retro selfie with some of the retiring exhibits.

The museum's “selfie day” will take place from 10am-4pm September 1.

The exhibit will reopen on December 7.