Melbourne’s art scene heats up winter

May 17, 2022

Melbourne is hailed by many as Australia’s cultural capital. Melburnians and visitors alike take to its many festivals in their hundreds of thousands to absorb sights, sounds and ideas inspired by artists from Australia and around the world. The city continues to burn hot this winter with a stellar line up of cultural festivals and events on the calendar for you to leverage for an unforgettable incentive experience for your colleagues or delegates.

The inaugural RISING Festival has been three years in the making, built by and for Melbourne. RISING invites you to get lost, go deep and shake loose. Ambitious in scale and impact, RISING will electrify the city from 1—12 June 2022. From a program of free and ticketed events, interlocking circles of experience and connection will reverberate through the city’s laneways, venues and public spaces. Immerse your team in Melbourne’s cultural core in this surge of art, music, performance and ceremony in the heart of the city.

As host of the annual blockbuster Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) will showcase The Picasso Century from 10 June 2022. The world-premiere Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, The Picasso Century, charts the extraordinary career of Pablo Picasso in dialogue with the many artists, poets and intellectuals with whom he intercepted and interacted throughout the 20th century.

Art lovers are in for a treat with this collection of over 70 works by Picasso alongside over 100 works by more than 60 of his contemporaries, drawn from French national collections, as well as the NGV Collection. Exclusively developed for the NGV by the Centre Pompidou and the Musée national Picasso-Paris, it’s an exhibition not to be missed.

For a team looking for inspiration, look no further than Light: Works from Tate’s Collection (16 June – 13 November 2022) – a major exhibition curated by Tate (UK) and presented by Visit Victoria that will open at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Part of the 2022 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, this Australian-exclusive exhibition featuring 70+ works harnessing the phenomenon of light and spanning 200 years of art history, will be accompanied by an extensive events program. Featuring Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ari Wegner (Power of the Dog, Lady Macbeth) and multi-award-winning filmmaker Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah, Sweet Country) fantastical magic lantern presentations, late-night exhibition access, a boundary-pushing performance by Liquid Architecture, plus tours, workshops and more for your team to experience. Not to be missed pieces include ground-breaking works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (including his epic painting The Deluge exhibited for the first time in Australia), Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Joeseph Albers.

Melbourne’s busy arts and cultural events calendar are sure to excite delegates during their visit. Contact MCB to help you organise group ticketing to one of these incredible events across Melbourne.