Updated September 2026
Something to photograph after dark...
Museum & Gallery Late Openings
One way to use Oddtoe...
The Museum Late Opening Package
For programming, public engagement, and marketing teams
Use Case: Museum Late Openings
Oddtoe is an experiential design and generative-AI animation studio based in Melbourne, creating projection, installation, and animated work for events, venues, and galleries. This is a use case: how a public museum or gallery uses Oddtoe for a museum late opening, from the first idea to the photographs people post that night. The worked example is one late, with one object in the atrium or the forecourt: projection, or an illuminated inflatable, live from dusk. The same steps apply to the sleepover, the school-holiday character, and the gala.
Come to Oddtoe for a piece designed by an artist who has already put one in a City of Melbourne venue. For Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2019, Oddtoe carved a 2.1-metre baobab and ran live projection over it at Signal, on Northbank. That is the shape of a late opening job: one object, one room full of people who did not come for the art, and a photograph they take anyway. The DJ and the bar can stay; the piece is what people stand in front of.
Let's look at three steps in the process...
Three Drawings from the Sketchbook
Oddtoe handles the first three stages of a late opening piece: what the object is, how it is drawn into the building at scale, and how it hangs, plugs in, and gets past the people who look after the fabric of the building.
Ideation
I do like this stage. What is the one thing in the atrium that a person who has never been to your museum photographs and posts? Projection on the far wall, a lit object hanging in the void, or something in the forecourt they walk past on the way in. The idea, and what it has to do with the exhibition that is on, get worked out here.
Drawn into the Building
The piece gets drawn in the room, at scale, with the balustrades, the doorways and the view from the ticket desk. That drawing is what the exhibitions team and facilities sign off, so it shows where it stands, what it weighs and what is underneath it. Get the drawing right and the size of the thing hits you for the first time.
Power, Rigging & Heritage
Working out what the piece plugs into and what it hangs from. Where the projector sits so nobody walks through the beam, how to find a rigging point in a building where you cannot drill a hole, and how it all comes down before the cleaners arrive. Oddtoe works this through with your facilities team before anything is built. Leave it until the afternoon of the late and you are solving it with the doors about to open.
What the marketing team counts afterwards...
What a Late Does to Your Numbers
One object in the atrium, lit from dusk, and a room full of people who came for the bar and the DJ. Out come the phones.
Afterwards the marketing team has a report to write, and it should be an easy one. Everything a museum late opening is for can be counted: the door, who was new, what got posted, and who joined.
I like the tracking in place before the night. Oddtoe shares a founder with the Datalabs Agency, a data visualisation studio, so a dashboard that shows whether the late worked can be part of the job.
Already doing it
FIVE MUSEUMS THAT OPENED AFTER DARK
Tate changed its opening hours. Dark Mofo put $71.8 million into Tasmania. Every number below came from the evenings themselves, never the whole year.
Across the UK, Culture24 counted £9.6 million in ticket revenue from about 8,000 after-hours events, and projected a further £7.7 million over five years.
Its later study found 50–79% of an after-hours crowd is aged 16–34, against about 25% by day. That crowd is the reason museums open at night.
All five run on the same thing: one object, in one room, that people photograph. That is what Oddtoe designs and builds. Send the date and the room.
Steal one of these
6 IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT LATE, SLEEPOVER OR GALA
Six jobs a programming team has in a year, each with one object at the centre. Roll over a circle and pick the one your museum could pull off.
Want one of these for your museum? Send the date and the room. Most of them start with a drawing of the building.
Programming, public engagement, marketing, and the friends
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Public museums and galleries, libraries, science centres and heritage houses with a ticketed program. The person who rings is usually in programming, public engagement or marketing, and the job already has a date, a room and a budget line.
Programming teams run a calendar: two or three big exhibitions, a late every month or season, school holidays, a sleepover and a gala. Each one needs something to happen in the building.
Marketing needs a photograph that proves it happened, and people through the door who do not usually come.
Public engagement and learning teams want the kids’ character, the sleepover piece and the interpretation, and they want it to hold up in front of a class.
The friends’ organisation and the development team want the gala centrepiece, and they want it still there for the members’ night.
Oddtoe has put a piece in a City of Melbourne venue for a kids’ show, so approvals, rigging and the after-hours install are in the plan from the start. Agencies producing a late for a museum are welcome too: see experiential marketing.
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes a Museum Late
I make my own work as well as client work, and installation art in a public building is the work I want to make more of. A museum late is about the only commission where the room, the lights going down and a crowd who did not come for the art are all handed to you on the same night.
The baobab taught me that. It was built for a comedy show, and the tree had to work for children who had come for the jokes.
A museum also has the thing I care about most in a brief, which is a subject. There is an exhibition on, with objects and a story behind them, so the piece after dark can be about that instead of being about nothing.
The practical upside for the museum is that the person designing the object has a stake in whether it works. I want the atrium to look right at ten o’clock for the same reason your marketing team does.
Rigged, powered, and live from dusk...
Designed to be Installed »
Down before the school groups arrive...
« Built to Come Down Again
Objects, drawings, and the footage afterwards
What Does a Museum Actually Get?
The piece, the drawings it was approved from, the animation if it is projected, and the photos and video from the night. All of it is the museum’s to keep, crate included, and it comes out again for the next late.
• The object — in this example one lit piece for the atrium or the forecourt
• The drawings — plans and elevations facilities can file, and the next venue can work from
• The animation — if the piece is projected, the sequences are yours to run again
• Photos and video from the night, for the press and for the museum’s own channels
People tend to forget about the drawings. Facilities will ask for them the next time the piece goes up, and a partner venue will ask for them before it agrees to take it on tour. They are part of the job, so they arrive finished.
It can be whatever the brief needs: a projection on the atrium wall, an illuminated inflatable in the void, a kinetic piece in the foyer, or a character for the school holidays, animated for the screens and built for the day. They are designed together, so what runs on the wall is the same thing that stands in the room.
Everything in the box
What the Package Covers
Ideation
We work out what the night needs to look like before we work out what to build. Bring the date, the exhibition, and a plan of the room.
Visualisation
The piece drawn in your atrium or forecourt at the size it will be, with people for scale. Exhibitions and facilities sign off on a picture of the thing in the building.
Feasibility
Weight, rigging points, power, sightlines and what the heritage listing allows. Install after the last school group, and the date, which nobody can move.
Fabrication
Designed in Melbourne, built by the right maker for the piece, here or near you. Finished to photograph under low light, and made to come down by morning and go back up for the next one.
Project Management
I run the job myself: visual progress reports, a plan against your date, and a run sheet for the afternoon worked out with your facilities and front-of-house teams.
Six
ideas to steal
One
object, one photograph
6–8
weeks, brief to night
Full
drawings and artwork
Dusk
to close, on the night
Years
of reuse
A precedent, in a City of Melbourne venue
Why an Installation Artist Designs This
A late opening piece has to work three ways at once: as an installation in a room with a heritage listing, as a projection or a lit object that photographs after dark, and as something the museum can put up again. All three are the studio’s own ground. See installation art and projection art.
Oddtoe has done it once already in a public venue. For Babbling with Baobabs, a kids’ show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2019, Oddtoe carved a 2.1-metre baobab for Signal, the City of Melbourne’s arts space, and ran live projection over it through the show.
That job had what a late has: a venue with its own rules, projection lined up in daylight and run in the dark, and an audience who had come for something else. Children and their parents, there for the jokes, with a tree in the room that had to hold its own.
For an inflatable in the void or a character for the school holidays, the design is done here and a specialist maker builds from the drawings. There is no delivered museum inflatable to show you yet, so what you get is the process, drawn out in full before you commit to it.
Where the late budget actually goes
A DJ, a Light Show, or Something Built?
A late opening budget usually has one line for the thing that makes the night different. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| A DJ and a bar | A hired light show | A commissioned piece | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | A fee each late, spent again next time | A hire fee and a crew each night | One build, spread over several nights |
| What people photograph | Each other | The wall, if it is on when they look up | The object, with the building behind it |
| Who runs it on the night | The bar staff and the DJ | A technician on a headset | Installed in the afternoon; one person on call |
| Heritage and power | Not usually a problem | Sorted on the day by the hire crew | Drawn and approved with facilities before the build |
| What you own afterwards | Nothing | Nothing | The piece, the drawings and the footage |
Questions about
Museum late openings?
Interested in seeing more…
built work?
A 2.1-metre carved baobab, lit and projection-mapped, built for Oddtoe's children's show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
A church renovation with a sense of humor.
Sculpture design case study of Oddtoe's limited edition, "Roman General with Pinkeye".
Tell me the date and the room.
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