“What is this?! A center for ants?!”
“The center has to be at least THREE times this size!”

In 2001, Ben Stiller delivered probably the most iconic lines ever said about an architectural model in the hit-comedy “Zoolander.” This joke lands superbly, because how can Zoolander not realize that the model of “The Centre for Children Who Can’t Read Good” is just a model?

And yet, as I walk around “Marco: Micro” at Sydney University’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, I realize that I know less about models than I thought. Who makes them? What’s the purpose of big, small or even 1:1 versions of things? What use are physical models in an age of computer generation? Perhaps Zoolander wasn’t so silly after all…

I hadn’t considered that botanists used large-scale models to study the anatomy of tiny things and was tickled by a giant garden pea in a pod; nor that engineers study the geometry of motion through small models called ‘kinematics’; nor that in the 19th century, 1:1 educational models of mushrooms were made to help identify poisonous fungi. As the caption playfully reminds us, there was “Not mush-room for error.”

Throughout the show, models are displayed from science, medicine, engineering, art and architecture—fields that often feel academic or exclusionary. Their display breaks down these barriers, inviting engagement through tactile, intriguing and often fun exhibits. It’s nice to see an exhibition not taking itself too seriously while being informative.

The exhibition’s design, perhaps, could have benefited from leaning into this sense of fun, using tricks of scale or different text sizes more dramatically, for instance. However, the reuse of the previous exhibition’s build makes sense in an age of environmental crisis. We shouldn’t be designing new sets for every show. In this case, the models more than held their own, not needing a design to assist with the heavy lifting of engagement.

“How can you expect to teach children to learn how to read, if they can’t even fit inside the building?!”, Zoolander asks. How can the public understand the value models if we rarely get to see them? This exhibition delightfully remedies this oversight. 

lc.