Jay Brown is the principal & managing director at Flying Fish, a leading producer of touring museum and science centre exhibitions. He founded the company in 2013 with a mission to increase sustainability for museums and science centres through touring exhibitions. Over the past decade, the company’s consultation and tour management success has brought a number of exhibitions from Australia to North America for global tours, growing and thriving the company from its home in Melbourne.
Flying Fish says that its mission is “To extend our museum partners’ institutional missions by reaching audiences of millions while operating sustainable programs (and additional revenue stream) through touring exhibitions.”
Popular exhibitions from the company include Apollo: When We Went to the Moon, James Cameron – Challenging the Deep, Towers of Tomorrow with LEGO Bricks and HOCKEY: Faster Than Ever. In 2022, it also partnered with nonprofit ocean exploration organization OceanX to launch of OceanXperience, a unique and immersive touring museum exhibition featuring mixed reality, which aims to raise awareness of the world’s oceans.
One nominator said: “Jay is known by his clients for his advocacy of museums in supporting them to produce travelling exhibitions to tour. He came up with a financial model for museums to co-produce an exhibition with Flying Fish in a way that would pay the co-producing museums back and create a sustainable revenue source for them. As a result, Flying Fish’s portfolio continues to grow and the industry has affordable exhibition selections to choose from, all of which have a team of museum staff to stand behind the content.
“I highly recommend Jay Brown for his contribution to the museum industry – for pushing museums to think differently – for encouraging them to be producers themselves and for showing them that it’s possible and lucrative when the partners are both invested in giving back.”