National Communication Museum to Open Radical Computing Exhibition Featuring Rare Connection Machine Supercomputer

In September 2026, visitors to the National Communication Museum in Melbourne will find a room occupied by a machine from a different era of computing ambition. The museum has announced its new ‘Radical Computing’ exhibition, opening September 19, 2026, guest-curated by Mel Huang Buntine. The centerpiece is a rare Connection Machine CM-2 supercomputer, a room-sized 1980s system with 65,536 processors recently donated to the institution.

The exhibition, as described on the museum’s site, will chart a history from inaccessible mainframes to the home computers that democratized processing power. Alongside the CM-2, the show will include more than 30 vintage computers from the Buntine Computer Collection. The Connection Machine units on display — a CM-2 and a CM-5 — were donated by collector Karl Von Moller and restored with help from original designer Tamiko Thiel, making their public exhibition a notable event for computing history enthusiasts.

The Connection Machine CM-2 represented a radical departure from conventional supercomputing architecture of its time. Instead of relying on a few extremely powerful processors, it used tens of thousands of simpler ones to tackle problems in parallel, an approach that directly influences today’s efforts in large-scale parallel and distributed computing. Its visually striking design, with a dense cube of blinking red processors, made it as much a symbol of computational ambition as a practical tool.

The exhibition’s broader narrative, exploring the shift from institutional computing to personal machines, uses the Connection Machine as a pivotal artifact. It existed at a moment when the idea of computing power was being reimagined — not just as a centralized resource for governments and large corporations, but as something that could be harnessed in novel, massively parallel ways. The CM-2’s physical presence, requiring an entire room, underscores the scale of that infrastructure before miniaturization truly took hold.

Mel Huang Buntine’s curation brings a specific collection perspective to the show. The inclusion of over 30 machines from the Buntine Computer Collection provides a tangible timeline of the technology that eventually entered homes and small businesses, creating a direct contrast with the hulking CM-2. This juxtaposition is the core of the ‘Radical Computing’ premise: what was radical in one decade becomes the foundation for the next, and the exhibition positions the Connection Machine not as a dead end, but as a conceptual bridge.

For the National Communication Museum, the acquisition and display of the CM-2, donated by collector Karl Von Moller, represents a significant expansion of its computing heritage holdings. The museum’s focus on communication technology makes the supercomputer a fitting addition, as these machines were fundamental to advancements in data processing and network modeling that underpin modern digital communication. Its restoration, aided by original designer Tamiko Thiel, ensures the machine is presented not as a static relic but as a carefully conserved piece of engineering history.

The announcement sets the stage for a major cultural installation two years from now. While most historical computing exhibits focus on the lineage that led directly to the devices in our pockets, ‘Radical Computing’ dedicates substantial space to a parallel path — the supercomputing architectures that solved different kinds of problems at a different scale. The Connection Machine’s impending public display offers a rare chance to see one of the most visually iconic and conceptually influential computers of the late 20th century outside of a textbook or a corporate data center.

Sources

• Media Release | NCM announces Radical Computing: A love letter to the personal computer — National Communication Museum
• Radical Computing | Exhibition | National Communication Museum — National Communication Museum
• A giant, 1980s supercomputer is about to take over the National Communication Museum — Beat Magazine