2 June 2011

Landmarks Gallery at the National Museum

| johnboy
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digger shovel

The NMA has announced the opening of their new gallery: Landmarks: People and Places across Australia.

Bringing together more than 1500 objects, Landmarks explores Australian history since European settlement.

“Every place in Australia has its share of stories. Landmarks takes 34 places and localities and draws out their multiple meanings over generations. There are Indigenous stories, settlement sagas, tales of triumph and failure, of cities and the bush,” said Andrew Sayers, Director of the National Museum of Australia.

A 15.2 tonne rock shovel bucket used in mining iron ore at Mount Tom Price, Western Australia, donated to the National Museum by Rio Tinto in 2010, is one of many striking large objects conveying an important Australian story.

Tiny treasures such as four small pieces of gold, wrapped in a crumpled note expressing ‘many happy returns’ from a digger in the goldfields of the Lachlan Valley, New South Wales evoke the dreams of wealth pursued, within and without the law.

All that plus Phar Lap’s heart and a Holden Prototype No 1.

Image Credits:

— Mining equipment, rock shovel bucket from a Terex O&K mining excavator RH-120E, Photo: Jason McCarthy, National Museum of Australia

— Kenya station windmill, Courtesy: Ben Lynes

windmill

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Holden Caulfield10:17 am 03 Jun 11

Haha, what a bunch of bloody sooks. Sure the NMA may not be perfect and, at times, suffered from its own internal issues, but it’s not that bad!

Hooray, another history of Australia via bits found at the back of the shed.

so the national museum for the promotion of white guilt is going to show something that might be interesting???

i might (probably not) go and have a look

BimboGeek said :

You mean just for a change they’re going to start displaying actual artifacts like a real museum? Surely this is some kind of joke!

+1

Interesting that the de-Indigenousizing (that’ll do) of the museum is continuing under Labor. During the Howard years the response to attempts to depoliticise and de-black-armband the museum were met with excoriation!

You mean just for a change they’re going to start displaying actual artifacts like a real museum? Surely this is some kind of joke!

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