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MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES
SYDNEY'S BEST: MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES
Sydney is well endowed with museums and galleries, and, following the current appreciation of social history, much emphasis is placed on the life-styles of past and present Sydneysiders. Small museums are also a feature of the Sydney scene, with a number of historic houses recalling the colonial days. Most of the major collections are housed in architecturally significant buildings - the Classical facade of the Art Gallery of NSW makes it a city landmark, while the Museum of Contemporary Art has given new life to a 1950's Art Deco-style building at Circular Quay.
MUSEUM OF SYDNEY
The edge of the Trees is an interactive installation by the entrance.
JUSTICE AND POLICE MUSEUM
This museum illustrates Sydney's early legal and criminal history. It includes some macabre relics of notorious crimes.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
The excellent Aboriginal Art section of this museum includes Mud Crabs by Tony Dhanyula Nyoka.
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
The museum is the home port for HMB Endeavour, a replica of the vessel that chartered Australia's east coast in 1770, with Captain Cook in command.
POWERHOUSE MUSEUM
This museum, set in a former power station, uses both traditional and interactive displays to explore Australian innovations in science and technology.
ELIZABETH BAY HOUSE
The diningroom is elegantly furnished to the 1840's period, when the Conlonial Secretary Alexander Macleay briefly lived in the house that ultimately caused his bankruptcy.
AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM
At Australia's largest natural history museum, dinosaurs such as this large mammal or "megafauna" Diprotodon skeleton are a major attraction.
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
The Australian collection includes colonial watercolours which, to avoid deterioration, are only shown for a few weeks each year. Charles Meere's Australian Beach Pattern (1940) is among more recent works.
HYDE PARK BARRACKS MUSEUM
Originally built by convicts for their own incarceration, these barracks were later home to poor female immigrants. Exhibits recall the daily life of these occupants.
SYDNEY JEWISH MUSEUM
The history of the city's Jewish community is documented here. Included is a reconstruction of George Street in 1848, a major location for Jewish businesses.
EXPLORING SYDNEY'S MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES
Sydney boasts a rich variety of museums and galleries that reflects the cultural, artistic and historical heritage of this, the country's oldest city - and of Australia as a whole. The growth of such institutions in recent years parallels a corresponding growth in public interest in all things cultural, a phenomenon that seems at odds with Sydney's predominantly hedonistic image. In fact, Sydney has a long-standing cultural tradition, one that has not always been widely recognized. It may even surprise some people that museums and galleries attract more people than do high-profile football matches.
VISUAL ARTS
The traditionally conservative curatorial policy of the Art Gallery of NSW has been abandoned in recent times, and it now has one of the finest existing collections of modern Australian and Aboriginal Art. Thanks to its former policy, however, it also possesses an outstanding collection of late 19th and 20th-century English and Australian works. Thematic temporary exhibitions are also a regular feature.
The far newer Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is best known for blockbuster exhibitions. Many of these take advantage of its prime harbour site to create a fine sense of spectacle. It also has a considerable permanent collection, and hosts mini film festivals, literary readings and talks.
The Brett Whiteley Studio opened even more recently. Housed in the studio of the late artist, it commemorates the life and works of perhaps the most celebrated and controversial Sydney painter of the late 20th-century.
The substantial collection of Australian painting and sculpture held by the SH Ervin Gallery is supplemented by frequent thematic and other specialized exhibitions.
TECHNOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY
The undisputed leader in this area is the Powerhouse, with traditional and interactive displays covering fields as diverse as space travel, silent films and solar energy. The National Maritime Museum has the world's fastest boat, Spirit of Australia, as part of its indoor/outdoor display. Also part of their historic fleet are the destroyer HMAS Vampire, the Onslow (a submarine), and the James Craig (1874), a three-masted baroque.
The Australian Museum, in contrast, emphasizes natural history with its displays of the exotic and extinct: from birds, insects and rock samples to giant Australian megafauna.
ABORIGINAL CULTURE
With more than 200 works, both traditional and contemporary, on display, the Art Gallery of NSW's Yiribana Gallery has the best and most comprehensive collection of Aboriginal Art in the country. The Australian Museum has displays ranging from the prehistoric era to the start of European settlement. In its community access space, it also presents performances that celebrate Aboriginal culture and traditions.
The First Australians exhibit at the Australian National Maritime Museum includes audio and video material, with traditional tools made by Aboriginal communities.
The Museum of Sydney uses images, artifacts and oral histories to evoke the life of the Eora, the indigenous people of the Sydney region, up to the years of the first contact with the European colonists.
COLONIAL HISTORY
The superb interior of Elizabeth Bay House has been furnished to show early colonial life at its most elegant, but while at first the house may appear to celebrate a success story, the enormous cost of its construction brought bankruptcy to its owner. Also built in grand style. Vaucluse House celebrates the life and times of WC Wentworth, explorer and politician.
Experiment Farm Cottage, Hambledon Collage and Elizabeth Farm in and around Parramatta are testament to the crucial role of agriculture in the survival of a colony that was brought to the brink of starvation. The former has been restored as a gentleman's cottage of the mid-19yh-century, while the latter two have been furnished to the period of 1820 - 1850. Parramatta's Old Government House was once the vice-regal "inland" residence when Parramatta had more people than Sydney. The colonial furniture on display predates 1855.
The Museum of Sydney is built on the site of the first Government House, close to Sydney Cove. On display are recently unearthed relics of that building, some of which are visible under windows at the entrance to the museum.
Susannah Place provides an insight into working-class life in the 19th-century. Cadman's Cottage, also in The Rocks, is a simple stone dwelling dating from 1816 and the city's oldest extant building. Adjacent is the Sailor's Home, built in 1864 as lodgings for visiting sailors. It now houses permanent exhibitions detailing the area's architectural, archaeological and social heritage. The important role of gold in the history of Australia and how it determined patterns of migration and expansion are shown at the Powerhouse Museum.
Hyde Park Barracks Museum evokes the often brutal lives and times of the convicts who were housed there in the early 19th-century, while not neglecting its other place in history as an immigration depot.
SPECIALIST MUSEUMS
Author May Gibbs' home on the harbour, Nutcote, has been refurbished in the style of the 1930's. The Justice and Police Museum examines a far less comfortable history, investigating Australian crime and punishment, while the Westpac Museum traces local financial transactions from first coins through to credit cards. Experiences of Jewish migrants to Australia and the story of the Holocaust are examined at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
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