Current exhibitions

Temporary Exhibitions

Makarr-garma: Aboriginal Collections from a Yolŋu Perspective

Everything is telling us who we are J. Gumbula

The Makarr-garma is a ceremony of formal invitation and introduction to Yolŋu land and culture. Guest curator, Dr Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula uses this concept as a way of welcoming us to share in his understanding of the Yolŋu world. Charting the course of a day, the exhibition will take us on a journey across Indigenous Arnhem Land through artworks, objects, natural history specimens, historical and contemporary photographs, sound and light. Gain insights into Yolŋu artistic expression and aspects of everyday life and learn about traditional intellectual frameworks and the resonance of cultural heritage collections within contemporary community life.

Macleay Museum
29 November 2009 – 15 May 2010

Image - Painting by Tom Djäwa of the Daygurrgurr Gupapuyŋu Clan, 1946. Wurrpan (Emu) painting representing the travels and activities of Wurrpan and the region around Lake Evella, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Djäwa is the father of Dr. Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula. Photo: © D. Liddle 2002. Macleay Museum (ETP.2005)

Outlines - Koori Artefacts from the Macleay Museum

Sydney is home to one of the largest outdoor rock art sites in Australia, and the largest population of Aboriginal people anywhere. Across Aboriginal Australia is a great diversity of art and belief practices. This exhibition brings together painting tools, ochres, shields, spears and clubs that all have their provenance in Aboriginal language regions of New South Wales, such as the Bundjulung, Wiradjuri and Dharug. The exhibition also includes stone tool artefacts from the Penrith lakes area thought to be around 15,000 years old.

From the deep past to today the exhibition highlights the continuing artistic traditions of Aboriginal people of New South Wales. This exhibition aims to highlight the largely untold story that these objects can tell us about the regional local knowledge’s of New South Wales and their traditional custodians.

Macleay Museum
26 October 2009 - 30 June 2010

Image - Pigment, Warialda, North West NSW, Ironstone with yellow ochre core. Macleay Museum (ET.86.36.9c)

WS Macleay and the natural history circle

William Sharp Macleay’s natural history opus Horae Entomologicae (1819-1821) sought God’s order in nature through a system of organisation based on the affinities and analogies between organisms. This quinarian system, as it was known, was read and considered by London’s young radical naturalists in the 1820s and 1830s, amongst them the promising scholar Charles Darwin.

Macleay Museum
12 February-December 2009

Image - ‘five great circular groups in the animal kingdom’ - W.S Macleay, Horae Entomologicae: or Essays on the Annulose Animals vol 1 part II (London, 1821) page 318

Permanent Exhibition

Macleay Reworked

This exhibition encapsulates the early purpose of museums - to exhibit the wonders of the world and its peoples. Housed in historic cedar cabinets within the Victorian surrounds of the Macleay Building, this exhibition is a unique opportunity to peak at the extraordinary diversity of the Macleay collections, from insects collected in the 1770s to medical instruments from Papua New Guinea and the University's first moves into computerisation.

Macleay Museum
Ongoing


Image - Photograph of Larus pacificus Latham, 1802, Pacific Gull, collected by George Masters, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney. Macleay Museum (NHB.4615)
© Robyn Stacey 2007
c-type photograph
Untitled
University Art Collection UA2007.13.