Museums in Australia

Abstract

The collecting of Australian natural history and Indigenous artifacts predates by centuries the introduction of formal museum infrastructure into colonial Australia. Whereas the earliest collections amassed by explorers, missionaries, and the like were shipped off to institutions abroad, significant museums were nonetheless soon inaugurated throughout the continent to act as repositories for the newly formed collections and to stand as emblems of the civilized values of the recently imported settler societies. The Australian Museum in Sydney (1827) was thus followed by the Museum of Victoria (1854), the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (1863), and so on. The rapid evolution of Australian mus..