Current exhibitions in the Macleay Museum

True to Form: models made for science

Wax model from the series Development of a beetle, Hydrophilus piceus, model 11. Maker: Ziegler Studio, c1890s

Open from 25 March - 9 August 2013

Models are vital classroom tools. This exhibition draws on the outstanding 19th century models acquired for teaching in the new faculties of science and medicine established at the University of Sydney in the early 1880s. The use of models at that time coincided with the golden age of biology and the rise of science in university education internationally as specialist disciplines developed.

True to form delves into the educational role of the models and their place in the history of scientific practice and the remarkable artisanship of their manufacture. Among the exhibits are series of Ziegler wax embryology models, an Auzoux papier-mâché male clastic model, plaster anatomical models, wooden crystallography models and early plaster models of prehistoric animals.

Outlines: Koori Artefacts from the Macleay Museum

Image - Ironstone with yellow ochre core, Warialda. ET.86.36.9c

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
Until mid 2012

Permanent Exhibition: Macleay Reworked

Image - Larus pacificus Latham, 1802, Pacific Gull, collected by George Masters, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney. NHB.4615

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.