Nearly 60 years ago a young Scottish immigrant, Isobel Saxelby, was given a toy koala, a symbol of a new life and her new home in Australia. It remained a treasured possession until ‘Kookie’, as Isobel called it, found a new home in the museum.
International Museum Day 2017 is based around the theme ‘Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums.’ Like all museums, sometimes at MoAD we need to talk about difficult subjects, and we use the power of the items in our collection to help us do that.
Horses were a vital part of the Parliament House opening ceremonies. What did they make of all the fuss? Three photographs of Bill, the horse ridden in Canberra by the Duke of York, provide a fresh insight into the day’s events.
Hilda Abbott was a distinguished guest whose recollections reveal that behind the public performance, VIPs are only people after all.
It took determination, ingenuity and a small piece of string to get Parliament House finished in time for its grand opening in 1927.
An object now in display in our Designing Democracy gallery documents one man’s life-or-death decision on Australia’s pastoral frontier.
In 2015 Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, resigned as party leader and ended her decades-long career in formal politics. As something of a self-confessed hoarder, she distributed some of her material, relics from her long and successful career, to museums and libraries. MoAD has been lucky to receive a large collection of her items, and we’ve found that it reveals some fascinating insights into her life and work.
In 1965 Queen Elizabeth gave Sir Robert Menzies a gift so special that he had to contemplate burying it on a beach. What was it?
A hundred years ago, Billy Hughes put the question of overseas conscription to the Australian people, in the hopes of gaining support for his plan to boost troop numbers in Europe. If you had been a voter in 1916, what would your answer be? Here are five objects from the Museum’s collection to help you make up your mind the way they helped Australian voters a century ago.
Robert Menzies was prime minister for almost two decades in total, but he was also a man of many interests and talents. One of his interests was in film, and in 1954 he was presented with a gift that let him indulge that passion. The Menzies projector is a new acquisition into the MOAD collection that sheds light onto Menzies’ life outside politics.
On this day 108 years ago, a prime minister took a stand and invited some warships to visit Australia. Did he realise at the time what a monumental impact he would have on Australia’s place in the world?
With the election over, people are now analysing the very close result. The government’s very small majority is not unusual in Australian history, and plenty of elections have come down to the wire and shown a very close result. Our researcher Campbell has examined six of them.
To celebrate NAIDOC week, Libby has written a post about Indigenous artist Lin Onus and his series of works, The Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray.
As the election campaign wraps up, our researcher Campbell has unearthed some ephemeral items from our collection; things designed to be thrown away that have been preserved to tell us stories about past elections in Australia.
Arthur Calwell was shot fifty years ago today. He survived, but the story of his brush with death doesn’t end outside Mosman Town Hall; it is a story of a Catholic faith that never wavered even when looking death in the face.
Last week we welcomed early learners and their parents to PLAY UP for a special National Reconciliation Week event introducing museum items and activities to this small but mighty audience.
Every election you see people out in force wearing t-shirts to reflect their political colours and support their candidate of choice. Our researcher Campbell shows off some of the t-shirts in the museum collection and why they matter to our democracy.
A post about the life and work of Neville Bonner and how the museum remembers his contribution.
This election season, the Museum will be showing examples from its collection of how elections have been fought in Australian history. This week, our researcher Campbell examines ten badges that show aspects of historical election campaigns and what they mean for democracy.
Fifty years ago, one of the most fundamental aspects of Australians’ lives underwent a radical transition.
