Exhibition Review: 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum
Museums are powerful spaces for learning about and connecting to the past. In recent years, many museums have uploaded their exhibitions online, making them accessible to anyone in the world. Today, I am sharing a review of an online museum exhibition I visited recently: 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum. This exhibition is a compelling example of how museums are not “neutral” spaces. Rather, they are informed and shaped by past and present museum collecting practices, and past and present socio-cultural, ideological, economic, and political contexts.
“What do you treasure?” the Australian Museum asks, “An object, a person, a memory?”
This sentence welcomes visitors to the museum’s exhibition 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum. Situated in the Australian Museum’s majestic Westpac Long Gallery in Sydney, New South Wales, the permanent exhibition is available for free as both an in-person exhibition, and as an online exhibition. The latter is the subject of this review.
200 Treasures of the Australian Museum is easily accessible through the Australian Museum’s ‘Exhibition virtual tours’ page.[1] The Exhibition Project Manager, Fran Dorey, identified that their aim for this exhibition was to demonstrate “that the gallery is not frozen in the past but has evolved and adapted over 150 years”.[2] They also remarked that “[t]he gallery will pay tribute to the past but embrace the future – enhanced with technology such as video, audio and interactive touch screens.”[3] This embrace of technology is reflected in the online nature of the exhibition. As the exhibition loads, the visitor is treated to an expansive view of the Westpac Long Gallery, which gives the impression that you are visiting the gallery in person. This is achieved by the immersive exhibition technology, which gives a wide view of both the grand gallery and its immense 1890s domed roof. The exhibition is divided into two floors. The visitor can also “walk” through the exhibition by clicking on white rings embedded in both floors of the gallery, which enables easy navigation, but these do sometimes misdirect.
The ground floor of the gallery is dedicated to 100 objects described as “the Australian Museum’s greatest treasures”. The gallery is flanked by large timber and glass display cases, each paired with an orange circle which, when clicked, opens an audio file that discusses the case’s contents. This could be a highly effective aspect of the exhibition. However, two display cases have no audio files and their labels are illegible. Furthermore, reflections in the glass display cases, and the small size of some objects, sometimes make it difficult to view parts of the exhibition. This arguably goes against the exhibition’s aim to celebrate these objects by embracing new technology.
The objects in this part of the exhibition were chosen “not only for their uniqueness, cultural significance, scientific value or beauty but for the captivating stories they tell, when and how they were discovered and their relationships with other items in the museum.”[4] The aim of this exhibition, therefore, is not just to celebrate treasures of Australian origin. This is demonstrated by the wide geographical contexts of the objects, including Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Bali, Hawaii, and Africa. The objects also encompass a diverse range of time periods, from a 120-100 million-year-old opalised Pliosaur to a 3000–8000-year-old bird-shaped pestle from Papua New Guinea, to more recent items, such as a 1911-1914 sledge used by Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson, and a striking Roro Feather Headdress from the Roro people of Central Province, New Guinea.
This Roro headdress, collected during an Australian Museum expedition to the area in 1923, highlights how the exhibition aims to both celebrate and be sensitive towards its objects and their cultural contexts. For example, the audio file attached to the display case discusses this type of headdress’s important role in both past and present Roro ceremonies. The audio also acknowledges that “[e]arly expeditions sometimes exploited Indigenous communities, removing sacred or rare artefacts with little given in exchange”. It then reflects on how “[t]oday, the Australian Museum seeks to maintain its ties with the people of Papua New Guinea through collaborative partnerships.” However, the question of whether the Roro community has consented to the headdress remaining in the Australian Museum, or why this object has not been returned to its community even though, as the audio implies, it may have been collected unethically, is ignored.
The omission of this complex issue of ownership is reflected in more objects in the exhibition. For example, one of the display cases holds a pair of Zulu shields from South Africa, acquired by the Australian Museum in 1884. The audio acknowledges “Africa’s bloody colonial history” and that the shields were collected during the Anglo-Zulu War in the late 1870s. But the reasons why the Australian Museum acquired the shields in the first place, and why the museum still holds them even though they were acquired during a conflict, likely without their owner’s consent, is omitted. This reflects the issue of the many stolen objects currently held in museums worldwide, the ownership of heritage, and the restitution/return of objects acquired in illegal or ambiguous circumstances, including during a conflict like the Anglo-Zulu War.[5] This is therefore a key aspect of the global factors that have shaped this exhibition.
The exhibition also has a significant number of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects. The audio for one of the objects, a breathtaking Morning Star Pole from Elcho Island, remarks that “their true value and meaning are to be found [….] in the central roles they play in the cultures and beliefs of their creators.” This further indicates that the museum aims to celebrate and respect these objects and their cultures. The provenance of some objects is also noted, such as dancing boards made by members of the Papunya Tula Art Movement. However, the issue of whether all these objects were obtained ethically, and whether all their communities have consented to them remaining in the museum, still looms large.
Furthermore, there is no Acknowledgement of Country visible on either floor of the online exhibition, and despite their attempts at sensitivity, the audio descriptions sometimes disrespect Indigenous cultures. For example, when discussing three magnificent Rainforest Shields made by the Kuku Yulanji, the audio discusses the Kuku Yulanji and other Northern Queensland Indigenous groups in the past tense. For example: “Aboriginal people lived within this extraordinary environment for thousands of years. They had extensive knowledge about local plants” (emphasis added). Although the exhibition’s other audio descriptions discuss Indigenous communities in the present tense, to discuss Indigenous communities like the Kuku Yulanji in the past tense arguably disrespects their continual existence on, and deep knowledge of, Country.[6] This also creates a false and damaging narrative because a visitor might listen to the audio and consequently assume that Aboriginal people no longer exist in North Queensland.
The exhibition also includes one of Australia’s first bank notes, printed by the Bank of New South Wales, now known as Westpac.[7] As the name “Westpac Long Gallery” indicates, the exhibition, and the building it is housed in, was heavily sponsored by Westpac. Indeed, “In 2015, Westpac became the Australian Museum’s Principal Partner.” and this partnership “included decade long naming rights” to the gallery.[8] This local factor has shaped the exhibition and raises ethical concerns around museums and other cultural institutions entering into partnerships with corporations like banks, and how much this partnership might affect the content of the museum and/or exhibition, or damage the museum’s credibility.[9] However, the fact that the Australia Museum acknowledges that they receive this funding in both floors of the exhibition is a positive step toward transparency around these corporate partnerships.
The second floor of the exhibition, “Level 1”, is situated on a walkway that overlooks the gallery below and focuses on “100 people who have been identified for the way they helped shape Australia” with the aim to “encourage different ways of thinking about how people shape nations”. Unlike the ground floor, there are no audio files embedded in this part of the exhibition. Instead, the 100 people are listed with their names and photographs/portraits on large, printed panels that line the walls of the walkway. The printed panels are plain in design, and do not include any historical artefacts relating to the individuals either within the panels or adjacent to them. In-person visitors do have the option of using “interactive walls” throughout the exhibition, but no such provisions are made for the online visitor. Although the small text on the printed panels is fairly easy to read, complicated screen manoeuvring is sometimes required to reach the right angle to read the text. Opposite of the printed panels sit glass cases filled with natural history specimens, cultural and archaeological objects, and more recent artefacts. These glass cases are part of the exhibition, but not related to the 100 people.
Each of the 100 people are assigned to one of six themes. The themes are “The Revolutionaries”, “The Curious”, “The Resilient”, “The Underdogs”, “The Innovators”, and “The Spirited”. These include a diverse range of individuals from a multitude of time periods and fields, including medicine, activism, politics, business, sport, and the arts. For example, Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Truganini is listed in “The Resilient” theme, as “a symbol of hope and cultural survival for the Palawa (Tasmanian) Aboriginal people”.
However, some of the individuals chosen, and how they are portrayed, contain some potentially problematic aspects. For example, “The Spirited” section includes “[t]hose who reveal a typical quality, mood, or attitude that is considered Australian”. One of these “Spirited” individuals is Sir Edmund Barton. He is described in the exhibition as Australia’s first prime minister who “introduced many new laws for our fledgling nation, including the Immigration Restriction Bill.” The Immigration Restriction Bill, a foundational bill of the White Australia Policy (c.1901-1970s), essentially aimed to eliminate non-white immigration to Australia, and instituted the infamously corrupt “dictation test”.[10] To portray a deeply discriminatory person whose actions influenced a decades-long exclusionary policy as someone who holds “a typical quality, mood, or attitude that is considered Australian” raises complex questions about whom and what this part of the exhibition is aiming to promote. Is the exhibition promoting Barton’s actions? Or simply including him as someone who, for better or worse, shaped the Australia we know today? Is the exhibition stating that his discriminatory behaviour should be “considered Australian”?
Although Barton undoubtedly shaped Australia through his actions and is thus in line with this part of the exhibition’s aims, the exhibition needs to be clearer about why they are including problematic individuals. This is not to say that the exhibition should exclude all potentially problematic individuals. Rather, these individuals raise important questions about who we commemorate, and why.[11] This gives cultural institutions a valuable opportunity to facilitate nuanced discussions around the actions of individuals like Sir Edmund Barton to both acknowledge their influence on Australia, and the harm they caused, while making it clear that they are not promoting this harmful behaviour.[12] This would also help mitigate emotional harm to visitors who were affected by the White Australia Policy, thereby taking a trauma-informed approach to heritage.[13]
As a whole, both floors of the exhibition are ambitious in their aims, but do not always meet them. For example, by not engaging with visitors in an open and honest dialogue about why some objects were acquired and still held by the museum, this exhibition could be argued as potentially perpetuating an “unsolved and unfinished agenda from colonialism”. [14] This situates the exhibition firmly in the past instead of meeting its aim to “embrace the future”. Additionally, by disrespecting the continuing existence of the creators of some objects, the exhibition arguably fails in its implied aim to respect and celebrate these objects and their cultural contexts. Furthermore, through their ambiguous messaging around problematic individuals, the exhibition could create emotional harm for visitors affected by the actions of these individuals.
The multitude of objects and individuals in the exhibition will appeal to visitors of all ages and interests. The online nature of the exhibition, and its mostly successful technology, also makes it easy to view from anywhere in the world. But whether the exhibition is worth seeing depends on what the visitor is hoping to receive from the experience. If a visitor wants to engage critically and analytically with a museum exhibition, then this exhibition could be a good fit. If a visitor simply wishes to learn from an exhibition, then another exhibition might be more suitable.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] ‘Exhibition virtual tours’, Australian Museum (n.d.), https://australian.museum/exhibition/virtual-exhibition-tours/, accessed 16 October 2025.
[2] Melinda Ham, ‘Facelift for the Future’, Australian Museum (16 August 2017), https://australian.museum/blog/museullaneous/facelift-for-the-future/, accessed 18 October 2025.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] George Okello Abungu, ‘Victims or victors’, in Alice Stevenson, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology (Oxford 2022), pp. 247-267.
[6] ‘Meet the Kuku Yulanji People’, Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre (n.d.), https://www.mossmangorge.com.au/our-community/kuku-yalanji-people, accessed 18 October 2025.
[7] ‘Our History’, Westpac (n.d.), https://www.westpac.com.au/about-westpac/westpac-group/company-overview/our-history/, accessed 18 October 2025.
[8] ‘Westpac: The Westpac Long Gallery’, Australian Museum (n.d.), https://australian.museum/get-involved/join/partners/westpac-long-gallery/, accessed 18 October 2025.
[9] Ryan D. Jacobs, ‘‘Who Could Be Opposed to Partnerships?’: Independence, Integrity and Credibility at Risk in the Entrepreneurial Museum’, Museum International, 76 (2024), pp. 8-19.
[10] ‘Defining Moments: White Australia policy’, National Museum Australia (6 March 2025), https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy, accessed 18 October 2025.
[11] Alex von Tunzelmann, Fallen Idols (London, 2022), pp. 1–20.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Charlotte Feakins, Emma Barrett and Marlee Bower, ‘Trauma-heritage: towards a trauma-informed understanding of heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 30 (2024), pp. 857-871.
[14] Abungu, ‘Victims or victors’, p. 256.