Inside the Collection

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Segment of the original transatlantic cable.

The first Atlantic submarine telegraph cable

May 13, 2009

Matthew Connell
If you’re reading this then you are more than likely sitting at your computer using the internet, or if you’re one of the ‘cool kids’, and technologically savvy, then you may be reading it from your iphone on the bus.
Portrait of curator Damian McDonald

Meet the curator- Damian McDonald

May 6, 2009

Damian McDonald

I’m obsessed with guitars and rock music; however, my path to curator has been more one of Museum knowledge rather than specialist of a particular collection area.

Grass 7D Polygraph machine 2008/184/1. Collection, Powerhouse Museum

Sweat, Lies and Heart-rates

May 6, 2009

Damian McDonald
One of the coolest objects I have acquired for the Health and Medicine collection is the Grass 7D polygraph machine. A common deus ex machina devise for Hollywood script writers – Polygraph machines, or ‘lie detectors’ are one of those objects that are so embedded in the public consciousness by popular culture that to see an actual example ignites curiosity.
Earoscope

Mystery Object – The ‘Earoscope’

April 29, 2009

Erika Taylor
The curatorial team here at the Museum are the keepers to an immense amount of knowledge, covering a wide variety of special areas. If you have a question, chances are someone here can write you a novel on the subject.
Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Meet the curator – Margaret Simpson

April 22, 2009

Margaret Simpson

My specialty area is the transport collection – I’ve researched everything from a steam car to a tram hearse, luxurious railway carriages to a shearer’s bicycle.

Mawson’s sledge.

Mawson’s Antarctic Sledge

April 22, 2009

Margaret Simpson
Several of my most favourite objects at the Powerhouse Museum are the five sledges used on Mawson’s and Scott’s Antarctic expeditions in the early 20th century. Hardly anyone knows we’ve got them.
Photography by Anne-Marie Van de Ven © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

George Gittoes

April 15, 2009

Anne-Marie Van de Ven
Recently I was invited to visit the studio of Australian artist and filmmaker, George Gittoes to inspect his collection of Yellow House Puppet Theatre puppets paintings, ceramics and etchings. Today Gittoes is an internationally renowned filmmaker, but in the Sixties, he was a co-founder of the Yellow House, one of the most colourful contributions to the hippy/psychedelic era in Australia during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Photography by Sarah Rhodes ⓒ Powerhouse Museum. All rights reserved.

Meet the curator – Paul Donnelly

April 8, 2009

Paul Donnelly
Name Paul Donnelly What is your specialty area? Curators ‘specialities’ seem to grow by the year (!) but my background research is the Bronze-Age archaeology of Jordan and Syria, and I look after numismatics, antiquities, ceramics of Europe and the Mediterranean region (before 1700), and Australian ceramics.
Collection, Powerhouse Museum

Beugelfauteuil – Gerrit Rietveld

April 8, 2009

Paul Donnelly
Today it is hard to imagine that the now-ubiquitous tubular-steel style of furniture was once at the fore-front of modern design. In the mid 1920s tubular steel furniture had developed from purely utilitarian use in hospitals and transport to the domestic environment.
Photography by Sarah Rhodes, © all rights reserved

Meet the curator – Erika Dicker

April 2, 2009

Erika Taylor

I like to think I’m a ‘jack of all trades’ but I know quite a lot about the history of the Australian merino, early plastics technology, scientific instruments, health and medical devices.

Collection, Powerhouse Museum

The Prawn Bike

March 31, 2009

Erika Taylor
This bike-riding prawn is one of my favourite things in the Museum’s collection. I both love it, and am deeply suspicious of it. The costume and bike were used in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony and are part of a large number of Olympic costumes we have in our collection.