National Museum of Victoria (1858 - 1983)

Summary

The National Museum of Victoria traces its origins to 1854 when the Government's natural collections were brought together as the Museum of Natural History. These collections were transferred to the University of Melbourne in 1856 by the Professor of Natural Sciences, Frederick McCoy. The official starting date of the National Museum of Victoria was 1858, when McCoy was appointed Director. In 1899 the Museum moved to premises in Russell St, Melbourne, where it remained for the next 100 years. Material held by the Museum included the Government's collections of fauna, geology and anthropology. These collections were assembled through the work of Museum staff and the many "amateur" naturalists whose specimens were added to the Museum's holdings by donation or purchase. In 1983 the Museum amalgamated with the Science Museum of Victoria to become the Museum of Victoria. The Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria were published between 1906 and 1983.

Details

Directors of the Museum were:
Frederick McCoy (1858 - 1899)
W. Baldwin Spencer (1899 - 1928)
James Kershaw (1928 - 1931)
Daniel Mahony (1931 - 1944)
Richard Pescott (1944 - 1957)
Charles Brazenor (1957 - 1962)
John McNally (1962 - 1978)
Thomas Darragh (Acting Director 1978 - 1979)
Barry Wilson (1979 - 1983)

Related entries

Timeline

 1854 - 1858 Museum of Natural History
       1858 - 1983 National Museum of Victoria
             1983 - 1998 Museum of Victoria
                   1998 - Museum Victoria

Published resources

Books

• Fennessy, Kathleen M., A People Learning: Colonial Victorians and their Public Museums (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007), 334 pp. Details
• Kenyon, A. S. and Mahony, D. J., Stone implements of the Australian Aborigines: guide to the classified collection in the Australian Room, National Museum, Public Library Buildings, Melbourne, arranged for the Australian meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Melbourne: Arnall & Jackson, 1914), 15 pp. Details
• McCoy, Frederick, On the formation of museums in Victoria (Melbourne: Goodhugh & Hough, 1857), 20 pp. Details
• Pescott, R. T. M., Collections of a century: the history of the first hundred years of the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne (Melbourne: National Museum of Victoria, 1954), 186 pp. Details
• Pescott, R. T. M., The memoirs of a "naturalist": a story of the goings and comings of one Richard Thomas Martin Pescott in Australia and elsewhere, by himself [unpublished.] ([Melbourne]: 1984), unpaged pp. Details
• Rasmussen, Carolyn et al., A Museum for the people: a History of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions, 1854-2000 (Carlton North, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2001), 420 pp. Details
• Spencer, W. B., Guide to the Australian ethnological collection exhibited in the National Museum of Victoria (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1901), 88 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Allen, Lindy, 'The Donald Thomson Collection' in A Museum for the people: a History of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions, 1854-2000, Rasmussen, Carolyn, ed. (Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2001), pp. 282-4. Details
• Allen, Lindy, 'Tons and Tons of Valuable Material: the Donald Thomson Collection' in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Peterson, Nicolas, Allen, Lindy and Hamby, Louise, eds (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008), pp. 387-412. Details
• Birch, Bill, 'E.. J. Dunn and his rock and mineral collection' in A Museum for the people: a History of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions, 1854-2000, Rasmussen. Carolyn, ed. (Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2001), pp. 138-40. Details
• Goad, Philip, 'Stolen stones and bare-faced brick' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne - Volume 1: The Truth, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 50-66. https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Knapman, Gareth, 'Curiosities or Science in the National Museum of Victoria: Procurement Networks and the Purpose of a Museum' in Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience, Longair, Sarah and McAleer, John, eds (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 83-103. Details
• Longmore, N.W., 'Growth and Life Stages of Ornithology in Museum Victoria' in Contributions to Contributions to the History of Australasian Ornithology, volume 2, Davis, William E., Recher, Harry F. and Boles, Walter E., eds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 2012), pp. 89-139. Details
• Mulvaney, John, '"Annexing All I Can Lay Hands On": Baldwin Spencer as Ethnographic Collector' in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Peterson, Nicolas, Allen, Lindy and Hamby, Louise, eds (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008), pp. 141-59. Details

Journal Articles

• Beasley, W., 'Growth of the mineral, rock, meteorite and tektite collection', Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria, 31 (1971), 1-16, https://doi.org/10.24199/j.mmv.1970.31.0. Details
• Birch, W. D.; and Henry, D. A., 'The geology collections of Museum Victoria, Melbourne', Australian Journal of Mineralogy, 6 (2) (2000), 83-91. Details
• Birch, William D., 'The Ellerslie meteorite: decription and correction to its historical find site', Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 154 (1) (2021), 12-23. Details
• Black, J. Hope, 'The Kershaw Dynasty', The Victorian naturalist, 122 (2005), 351-7. Details
• Carey, Jane, 'Hope Black, née Macpherson (1919- ): First Female Curator at the Musuem of Victoria', Australasian Science, 21 (5) (2000), 46. Details
• Cockburn, Sylvia, 'Seeking a lost collection at Museums Victoria: George Thomas Rice's "Museum of Island Curios"', Journal of Pacific History, 58 (1) (2023), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2022.2060197. Details
• Darragh, Thomas A., 'Brief history of the palaeontological collection in the Museum of Victoria', The Fossil Collector Bulletin, 40 (1993), 7-12. Details
• Goodman, David, 'Fear of circuses: founding the National Museum of Victoria', Continuum: journal of media and cultural studies, 3 (1) (1990), 18-34. Details
• James, Rodney, 'The battle for Spencer barks from Australia to the U.S.A., 1963-68', La Trobe journal, 93/4 (2014), 181-95. Details
• Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, 'Australian Museums of Natural History: Public Priorities and Scientific Initiatives in the 19th Century', Historical Records of Australian Science, 5 (4) (1983), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9830540001. Details
• McNally, J., 'The role of the National Museum in conservation', Victoria’s resources, 8 (1966), 2. Details
• Rasmussen, Carolyn, 'Professor Frederick McCoy and the National Museum of Victoria, 1856-1899', The Victorian naturalist, 117 (5) (2001), 230-239. Details
• Rasmussen, Carolyn, 'How Can a Museum Collect Dead Things and Remain Alive? Reflections on the History of Museum Victoria', Circa: the Journal of Professional Historians, 2102 (3) (2012), 63-73. Details
• Turnbull, Paul, 'Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the imagining of human evolutionary history', Museum & society, 13 (1) (2015), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v13i1.318. Details
• Wilkinson, Ian R, 'The Battle for the Museum: Frederick McCoy and the Establishment of the National Museum of Victoria at the University of Melbourne', Historical Records of Australian Science, 11 (1) (1996), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9961110001. Details

Resources

• Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-488974. Details

Theses

• Aitken, Richard, 'The Mining Collection of the National Museum of Victoria, 1856-1871', MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1990. Details
• Cohn, Helen M., 'Some Foundations of Science in Victoria in the Decade After Separation', MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1990. Details
• Kesik, Catherine Louise, 'Moving into the 20th century: from the National Museum of Victoria to the Melbourne Museum: a study of cultural revolution', MA thesis, Monash University, 1998. Details

See also

• Bowler, Jim, 'Unlikely encounters: Geology and archaeology' in Dhoombak goobgoowana: a history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne - Volume 1: The Truth, Ross L. Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton, eds (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2024), pp. 107-124, https://www.mup.com.au/books/dhoombak-goobgoowana-paperback-softback. Details
• Clode, Danielle, 'The elusive Leadbeater' in A Museum for the people: a history of Museum Victoria and its predecessors 1854 - 2000, Rasmussen, Carolyn, ed. (Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2001), pp. 253-5. Details
• Kean, John, The Art of Science: Remarkable Natural History Illustrations from Museum Victoria (Melbourne: Museum Victoria, 2013), 177 pp. Details
• Pybus, Cassandra, A very secret trade: the dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2024), 318 pp. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Cassandra-Pybus-Very-Secret-Trade-9781761066344. Pages 230-231. Details
• Taçon, Paul S. C., Taylor, Luke, May, Sally K., Goldhahn, Joakim, Jalandoni, Andrea, Ressel, Alex and Mangiru, Kenneth, 'Majumbu ('Old Harry') and the Spencer-Cahill bark painting collection', Australian archaeology, 89 (1) (2023), 14-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2023.2177949. Details
• White, Judy, The Art of Collecting National Heritage: the Letters of Henry Luke White 1910-1913 (Scone, N.S.W.: Seven Press, 2007), 190 pp. Details