Tuesday 19 February 2008
Two days out from the official opening of the Cabinets of Wonder at Beechworth’s Burke Museum, an astonishing assortment of privately owned artefacts and collections from the local community are still coming to light.
A portable writing desk owned by Charles Dickens is one of the many treasures individuals and organisations have loaned to the Burke for the six-month exhibition.
An amazing collection of skulls of small native mammals, cranial instruments from the Beechworth Hospital, book marks, Egyptian artefacts, egg cups, brooches, a rock collection and a 100 year-old Chilean bird-eating spider have recently found their way into the Burke’s Cabinets of Wonder.
Burke Museum Collections Officer, Linda Peacock, says response has been overwhelming: “Once word got out about the exhibition we were inundated with offers of objects for display. And what’s been really surprising is the variety and quality of artefacts that have come in. We could fill the entire museum with community collections alone!”
The Hon. Tim Fischer, the Patron of the Indigo Tourism Board, officially opens Cabinets of Wonder: Treasure from the Beechworth Community this Thursday 21 February. The exhibition runs until 30 June.
With its extraordinary collection of Aboriginal artefacts from the early to mid-19th century, an amazing natural history collection including an extremely rare stuffed Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) as well as thousands of artefacts, journals and photographs Beechworth’s historic Burke Museum could be described as a Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonder) in its own right.
Named in honour of the ill-fated explorer, Robert O’Hara Burke who was Police Superintendent during Beechworth’s heady gold rush days of 1854 – 1858, the Burke Museum is part of the town’s nationally significant Historic & Cultural Precinct, which this year celebrates its sesquicentenary.
No comments:
Post a Comment