Powerhouse Museum Favourites - Part 9 : The final presentation.

I'm so proud of Edward.  He did a great job with his half of the presentation today.

For those who couldn't be at the Powerhouse Museum earlier this afternoon I'll give you an overview of the slides and our script.  The talk was not delivered exactly according to this script, but you will get the idea.  I'll redact a few images from the slides, because I don't have permission yet to publish some of the last minute stuff from the Powerhouse Museum here - I haven't asked yet.

Simon, the duty IT/AV tech did a great job getting us set up, and Ali Gordon introduced us.

The Sydney Observatory is great. I loved the 3-D movie there.  To see the movie you have to wear special glasses which make normal things blurry, but the movie is OK.  I also enjoyed looking through the telescope and going on the tour.

 

The Odditoreum is a place where everything is odd.  And the Odditoreum had robots and were trying to get a cow with a mouth down the bottom to eat grass, but it would not eat it.  In the Odditoreum there was like this giant shoe which had  bicycle handles in it.  It was really for the Olympics and was decorated with licorice allsorts, freckles and glitter.

In Zoe’s house there are lots of things to do.  You can push trucks with blocks in them.  There is a crane that’s broken.  There is a conveyor belt and a boom gate. 

I love seeing all the different kinds of transport like a train.  There’s also a bell for a boat in that room 

Here’s a photo of me in the zero gravity space lab.  It feels like you are turning around, but it’s really one bit that turns around to make you feel like you are turning around. Sometimes you feel dizzy when you come off. 

The space lab is where you can do things like in space and you can see a bit of what a space shuttle looks like.  But there is not the whole space shuttle.  You can do a bit of a computer thing.  There’s like a computer and you can switch some things that have lights and you can see this video of Andy Thomas, and he talks about stuff at NASA.

 The Powerhouse Museum tags itself as a Science and Design museum.  On the design half of that tag rests the decorative arts.

Josiah Wedgwood was one of the leading industrialists of the late 1700s and a hugely successful businessman.

 Although there is much to love about the Wedgwood  you see here [ image redacted] – this one from about 1790 is more than half a metre tall- it isn't the Wedgwood piece I love most ... It's a piece that is just about the size of a 50 cent piece.... 

  

Josiah Wedgwood became deeply involved in the movement to put a stop to the world wide slave trade.

To help the cause, he had one of his chief designers Henry Webber  modellers William Hackwood design a statement piece.  It became known as the slave medallion. 

  

This one here, from the Powerhouse Museum’s collection is thought to be from 1787.   We see here, on a white ceramic background,  a black man in chains, kneeling, begging. Around the border of the oval disc – although a bit difficult to read from this image -   is the motto of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade,

“AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?” ….

The motto became famous and the medallion became a very fashionable item.  It could be worn as a brooch, a necklace ornament, or even adorning a hairdo. 

There are some examples in other museums showing what we now call an “after market addition” giving it a means to be worn such as a metal rim with a piercing for a pin or chain.

As such, it became the first fashion item to also bear a political message….

On request from a bloke in the then new nation the United States of America called Benjamin Franklin, Wedgwood shipped nearly 200 of the slave medallions to Franklin in Boston  also helping him to raise awareness for the need to end slavery in the United States.  Something that would take a further 80 years and a terrible Civil War in the USA to achieve.

I love the Slave medallion because it symbolises one of the most important civil rights movements of the past 300 years.  A political movement that was right, honourable, improved the human condition and actually succeeded.

You can see both of the extremes of Wedgwood design out there now in the “Inspired! Design across time” exhibition on level 3.

As a father who takes a keen interest in his son’s education – I’ve become a connoisseur of children’s books and early childhood educational aids.  I’m going to talk about one now. 

Let’s look at Maggie’s ABC book.

[ All images of Maggie's ABC book redacted ] 

One hundred and fifteen years ago, in 1894,  William Harrison, , hand made a Christmas Present for his niece Maggie Harrison back in mother England, in Avon. William was just 13 years old himself, and living in Australia. 

The book is personalised for her… painstakingly hand lettered…

 And painstakingly hand illustrated.  Illustrated both with pictures of things which would have been familiar to young Maggie in her home and some less familiar to her but representing the exotic new homeland of her uncle Will.

Go into any library in Sydney or any bookshop and pick up a kids’ book for ages 3 or 4.  You’ll find plenty of examples with big letters of the alphabet and words starting with that letter and accompanying pictures too.

So that educational device is tried and true.

 As a parent, I’ve spent plenty of time teaching Edward about the days of the week, the division between the weekdays and the weekend – and every morning at his primary school starts with talking about the day of the week and the date.

Again, not much has changed in 115 years.

The quality of the production of Maggie’s ABC book is just extraordinary for a 13 year old boy.

William Harrison went on to be Art Director and later advertising manager for Wunderlich Limited, the venerable manufacturer of pressed metal ceilings and building windows.

There are a few other items by William Harrison in the Powerhouse Museum collection – but none of them rival Maggie’s ABC book.

One of the things I love about the Powerhouse Museum is that it can be all things to all people.  There is something here for everybody, and now with more and more items from the collection being able to be viewed on line – the museum goer can make his or her trip on line too.  And not be limited by the constraints of exhibition space.

I can construct or curate my own personal exhibition around my personal interests.  One of my areas of deep interest is Australia’s maritime history, particularly in wartime.  I’ve spent hours trawling through the museum’s on line collection and discovered something intriguing.

World War Two began 70 years ago this week.  After Poland was invaded;  France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declared war on Germany, forming the allies.   

The remainder of 1939 and most of 1940 were pretty dark days for the allies.  There were few victories.  One famous victory was a battle in the Mediterranean sea on 22 July 1940 when HMAS Sydney sank the Italian warship Bartolomeo Colleoni.  After that battle in which the HMAS Sydney sustained some serious damage it made its way home to Australia and the port of Sydney on 11 February 1941. There was a huge welcome. 

Between 200,000 and 300,000 people lined the streets of Sydney, including school children who had been given a public holiday, to cheer 400 of the crew marching from Man O’War steps by what is now the Sydney Opera House to Town Hall.

There was a civic reception in the Sydney Town Hall for the crew, and a plaque was unveiled commemorating the naval victory.  Then the assembled ships company received a replica of the plaque in the form of a medallion.  Each medallion was engraved with the man’s name and service number.

[ images of the replica medallion plaques redacted ]

Here they’re pictured in Martin Place outside the G.P.O.

Enough replica medallions were produced to permit one to be presented to each member of the crew. 

The Ship’s plaque was fixed to a gun turret on the ship.  One large identical plaque sits in Sydney Town Hall today. And two of the replica medallion plaques sit in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum

This one was awarded to Frederick Mozart MURRAY ( 20100 ) who was an assistant yeoman of signals.

Fred Murray was not one of the 645 who perished with HMAS Sydney.  He survived the war, and even prospered, being promoted as an officer, and retiring from the navy in 1964 as a Commander.

A lovely piece of naval history.

( Left hand side  photograph from the Tyrrell Collection of the Powerhouse Museum. Right hand side photograph by the author )

The way I first came to love the Powerhouse Museum was though the museum’s online activities.  Chiefly from their presence on Flickr where for a bit over a year they have been displaying photographs from their archival collection – many of them historical images of Sydney and New South Wales.

They exist as fragile glass plate negatives – and prints from the negatives have never been publicly exhibited within the Powerhouse Museum, either through a perceived lack of public interest, or lack of exhibition space, or lack of motivation.

On the internet there are few limitations on exhibition space.  When scanned uploaded and hosted by Flickr the photo sharing website they cost the museum very little to display.  I discovered them there, on the flickr website one day. 

I then started a little photographic project of attempting to take contemporary photographs from the exact same position as that from a century before. 

Here’s George Street, looking south, that’s the corner of Margaret Street on the right.  100 years ago, and the one I took last year.

( Left hand side photograph from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection of the Powerhouse Museum.  Right hand side photograph by the author.)

Here’s the Sydney Observatory – around a hundred years ago, and in honour of the International Year of Astronomy, my pic from earlier this year. 

( Left hand side photograph from the Tyrrell Collection of the Powerhouse Museum.  Right hand side photograph by the author )

Another familiar building is Customs House at Circular Quay, One hundred years ago, and again late last year as a part of modern, busy, bustling Sydney.

Without the Powerhouse Museum setting those historic photographs free on the internet, I would not have been able to do my little photography project.

Thanks to the people who invited us to talk, and thank you for listening to Edward and I and thanks to Edward for his support today.

If you spot any factual errors in the script please let me know.

I especially thank Ali Gordon and Erika Dicker of the Powerhouse Museum for providing illustrative images and helping prepare our talk.

Comments

[Greg Abernethy]

Hi

My name is Greg Abernethy, I am the great-nephew of Roderic Bell Abernethy, who was killed on HMAS Sydney II. I have been doing a lot of research on the event and on Rod's life.

I have a website under construction as a tribute (listed below), gathering information as I go along.

I came across your website during investigations and wanted to say how interesting your information on the Sydney is.

Regards
Greg

[Bob Meade]

Thanks very much Greg.

I checked the tribute website you are building - and it looks great. Best of luck to you.

[Bob Meade]

Greg, do you have one of the replica plaques?