Museum
The homestead, now a house museum, is creatively furnished with props and copies of objects known to belong to the Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm. Impressive cedar joinery has been restored while carefully reproduced paint schemes, fabrics and floor coverings provide an authentic impression of this early 19th-century household. The Macarthurs' garden of native and exotic ornamentals, fruit trees and vegetables has been recreated around original plantings and archaeological features dating to the early 19th century.
Avoiding the use of rope barriers and screens, an innovative 'hands on' approach encourages visitors to explore and interact with this evocative historical environment: sitting in chairs, leafing through letters, playing the piano or pulling up beside an open fire. The museum offers an introductory video and free guided tours. Elizabeth Farm is open to the general public.
Elizabeth Farm is a modern museum with an unusual approach to interpretation. Like a stage set, the house is decorated with replica furniture and props, presented in sparse, abstract, evocative, perhaps even puzzling, arrangements. Stories and impressions emerge of a family caught in the whirlwind of colonial life: flung far from home to a dangerous place, coping with separation, isolation and loss, enduring hardship, securing wealth, prestige and power. This is not a period piece, but rather a carefully reassembled puzzle: some of the pieces remain missing whilst others have been deliberately left out. Elizabeth Farm aims to intrigue, raise questions, provide clues and stimulate the imagination. Who were the Macarthurs and what were they like? How did they run their estate? Why did they choose to risk everything by sailing to Australia? And what became of the Burramattagal, Wangal and Wategora clans whose land was taken over, or the hundreds of convicts and servants who laboured here? What can their story tell us about colonial society and empire? Why is their house, an unfinished cottage, important to us today? Literally ‘hands on’, Elizabeth Farm allows museum visitors to move freely through the house and garden: to open doors, try out furniture, read family letters and newspapers, relax on shady verandahs or rest before open fires. Filled with clues, stories and characters, a vivid atmosphere emerges: a museum without barriers, history you can touch.
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Famous quotes containing the word museum:
“The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“A rat eats, then leaves its droppings.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 85, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)