Published by the Australian Jluseuin 

 Editor: C. Anderson, M.A., D.Sc. 



College /Street, Sydney 

 Annual Subscription, Post Free, 4/4. 



Vol. I., No. 9. 



JULY, 1<>23. 



Editorial 



THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM BUILDINGS. 



IN planning a museum it is tlittieult 

 to foresee what the future needs of 

 the institution may be so that 

 adequate provision may be made for 

 expansion and evolution. In the case 

 of our own Museum the intention at one 

 time was to erect a building which 

 should be at once a Library, an Art 

 Gallery and a Museum. This intention 

 was abandoned, but, though the Lib- 

 rary and Art Gallery now have their 

 own buildings, the original plan has 

 been adhered to more or less in the 

 additions that have since been made 

 to the nucleus of the building erected 

 in 1849. 



As generally happens building has 

 not kept pace A\ith the ex])ansion in 

 the collections housed in the Aus- 

 tralian Museum, and now an extension 

 of the existing buildings is urgently 

 required. Extra space is needed for 

 exhibition purposes, for storage of 

 specimens, for the library, for work 

 rooms . 



To the public the exhibition halls 

 are the Museum, and it is quite proper 

 that in a state -owned museum the 

 education and entertainment of the 

 public should be one of the first duties 

 of the management. To every museum 

 there comes a time when the exhibi- 

 tion galleries are filled to their utmost 



capacity and no new exhibits can be 

 introduced without dis|)lacing others. 

 U]i to a certain point this is no dis- 

 advantage, for few exhibits are so good 

 that they cannot be replaced by better. 

 But the process cannot go on indefi- 

 nitely, for at last the stage is reJiched 

 A\hen it is no longer possible to with- 

 draw exhibits without seriously im- 

 pairing the usefulness of the museum. 

 In the Australian Museum we have 

 now reached that stage. For example 

 we have a large and valuable collection 

 illustrating the ethnogi-aphy of the 

 Pacific Islands, but only New Guinea, 

 the Solomons and Bismarck Archi- 

 pelago are adequately represented in 

 the ethnogra])hical galleries. The large 

 and interesting collections from the 

 other island groups, comprising prac- 

 tically the whole of Polynesia and 

 Micronesia, are mostly packed away 

 where the public have no opportunity 

 of seeing them. 



In the department of zoology the 

 most striking and most instructive 

 exhibits are habitat groups, showing 

 the animals in their natural surround- 

 ings, as in the case of the coral pool 

 and the Admiralty Islets bird group 

 described in this number. But to 

 show these effectively considerable 

 space is necessary and to make room 

 for them other exhil)its, themselves 



