The Macleay Museum's current exhibition, Collected: 150 years of Aboriginal Art and Artifacts at the Macleay Museum, displays nearly 200 objects from the Museum's important Australian Aboriginal collection.
Largely gathered between 1850 and 1940, this collection had its origins in the private ethnographic collection of Sir William John Macleay (1820-1891), a wealthy pastoralist, politician, and member of colonial Sydney's scientific community.
Originally housed at the Macleay family home, Elizabeth Bay House, Sir William's ethnographic collection contained more than 2,000 indigenous artifacts from Australia and the Pacific Islands.
It was one of the largest collections of its type in private hands in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century and includes some extremely rare and significant material.
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© W.J. Macleay Collection
Shields
Fig tree wood, ochres
Nyawaygi people (?)
72x29, 94.5x36.5 and 83x34.5 cm
Herbert River, Queensland
Collected by J.A. Boyd 1885
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