From the Curator...

We are hoping to reinterpret our collection of Aboriginal artefacts in the near future. As a consequence, I have been looking into the role and responsibilities of the museum in the presentation of Indigenous objects. The following comes from my initial research:

"The inclusion of Aboriginal art and artefacts in the modern museum setting is the product of major changes within Western conceptions of art and culture, and the political climate of Australia. For the greater part of the twentieth century Aboriginal art and material culture was confined to the ethnographic museum, thus defining it as belonging to the 'other' and being part of a 'primative' art movement. More recently, the modernist expressionism of this 'primative' art has been recognised by critics and Aboriginal art and associated artefacts have been accepted as equal to the Western cultural 'standard' and is being exhibited in every key museum in Australia."

New website

Work has been completed on our new website and it has officially gone online.
It has a nice, clean look and hopefully will be easy for people to navigate.
If you'd like to check it out at www.henrykendallcottage.org.au and let us know what you think, we'd be happy to read your comments.

Heritage Week 2009

Our astronomical event, planned during Heritage Week, 4th-19th April as part of the National Trust Heritage Festival Our Place in Space - Under the Southern Skies, has shaped up nicely.

Our exhibit features James Dunlop, former Superintendent of Parramatta Observatory and Astronomer Royal of the Colony of New South Wales during the 1830s. In 1843 he retired to Kincumber where he died in 1848 and is buried in St. Paul's Church of England graveyard at Kincumber.

Updates Coming Soon