Yesterday's Tomorrows: The Powerhouse Museum and its Precursors 1880-2005 edited by Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber (original) (raw)

2006, Public History Review

he Powerhouse Museum was conceived by the trustees of the Australian Museum in 1878. By 1880, Australia's first Technological and Industrial Museum was open to the public. Over the next 125 years, the museum experienced various metamorphoses and name changes, most notably its transformation into the Powerhouse Museum which opened during Australia's Bicentenary in 1988. On the 125 th anniversary of the birth of this world-renown museum comes Yesterday's Tomorrows: the Powerhouse Museum and its precursors 1880-2005, edited by eminent urban and public historian Graeme Davison and Powerhouse Museum curator of social history Kimberley Webber. This visually appealing book approaches the history of the museum from a thematic perspective, focusing on innovative exhibitions and bold personalities that have peppered the museum's past. Broken into three sections-'Visions', 'Stories from the Collections', and 'Tomorrows'-this collection of essays covers a broad spectrum of topics in the museum's history. Quirky stories of past curators and popular objects ensure an entertaining read, with copious images providing engaging illustrations of bygone days. The book positions the Powerhouse Museum as an innovative educational institution providing a window on cutting-edge technological advances, bringing the world of technology to the everyday visitor. The history of the museum is dealt with in sufficient detail to ensure the general reader gains a comprehensive understanding of the vision, struggles and triumphs of this pioneering institution. Contributors range from museum staff to academic historians, providing diverse approaches to the history of the museum. While, however, it is often stimulating to be presented with differing perspectives, in this instance the multiplicity of views and approaches fragment the end product. There is a lack of connectedness and continuity between the chapters. Perhaps this is unavoidable in a collection such as this given the diversity of the museum's exhibitions over the years. But the wide range of styles that appear in Yesterday's Tomorrows is also problematic. The book is at times too academic for the general reader and yet insufficiently critical for the student or scholar. I am left wondering for whom exactly was the book intended. The numerous colourful plates and 'pop' interludes between the chapters might suggest cultural tourists. But the price-$54.95-and size-almost 300 pages-would make this seem a rather large and expensive souvenir. The impressive line-up of historians as contributors suggests a more academic audience. But academic interest in the book may well stem from the public historian's interest in the way in which major public cultural institutions such as museums control, construct and present themselves. In T