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Yesterday's tomorrows : the Powerhouse Museum and its precursors 1880-2005

by Graeme Davison, Kimberley Webber

This illustrated book documents the history of Sydney's Powerhouse Museum from its 1880 founding. It details the institution's evolution, collections, and research activities as one of Australia's oldest state museums.

Accession 9780868409856 ISBN 9780868409856 Publisher Powerhouse Publishing in association with UNSW Press

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position_updated_at: 2026-05-05 17:11
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binding_type: Hard Back
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spine_text: YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS THE POWERHOUSE MUSEUM AND ITS PRECURSORS 1880-2005 MAHO Eucalyptus BL ROSEWOOD powerhouse publishing phm UNSW PRESS

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Topics and Themes

1. **Museum History & Institutional Evolution**
The book traces 125 years of a single institution — from its origins as a colonial-era industrial and sanitary museum, through name changes and relocations, to its reinvention as the Powerhouse Museum in 1988. It examines how the museum's identity, governance, and purpose shifted across eras in response to social and political pressures.

Connect to books about: institutional history, heritage organisations, Australian cultural policy, museum governance.

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2. **Museology & Curatorial Practice**
The book examines the evolving curatorial profession — what curators hoped to achieve through display, the challenges they faced across generations, and the museological fields of education and entertainment that shaped their work.

Connect to books about: curatorial theory, exhibition design, museum studies, object-based learning.

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3. **Science, Technology & Industrial History**
From a prize locomotive to medical implants, the Powerhouse's collections are anchored in technological and industrial progress. The book explores how science and technology were collected, displayed, and given cultural meaning over more than a century, including a chapter on the "heroic age of steam."

Connect to books about: history of technology, industrial heritage, science communication, material culture.

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4. **Public Education & the Museum as Pedagogy**
The book shows how the museum began as a late-nineteenth-century educational institution aimed at workers bettering themselves through "salutary instruction," and how that educational mission evolved into the late twentieth century's model of "infotainment."

Connect to books about: public education, working-class self-improvement, informal learning, science education history.

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5. **Audiences, Visitors & the Public Museum**
The book traces changes in expected audiences and those audiences' expectations of a museum — who museums were built for, who actually came, and how visitor experience was imagined and managed across different eras.

Connect to books about: visitor studies, audience engagement, cultural participation, the sociology of public spaces.

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6. **Australian Cultural & Urban History**
Edited by an eminent urban and public historian, the book situates the museum within broader Australian cultural and urban life — particularly Sydney — reflecting on how a public institution both shaped and was shaped by its city and nation over 125 years.

Connect to books about: Australian history, Sydney urban history, colonial institutions, nation-building and culture.

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7. **Memory, Heritage & the Politics of Collecting**
The book raises questions about what gets preserved, what gets displayed, and why — reflecting on the museum as a site where decisions about collective memory and national heritage are made, contested, and revised over time.

Connect to books about: collective memory, heritage studies, archival theory, politics of history.

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8. **Design, Decorative Arts & Material Culture**
The Powerhouse's collections span science, technology, design, and decorative arts, and the book engages with how objects — from everyday items to landmark inventions — are given cultural and historical significance through the act of collection and display.

Connect to books about: material culture studies, design history, decorative arts, object biography.

Yesterday's tomorrows : the Powerhouse Museum and its precursors 1880-2005

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