Find treasure at the National Library this April! Highlights from our exhibitions and events program include a new selection of treasures going on display in the Treasures Gallery, the final days of our Viewfinder: Photography from the 1970s to Now exhibition, and an Australian Women’s Archive Program event.
Program
- New Treasures on display
From Thursday 6 April | 9am to 5pm daily (except Good Friday, Friday 7 April, when the whole Library building is closed)
The Treasures Gallery highlights the extraordinary holdings of the National Library of Australia. From maps and rare books to manuscripts, photographs, oil paintings and watercolours, this is where you will find many of the Library’s most unexpected and unique items.
From Thursday 6 April, visitors to the gallery will be able to see a new selection of treasures from our collection including:
- Harold Cazneaux’ first camera (a Midg box quarter-plate), which he purchased in 1904. In 1909, Cazneaux became the first Australian photographer to exhibit his works in a solo show.
- The Schevenhuysen Map, a cosmographical map dating from the end of the ‘Dutch Golden Age’ (c. 1700) and acquired by the Library in 2022. The map’s layout brings together different mapping and philosophical traditions of important past mapmakers.
- Ellis Rowan’s Chrysanthemums, a more recent addition to the Library’s vast Rowan Collection, the bulk of which was acquired for the nation for £5,000 in 1923.
- The journal that British naval captain James Cook kept during the voyage of HMB Endeavour to the South Pacific will also be returning to the gallery. This item was also purchased by the Australian government in 1923 for the cost of £5,000.
- New Collection-In-Focus Display: Joyce Evans
From Tuesday 4 April | 9am to 5pm daily (except Good Friday, Friday 7 April, when the whole Library building is closed)
The career of Joyce Evans OAM (1929-2019) spans more than six decades of landscape, documentary, and portrait photography. Her work is preserved through the Library’s Joyce Evans Archive, one of its largest collections of images by a contemporary Australian photographer. Highlights from this archive will go on display in the Treasures Gallery from Tuesday 4 April.
