Outreach

Our year in review 2023

Our work has always travelled well beyond our physical sites, but our fresh remit as Museums of History NSW brings new responsibilities and opportunities to connect with regional audiences and communities.

The MHNSW website is an immensely powerful tool for extending our reach and impact across NSW and beyond. Since its launch at the end of 2022, it’s hosted over 2 million sessions from around Australia and many other parts of the world. With its enhanced functionality, it now provides a robust yet flexible platform that enables deeper, more intuitive and more meaningful experiences for both audiences and content creators, wherever they may be.

Our touring exhibition program, regional archives centres and collection loans give offsite audiences physical access to our collection items and their stories. In 2023, we toured four exhibitions nationally and one internationally. The family-focused exhibitions How Cities Work and On the Move have continued to be popular, with critical repair work undertaken in May ensuring they can keep touring well into the future. A highlight of our annual Collections on Tour series – where original collection items tour with staff around regional NSW for talks and viewings – was the Carrington Album tour. In April and May, a selection of these spectacular bound volumes of illuminated addresses, greetings and photographs presented to Lord Carrington in 1890 as a memento/record of his time as governor of NSW toured to ten regional locations. Our network of regional archives centres provides ongoing access to records in the State Archives Collection of significance to those regions. Through our outward loans program, collection items also feature regularly in exhibitions and displays developed by other museums and cultural institutions within Australia and internationally. During 2023, collection items were on loan to Newcastle Museum, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery and Wollongong Art Gallery.

Our staff actively support the regional and broader cultural sector through a range of activities and collaborations, providing advice and expertise, hosting interns and visitors, and participating in forums and events. In April, staff took part in Let’s Get Prepared, an open day at the Woodford Academy in the Blue Mountains organised by Museums & Galleries of NSW where artists, private collectors and family historians can learn about object care and disaster preparedness from museum experts. Our conservation team continued their ongoing support of government agencies across NSW, providing advice on preserving and handling archives still in their custody.