The website is intended as an initiator of dialogue between visitors and museum staff so that a visit to the homepage will encourage, rather than replace, a visit to the Museum in person. The Macleay Museum gallery has four new single-case displays drawing on the Museum's collections of natural history, ethnography and scientific instruments. The displays cover such diverse topics as the controversies surrounding William John Macleay's collecting expeditions, the adventurous life of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay, and the technological advances which allowed the accurate charting of the Australian landscape during the 19th century. The new displays represent the beginning of a gradual refurbishment of all the long-term showcases in the Museum gallery. The Museum has again used the talents of designer, Lucy Bannyan, and graphic designer, Marianne Hawke, in the production of the displays, to stunning effect.
Leaflets are available on all the new displays.
Macleay always stressed that the aim of his expedition was to improve his family collections for the advancement of colonial science. The public did not judge his trip kindly, however, criticising him in the press for his failure to assess the interior of New Guinea for future trade and even annexation by Britain or Australia. Objects Collected by Walter Wilson Froggatt in the Kimberleys in 1887 asks whether museums should retain objects which have been acquired in violent circumstances. Froggatt, employed by William John Macleay in 1887 to collect natural history specimens in the Kimberleys, accompanied police and pastoralists during a raid which aimed to drive Aborigines off land recently claimed by white pastoralists. One Aborigine was shot.