Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:37:p1
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 37 (pt 1/2)
Character Range: 75882–78787

37   http://sydneytafe.libguides.com/SydneyTAFEHeritage/ArchitectureDesign ; Joan Kerr, 'The architecture of scientific Sydney', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 118, parts 3 and 4, March 1986, p. 190; Kirsten Orr, 'The realisation of the Sydney Technical College and Technological Museum, 1878-92: aspects of their cultural significance', Fabrications, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp. 46-67 (especially pp. 52-4 and 57-60).

  While Morris worked on detailed plans and specifications for the revised design, MacKenzie's patience with the government was wearing thin. In January 1928, he wrote to Howse, who was a Minister without portfolio in the Cabinet and the Australian Army's former Director of Medical Services in France during World War I. MacKenzie pointed out to him the importance of his research to military medicine and urged the government to get on with the building of the museum. The representations to Howse brought an immediate response. Howse took the matter to Cabinet the same month and secured its approval for the construction of the museum to be given top priority; the FCC was duly instructed to regard the building of the museum as 'of urgent importance'. Cabinet agreed as well to transfer responsibility for the museum from the Department of Home and Territories to the Department of Health, both of which portfolios Howse was about to take over. The transfer was effected on
  1 February. Finally, Cabinet also gave Howse leave to consider a change of name for the institution. It was undoubtedly Howse's role in getting the project moving that led to the erection of the portrait-in-relief of him that still exists in the southern museum hall.38

  Even before the transfer to the Department of Health took place, the need for a change in the institution's name was becoming evident. Apart from his zoological specimens, MacKenzie was accumulating a substantial collection of Aboriginal skeletal remains. As MacKenzie intended to house this material in his museum, the name 'Zoological Museum'

  was clearly no longer appropriate. In August 1928, MacKenzie and the government signed an agreement changing the name to the 'Australian Institute of Anatomy'. The change was formalised in the Australian Institute of Anatomy Agreement Act of 1931.39

  The name change was appropriate for another reason as well. In 1926, the government had acquired the extensive ethnological collection that had been assembled by Dr Horne and his niece Miss Bowie, and soon afterwards had been promised the Edmund Milne ethnological collection of Australian Aboriginal material which was the largest private collection of its type in the world. With the acquisition of these two collections, the Australian government found itself under an obligation to provide proper museum accommodation for them.

  This need to house the collections soon became bound up