Chau Chak Wing Museum

About

The Chau Chak Wing Museum is a university museum at the University of Sydney, Australia. It was formed as an amalgamation of the Nicholson Museum, the Macleay Museum, and the University Art Gallery in 2020.

The collections began with the Nicholson Collection of antiquities in 1860 and continued to grow to include the Macleay Collections of natural history, ethnography, science and historic photography, and the University Art Collection. The three collections were brought together under Sydney University Museums in 2003.

The museum is named after Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-Australian businessman who donated $15 million for the building's construction in 2015. Other major benefactors were Penelope Seidler, the Ian Potter Foundation and Nelson Meers Foundation. The museum was officially opened on the 18 November 2020.

In September 2023 it hosted the International Council of Museums Committee for University Museums and Collections Conference, "Truth-telling through university museums and collections".

The museum's collection of human remains from Egypt was featured in the second season of Stuff the British Stole.

The building is located on Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, opposite the Main Quadrangle and Fisher Library. The building was designed by Johnson Pilton Walker. The building is five-storey, with four levels of exhibition space with six main galleries: Ian Potter Gallery, Macleay Gallery, Nicholson Gallery, Penelope Gallery, Power Gallery, and the China Gallery. Indigenous Australian design features were incorporated design and landscaping of the building. The forecourt incorporates a replica of a pre-invasion Aboriginal petroglyph of two wallabies originally located in Westleigh and the foyer prominently displays a Welcome to Country in the Sydney language.

CCWM has three main collections, the Macleay Collection, the Nicholson Collection, and the University of Art Collection.

The Macleay Collection is the oldest natural history collection in Australia, originating in the cabinets of Alexander Macleay, and expanding through the collecting networks of the Macleay family from Charles Darwin to Sir Stamford Raffles.

It contains historically rich collections of Aboriginal, Torres Strait and Pacific Islanders ' cultural material, including objects collected on the early scientific expedition, the Chevert, and those collected in the early years of anthropology at the University of Sydney.

The work of University of Sydney scientists is reflected in the collection of scientific instruments and apparatus used in research and teaching, and is part of the story of scientific practice in Australia.

The Historic Photograph Collection records life in Australia and the Pacific region, from the late 1840s to the 1960s, as captured by both commercial and amateur photographers. It includes a wide range of photographic formats, reflecting the changing technology of photography.

In addition, the Macleay Collections holds material reflecting the museum's history, including a significant library, furniture, documents and ephemera relating to the major collectors.

The Nicholson Collection contains nearly 30,000 artefacts representing ancient cultures from the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Spanning from the Palaeolithic to the late medieval period, these artefacts hold intimate stories of people's everyday lives, ancient environments, and cultural activity for over more than 10,000 years.

The collection was founded in 1860 by Sir Charles Nicholson with a donation of Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities acquired to establish a museum, "calculated materially to promote the object[ives] for which the [University of Sydney] was founded." By 1870, the University of Sydney's Museum of Antiquities included over 3,000 artefacts and had been nicknamed the Nicholsonian Museum.

Over the past 160 years, the Nicholson Collection has expanded through ambitious acquisition programs, generous donation and private bequests. International excavations in Egypt, Cyprus and the Middle East, partly sponsored by the University of Sydney have also contributed significant objects to the collection.

The collection contains more than 8000 works including paintings, sculptures, photography and ceramics. Among the first donors was one of its founders, Sir Charles Nicholson, who gave some 30 European paintings, tapestries and sculptures in 1865. The strength of the collection lies in Australian painting – including Indigenous art – as well as significant holdings in European and Asian art.

CCWM holds 950 identified human remains across its collections. This includes the remains of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, as well as remains from what is now the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Timor, and Peru.

The Macleay Collection is the oldest natural history collection in Australia, originating in the cabinets of Alexander Macleay, and expanding through the collecting networks of the Macleay family from Charles Darwin to Sir Stamford Raffles.

It contains historically rich collections of Aboriginal, Torres Strait and Pacific Islanders ' cultural material, including objects collected on the early scientific expedition, the Chevert, and those collected in the early years of anthropology at the University of Sydney.

The work of University of Sydney scientists is reflected in the collection of scientific instruments and apparatus used in research and teaching, and is part of the story of scientific practice in Australia.