Immigration Museum

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Museum view, 2017

The Immigration Museum in Melbourne , Australia is a museum dedicated to immigration to Australia .

It is housed in Melbourne's historic Old Customs House , a neo-classical building from 1876 that was built after the gold rush . The notorious dictation tests for foreclosure under the White Australia Policy took place in the building from 1901 to the late 1960s .

The collection on Australian migration history, which the Museum Victoria has built up since 1990 , formed the basis of the museum. The collection was not originally created until the mid-1980s, when Australian museums began to set up their own history departments. From 1990 onwards, the topic of immigration, which is ubiquitous in Australia, gained importance through the National Agenda for a multicultural Australia with exhibitions on the Jewish and Italian communities in Melbourne and another on Muslims in Australia.

The museum, founded in 1998, was intended to break the widespread opinion that Australia was a homogeneous British society until after World War II. The heterogeneity of the population and the multiculturalism caused by the immigration of non-British and non-Irish immigrants should be made tangible and awareness promoted that every non-indigenous Australian has a migration history in the family. This should fight racism and promote Australian cohesion.

The exhibition is grouped around four aspects:

  • Leavings: Illustrates the various motives for emigration such as natural disasters, war, the search for freedom, unemployment, a thirst for adventure and the desire to reunite families.
  • Jouneys: Shows the change in travel routes and means of transport used from the harsh conditions of a lengthy sailing trip to the jumbo jet.
  • Getting in: Shows the historical development of Australian immigration policy and national identity. The dark sides of history with racism and isolation from unwanted immigrants are also shown.
  • Settlings: uses pictures to show immigration to Victoria over time, addressing positive and negative aspects such as happy new naturalizations and the conditions in asylum seekers' camps . The effects of immigration in general on culture and society, but also on the indigenous people and the landscape, are shown.

literature

Web links

Commons : Immigration Museum, Melbourne  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Baur: The musealization of migration . P. 267 ff.
  2. ↑ Joachim Baur: The musealization of migration . P. 266.
  3. ↑ Joachim Baur: The musealization of migration . P. 274.

Coordinates: 37 ° 49 ′ 8.8 ″  S , 144 ° 57 ′ 37.4 ″  E