The Women's Museum of Australia, formerly the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame, is a museum focused on the place of women in

Australian history The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia. People first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and penetrated to all parts ...

, situated in the restored HM Gaol and Labour Prison Alice Springs building in

Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

History

The museum was founded in 1993 by Molly Clark of Old

Andado Andado Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in the Alice Springs region of the Northern Territory. The traditional lands of the Arrernte people before European settlement, the first pastoral lease was granted in 188 ...

Station. It opened in September 1994 in the town's Old Courthouse building, which had been leased for a period of five years. By 2001, the premises had become too small and the NT-

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

Old Alice Springs Gaol was offered as a new location. In 2007 the museum was officially opened in its new location by

Marion Scrymgour Marion Rose Scrymgour (born 13 September 1960) is an Australian politician and the current MP for Lingiari. She was a member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 2001 to 2012, representing the electorate of Arafura. She was th ...

, Minister for Women's Policy and the first

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

woman to be elected to the

Parliament of the Northern Territory The Parliament of the Northern Territory is the unicameral legislature of the Northern Territory of Australia. It consists of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly and the Administrator of the Northern Territory, who represents the Governo ...

. In 2019 the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame was renamed the Women's Museum of Australia, and in 2020 refurbishment of the car park and new plans for future exhibitions commenced.

Description

The museum is located in the HM Gaol and Labour Prison Alice Springs building in

. The museum aims to recognise the place of women in history, and particularly the role of women in Australia's development. It recognises "any woman who is a pioneer in her chosen field from settlement to present day". The museum's permanent exhibitions include ''Ordinary Women/ Extraordinary Lives - Women First in Their Field'', the ''Signature Quilt'', ''Women at the Heart'' (Central Australia), ''What's Work Worth'' and the ''Aviatrix Tapestry.''

Patrons

The museum has two patrons: Dame

Quentin Bryce Dame Quentin Alice Louise Bryce, (née Strachan; born 23 December 1942) is an Australian academic who served as the 25th governor-general of Australia from 2008 to 2014. She is the first woman to have held the position, and was previously the ...

, a former

Governor-General of Australia The governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III, in Australia.Gaby Kennard Gaby Kennard (born 1944, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) was the first Australian woman to circumnavigate the globe by airplane. When she was 18 she found out that her natural father was a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Force du ...

, the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world, in 1989.

References

External links

Women's Museum of Australia
{{Authority control Museums in Alice Springs Women's museums History museums in Australia 1993 establishments in Australia History of women in Australia