National Library of Australia

The language of treasures

When the 1869 Melbourne blockbuster failed to trigger any more treasures exhibitions, the language of treasures went into retreat, but did not disappear. There were regular auctions of ‘art treasures’ in Sydney and Melbourne throughout the first half of the 20th century, while Treasures could also be heard on weekly commercial radio in wartime Sydney. A newspaper advertisement taken out by Sydney’s Mitchell Library in the 1940s records the details: ‘Listen to Treasures of the Mitchell Australian History Dramatised ... 2UW every Wednesday, 9.15 p.m.'

Australian cultural institutions began making more use of the language of treasures in the late 1970s when the State Library of New South Wales published Treasures of the Mitchell and Dixson Libraries, and the National Gallery of Victoria staged Treasures of a Decade, an exhibition of its recent acquisitions. Since then, art galleries and museums have held regular treasures exhibitions, each typically drawn from an overseas collection such as the British Museum, the Shanghai Museum and the Jewish Museum in Prague. Libraries in Australia, as elsewhere, have made the most of treasures. What masterpieces are to galleries, treasures have become to libraries.

Notes

1. David L. Jones, A Source of Inspiration and Delight: The Buildings of the State Library of New South Wales Since 1826, Sydney: Library Council of New South Wales, 1988, p. 108.

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