Defining Symbols of Australia Appeal

Thank you to all our donors who helped us reach our fundraising target. The Defining Symbols of Australia Appeal is now closed. The Defining Symbols of Australia touring exhibition launched in 2021.

Defining Symbols of Australia is a travelling exhibition from the National Museum that explores our affinity to iconic Australian symbols such as Uluru, the national flag and wattle. The exhibition is based on our 2009 show Symbols of Australia which also toured across the country.

The Museum will travel exhibition panels depicting each symbol. Venues will then look to their own collections to add objects and works of art that explore how these symbols relate to their local community. In this way the new exhibition will be a collaborative venture between the Museum and the regional venue.

Your generous donations enabled us to:

• Support regional museums and galleries by providing a core exhibition from which they can create a bespoke show to reflect their own community.
• Enable Museum curators to visit and work alongside regional counterparts to create and install the exhibition.

In 2009 the Museum's Symbols of Australia toured the nation and encouraged visitors to explore the diversity of Australian symbology: the official and the popular, the organic and the imposed, the natural and the man-made, the old and the new.

More than a decade later Defining Symbols of Australia builds on the original iteration by looking at how Australian symbolism and our perceptions have changed. How do we read to the symbols today? What might we choose as an alternative? How important are these symbols to our national Identify?

We would like to thank and acknowledge our donors to the Defining Symbols of Australia Appeal, including those who would like to remain anonymous.