Sydney Museum - Human Evolution is Absent

[Jason Jarred]

I visited the Sydney Museum for the first time ever on Saturday, which is quite impressive considering my partner and I have been living here for 3 1/2 years (yes, I'm prowd that we took such a long time to get off our arses and finally get there).
Over all it was great fun, we saw dinosaur bones, contemporary photography (which I loved), minerals & rocks, and a few too many preserved insects and bugs.
In retrospect and on discussing our visit however, we came to the odd realisation that there was no sign of an evolution display of man, or anything relevant in this regard. How odd. You'd think for sure there would be some form of display on the evolution of man from his predecessors to modern form.
I haven't visited many museums, truth be told. But the absence of such a display motivated me to write them some feedback (pasted below) - which I eagerly await for response. I thought you may all find this of interest, and will keep you updated.

Cheers,
J
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Hi,
I understand that the Australian museum takes an assertive position when it comes to what science has demonstrated as the fact of evolution (http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/about/evolution.htm). My partner and I found it curious on our visit during the weekend however, that there was no particular display demonstrating the evolution of man.
Perhaps we missed the display (the musuem certainly is large), or perhaps this is an accidental oversight? My main interest for visiting your musuem was to review information on evolution, particularly evolution of man, and so I found the absence of such a display a little disappointing.
I certainly hope that the absence of an evolution display was not to avoid causing controversy with your Christian customers, who profess to acquire their morals from a 2000 year old work of fiction which advocates the stoning of unruly children. (I'm sure it wasn't).

I look forward to your response,
Jason Jarred

[Rob]

Interesting. I look forward to reading their response.

[Jason Jarred]

I've attempted to send the email 3 times and kept getting an error message from their mail delivery system. I don't think I will bother with pursuing this, my partner pushed me in the first instance to email them feedback but since that avenue isn't working it's all becoming too difficult (And I really couldn't be arsed phoning them).

For the time, I'm going to assume that I simply missed the evolution displays :p

[Jason Jarred]

Ok it appears they were having some website difficulties. I resubmitted my enquiry earlier this week, and this is the response I received:

Dear Jason,

Thank you for your enquiry. The museum did have a exhibition called Tracks through time which closed a couple of years ago to make way for our new Dinosaur gallery and Surviving Australia and also as the exhibition was installed over a decade ago there were a number of inaccuracies which needed to be rectified . We still have a small display at the end of Search and Discover which is supported by web resources and specimens which are made available when possible.The website link

http://www.austmus.gov.au/human_evolution/about.htm

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Kind regards,

Yvette Simpson

Interpretive Officer

All in all a little disappointing. Get rid of those damned rocks and crystals they have cluttering one of the showrooms and reinstall the human evolution display is my first thought.