Collections without End

The discovery of five photographs in 2018 in the State Library of WesternAustralia led us to the existence of a forgotten private museum housing the collectionof Captain Matthew McVicker Smyth in early-twentieth-century Perth. Captain Smythwas responsible for the selling of Nobel explosives used in the agriculture and miningindustries. The museum contained mineral specimens in cases alongside extensive,aesthetically organized displays of Australian Aboriginal artifacts amid a wide varietyof ornaments and decorative paintings. The museum reflects a moment in the history ofcolonialism that reminds us today of forms of dispossession, of how Aboriginal peoplewere categorized in Australia by Western worldviews, and of the ways that collectorsoperated. Our re-creation brings back into existence a significant Western Australianmuseum and opens up a new discussion about how such private collections came intoexistence and indeed, in this instance, about how they eventually end.