The Macleay Museum at The University of Sydney, was a natural history museum located on the University's campus, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The Museum was amalgamanted into Chau Chak Wing Museum, which opened in 2020.
The Macleay Museum was added to the City of Sydney local government heritage list on 14 December 2012.
History
The Edgeworth David building in which the museum is housed was built off Science Lane within the Camperdown campus in 1887. The collections of the Macleay Museum are based largely on the efforts and acquisitions of the Macleay family, one of the pre-eminent families in colonial Sydney including Alexander Macleay, William Sharp Macleay and William John Macleay. The zoologist and collector George Masters served as curator until 1912.
Collection
The strengths of the collection, now part of the Sydney University Museums, were in entomology, ethnography, scientific instruments, and historic photographs. Many of the biological specimens in the collection represented rare or extinct species, while some of the specimens have historic and cultural value as they were collected by explorers like Charles Darwin and Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay.
The George Masters Exhibition Space of the museum was devoted to temporary exhibitions. Overall, the museum house one of the most important natural history and ethnography collections in Australia, surpassed in Sydney only by the Australian Museum.