The new Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta is due to open in a fortnight with exhibitions focused on food, design and music. In response, a satirical proposal has imagined a very different institution: a Museum of Forgotten Places devoted to the habits, interiors and discomforts of Australia’s recent past.
The fictional museum would begin with a suburban barber shop, recreated as it might have appeared before the early 1980s. Its barbers would smoke while cutting hair, with racing on the radio, old copies of The Australasian Post available to customers and hair oil adding to the atmosphere.
Another display would feature a mid-1960s Holden, complete with vinyl bench seats and no seatbelts. Children would occupy the back while cigarette smoke drifted through the car, and their mother would attempt to navigate with a Gregory’s Street Directory.
Visitors would then be taken into a traditional Australian motel room, where stained carpeting, a cleaned toilet and a hatch for breakfast would form part of the exhibit. The meal would consist of toast and hard butter, while children would jump on the bed until its springs gave way.
A museum of Australia’s forgotten routines
A 1970s classroom would provide the next historical scene, including a deputy principal disciplining pupils and clocks moving backwards. Desks would contain copies of Go-Set and Dolly, while visitors arriving at 11am would be served warm, curdled milk.
The food section would reject the sophisticated displays promised at the Powerhouse in favour of overcooked cabbage, boiled beans, burnt T-bone steaks and tuna mornay. A deliberately unpleasant smellscape would be used to recreate the kitchens and barbecues of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
The final major room would be a replica of an old Australian pub, with tiled surfaces, two types of beer and a half-empty bottle of red wine in the fridge. The imagined attraction would also include a traditional hose-out at closing time.
Visitors would leave through a gift shop selling items including desert boots, Bogart jeans, hair oil, old copies of The Australasian Post and packets of cigarettes. A teacher’s cane would also be available as a deliberately grim souvenir.
The proposal presents the Museum of Forgotten Places as an irreverent alternative to the forthcoming Powerhouse Museum, asking whether a museum of the past might offer more memorable exhibits than one dedicated to cutting-edge culture.
