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Elspeth Wishart outlines the challenges facing the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in exhibiting important two-dimensional artefacts. She relates how the museum must balance the needs of visitors with the care of these artefacts, a letter and a flag.

Alison Wishart examines the challenges of displaying rare cookery books in museums. She focuses on Flora Pell’s Our Cookery Book, published in 1916, and suggests display methods to allow better visitor interaction.

Peter Stanley welcomes guests to the 2009 National Museum Collections Symposium and key speaker Howard Morphy delivers ‘Perspectives on exhibiting collections,’ looking at the significance of artefacts and the stories they can tell.

Researcher, author and Irishman Richard Reid and photographer Brendon Kelson examine the role of the Irish in Australia, to be featured in a forthcoming National Museum book, The Scattered Children of St Patrick.

Curator Kirsten Wehner outlines the themes of the new National Museum of Australia gallery, Creating a Country (now Landmarks). It will look broadly at the history of Australia since European colonisation of the continent in the late eighteenth century.

Guna Kinne and Carmelo Mirabelli’s stories feature in the National Museum’s Australian Journeys gallery. They join curator Karen Schamberger and broadcaster Sylvie Stern in a discussion about their lives in Europe and Australia.

Writer, lawyer and former science minister Barry Jones opens the Charles Darwin exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.

Curator Martha Sear examines the evolution of the National Museum’s Australian Journeys gallery. She provides a comprehensive overview of the stories and the objects in this gallery, which looks at Australia’s connections to the world over time.

ABC journalist Virginia Trioli discusses the work of artist Emily Kngwarreye with Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald and National Museum curator Margo Neale. Does Emily’s work compare with modernism? Is it considered abstract expressionist?

Artist and gallery owner Christopher Hodges, who had a close association with Emily Kame Kngwarreye, affirms her position as an abstract artist and provides insights into how her thinking was reflected in the Emily exhibition in Japan.