Below you’ll find a changing selection of highlights from our collection and past exhibitions, plus fascinating stories and hands-on activities for your next crafternoon session.
We hope you will check in regularly to gain inspiration and discover something new.
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Member magazine
Unlocked is filled with great articles and posted straight to your door. Check out a selection of past issues now available online.
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Kids activities
Get creative with our activities and crafts inspired by our museums and stories. Find printouts, art projects and more.
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Discover SLM
Find out what's new across our museums, including in the kitchen and the garden. Settle in for some good long reads.
Collection highlights
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Tassels
The Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection holds an important collection of furnishing fabrics, loose covers, curtains, blinds, valances, cushion covers and wallpaper, mostly provenanced to Tinker Tailor Interiors and donated by retired decorator Robert W Lloyd. Read more here
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Pin cushion
Our collection holds many personal items including pin cushions. Some are ornate and beautifully decorated, while others are austere and well-worn. This homemade pincushion was made by former Susannah Place resident Ellen Marshall adn was gifted to us by Jenni Whitford & family.
Online puzzles
Get puzzling
Take a moment to relax and recharge with one of our online puzzles featuring our beautiful collections and museums.
Watch & listen
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(Re) making a home
Duration: 8:04
Duration: 8:04
Exhibition highlights
Underworld: mugshots from the roaring twenties
Criminals thrived during the turbulent 1920s when rapid societal change led to the opening up of new illicit markets for entrepreneurial felons. Sydney’s police photographers captured the zeitgeist of the era in these unexpectedly candid mug shots of cocaine sellers and addicts, sly-grog purveyors and small-time criminals. Bosses, bruisers, plotters and petty crims are captured by the camera as they stare down the lens and into history. Discover more.
Marion Hall Best: Interiors
This exhibition colourfully charted the work of Marion Hall Best (1905-1988), one of Australia’s first and most influential independent interior designers, displaying original furniture, fabrics, furnishings and design schemes. Best’s career spanned four decades from the mid–1930s, a period of transition from the department store decorators and art furnishers of the 1920s, to the independent professional designers of today. Discover more.
A Thousand Words
‘A picture tells a thousand words.’ This adage is the inspiration for an innovative exhibition, in which the public becomes the curator. A Thousand Words presents 100 of the most compelling photographic images from the rich collections of Sydney Living Museums and the State Archives and Records Authority of NSW, created between the 1880s and the 1980s. Discover more.
Meet the team
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Edward Washington, Program Producer
Ed is part of the learning team, which provides curriculum-based programs to more than 60,000 students and teachers every year. He is passionate about using objects, places and personal stories to engage students in history and archaeology. Read more.
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Jacqui Newling, Assistant Curator
Jacqui specialises in place-based social history and heritage, bringing meaningful stories from our past to contemporary audiences through various forms of media, from exhibitions to interactive opportunities for visitors in our museums. Read on.
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Rebecca Bushby, Director, Audience and Creative Production
Rebecca is SLM's Director, Audience and Creative Production. She has over 20 years’ experience working in the museum and cultural heritage sectors. Rebecca led the renewal of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Hyde Park Barracks, which reopened in early February 2020. Read on
Contact us
Membership Office
W slm.is/members
T +61 2 8072 4515
E membership@slm.com.au