Donald Thomson

Amassed by the Melbourne-based anthropologist and biologist, Professor Donald Thomson (1901-1970) during a professional career that spanned five decades. The collection has almost 7500 artefacts and 2000 biological specimens collected mainly on Cape York (1928-33), in Arnhem Land (1935-37, 1942-43), and from the Great Sandy Desert and the Gibson Desert of Western Australia (1957, 1963, 1965). Over 800 objects from the Solomon Islands and West Papua were collected during Thomson's WW2 service (1940-43). The document and manuscript material includes over 2,500 pages of handwritten, unpublished field notes with 7000 typed foolscap pages of transcriptions, a total of 378 scientific illustrations of biological specimens and anthropological objects, over 260 sets of maps, copies of Thomson's published and unpublished articles, and an archive of newspaper clippings. The audiovisual component includes approximately 11,000 images on glass plate, negative and nitrate formats, 25,000 feet of colour film and numerous reel-to-reel audio tapes.

Significance

The Donald Thomson Collection has two main components, the Ethnographic collection, which has been on long-term loan to Museum Victroia from the University of Melbourne since 1973 and the Ethnohistory collection, also on long term loan to the Museum from the Thomson family since 1973. 

For sheer quantity and diversity it ranks amongst the most important anthropological collections in the world, and in 2008 the ethnohistoric component was inscribed onto the Australian Memory of the World Register.

The collection's strength lies in the detailed documentation linking objects, images, language and customary practice, economics, trade and knowledge of the natural world. Thomson sought to create a collection that was representative of all aspects of life. He documented the sophistication and specialisation associated with creating the material world and its distinctions that reflect the age, status and gender of its user or maker. He further documented and collected those aspects that reveal the influences of outsiders demonstrating the capacity of Aboriginal societies to adapt to change, in stark contrast to the stereotypical view of Indigenous Australians as 'stone age' people.

In 2019 The University of  Melbourne advised the Museum that they will recalling the loan and by December 2023 the entire ethnographic collection was relocated by UoM staff to their own storage facility. The Thomson family also decided to recall the ethnohistory collection loan and subsequently donated the collection to the University. The latter was also relocated by the University of Melbourne staff from Melbourne Museum by October 2024.