Topic

Sydney’s first theatre was said to be opened in 1796 and was managed by Robert Sidaway.

We hold one of Australia’s largest collections of performing arts materials.

The Library is unable to provide specialist advice about how to care for personal or family archives, but there are a number of resources which can help.

Topic

The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and its principal Sydney-based artists - Julian Ashton, A. Henry Fullwood and Frank Mahony - transformed the way settler colonial Australia was seen both here and around the world.

About 15,000 books and pamphlets. The great strength of the collection is in Pacific voyages and early Australiana with many very rare items. Also manuscripts including papers of Joseph Banks, maps and pictures.

PhotoAccess tutors Eunie and Claire led a hands-on cyanotype printing workshop inspired by the Fit to Print exhibition.

About 440 books published by William Pickering between 1820 and 1854 including reprints of classics and 17th-century Anglican religious works, plus contemporary writers of his time.

Our rich and varied Pictures collection focuses on Australian people, places and events, from early European exploration of the South Pacific to contemporary events.

Lavishly illustrated travel books had long been popular in Europe and North America when the same American team that produced Picturesque Canada established the Picturesque Atlas Publishing Company in Wynyard Square, Sydney, on Gadigal Country, in 1885.

Comics-journalist and cartoonist Sam Wallman presented a lecture on his 2023 Creative Arts Fellowship research into the Pink and Green Bans movement and how it will contribute to a new artwork celebrating the 1970s coalition of blue collar union workers and LGBTIQA+ people.