The Commonwealth nation of Papua New Guinea is the world’s youngest democracy and commemorates its 50th year from 16 September 2025 to 16 September 2026.
The Chau Chak Wing Museum will join selected museums and cultural institutions around the world to celebrate via an online exhibition; WanBel: a PNG Collective Global Exhibition. Each month we will be highlighting items from our collection via social media, presenting a number of public programming events and Pop-Up Museums to celebrate.
WanBel is a landmark exhibition organized by the Mariwai Project in partnership with the National Museum and Art Gallery and the PNG National Cultural Commission, which commemorates Papua New Guinea’s 50th Anniversary of Independence. It highlights the culture of PNG through a growing network which already includes nearly 40 international museums across 13 countries, presenting PNG’s art and objects through diverse displays, educational programs, and cultural exchanges. The project includes a central digital platform that unites high-quality images, videos, and 3D scans of PNG cultural objects, enhancing global accessibility and engagement. WanBel also brings the exhibition experience back to PNG through immersive outdoor media and projections,encouraging local connection to cultural roots and ensuring a lasting online legacy of PNG’s artistic heritage worldwide.
The Chau Chak Wing Museum's connections with the peoples of Papua New Guinea began in the 1870s. Today, we look after and learn from over 7,000 cultural, photographic and natural history objects. These were acquired from colonists, administrators, missionaries, and University academics – often in ways that we would not condone today. By the late 1970s we also received donations and gifts directly from Papua New Guineans. We thank the peoples of PNG for guiding our curators over the decades to see and understand these collections differently.
This exhibition predominantly takes place via our online channels. Please see links below to follow:
Visit our Talks and Events page to see upcoming public programming related to this exhibition.
Visit our Pop-Up Museum page to see upcoming activations related to this exhibition.
Online exhibition
16 September 2025 – 16 September 2026
This exhibition predominantly takes place via our online channels. Please see links below to follow:
Holotype Paradisaea Raggiana. Photo credit: Matteo Sicios/ Giacomo Doria Natural History Museum.
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LinkStory by Jude Philp (Senior Curator, Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum) with Giuliano Doria (Director, Giacomo Doria Natural History Museum) and Maria Camilla De Palma (Director, Castello D'Albertis Museo delle Culture del Mondo).
It is January 1873, and an Italian collector, Luigi Maria D’Albertis, was travelling from West Papua to Sydney in the Italian corvette Vettor Pisani. On the way they anchored for a few nights close to Dufaure island at Orangerie Bay and were visited each day by men and women who canoed out from the shore. One of the trade items offered to the Europeans were bird skins. One bird excited and surprised D’Albertis, it was a kind of bird of paradise he had never seen before in museum collections or during his two years in West Papua.
D’Albertis was concerned that the skin was prepared in the style used for trade along that coast, it didn’t have all the features D’Albertis wanted to record (like the feet). But the bird skin was so important to European knowledge that it became the international reference specimen for the name that D’Albertis chose: ‘Paradisaea Raggiana’.
Today this kind of kumul is a symbol of independent Papua New Guinea. Lovingly prepared by a person from Milne Bay Province it still looks fresh today. We celebrate the ways that our knowledge comes together in this bird. Preserved in Genoa, Italy for 152 years, this kumul connects all people of Papua New Guinea together, and is part of a shared history connecting the people from across the world with the people of Papua New Guinea.
Happy independence from Genoa’s Giuliano Doria, Director of the Giacomo Doria Natural History Museum and Maria Camilla De Palma Director at Castello D’Albertis Museo delle Culture del Mondo which shows to the world the cultural diversity of PNG collected by D’Albertis and his cousin Enrio.
Header image: PNG national crest, 1971-5, Papua New Guinea; carved and painted wood. Collected by Malcolm Wright, an Australian Colonial administrator in PNG. Wright started service as a Patrol Officer in the 1930s, served during WWII, and ended his career as District Officer of Bougainville. Donated by his daughter, Robyn Lee 2022. Chau Chak Wing Museum, ET2022.23.
The crest features a stylised Raggiana Bird of Paradise, a carved spear, and Kundu drum. It was developed in the early 1970s and reconfirmed as the national crest in 1975.
Phone: +61 2 93512812
Email: ccwm.info@sydney.edu.au
Chau Chak Wing Museum
University Place
Camperdown NSW 2050
