Museums Victoria

Museums Victoria, founded in 1854, is Australia’s largest public museum organisation. As the State museum for Victoria it is responsible for looking after the State Collection, conducting research and providing cultural and science programs for the people of Victoria and visitors from interstate and overseas.

Museums Victoria operates a collection storage facility, three public museums – Melbourne Museum, Scienceworks, and the Immigration Museum – and is custodian for the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building. Within Melbourne Museum, the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Centre empowers Aboriginal Australians to interpret their own cultural heritage, for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Museums Victoria staff and students undertake high-quality research on historical and contemporary issues in the fields of science, history and technology, and Indigenous cultures, based on a world-class collection of an estimated 15 million items. Zoological and palaeontological research at Museums Victoria focuses on taxonomy, including documenting diversity within and between populations of species, and understanding the origins, evolution and biogeographical distribution of the Australasian fauna. Integration of information from all these sources contributes to debate and planning for species conservation and ecosystem management.

Museums Victoria Collections provides access to over 1.05 million specimen records from our zoology, palaeontology and geology collections as well as information about our extensive humanities collections.

Museums Victoria is one of the founding partners of the Atlas of Living Australia and contributes data to it via the Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums (OZCAM), an initiative of the Council of Heads of Australian Museums (CHAFC).