The John and Jacqui Mullen Collection
Now on display as part of the Under Southern Skies exhibition, the John and Jacqui Mullen Collection offers a rare window into the European quest to discover and understand the imagined ‘Great South Land’. Through an extraordinary collection of rare manuscripts, books, maps and navigational instruments, visitors can trace how explorers, cartographers and naturalists recorded and interpreted Australia and the wider Pacific region.
The exhibition features some of the earliest maps and descriptions of ‘New Holland’ and its First Nations peoples, silver dinner plates that once belonged to Viscount Sydney, after whom the city is named, and lavishly illustrated accounts of two early nineteenth-century French expeditions. Together, these remarkable objects illuminate the curiosity, ambition and shifting understandings that shaped European perceptions of the southern hemisphere.
Generously donated by John Mullen AM and Jacqui Mullen through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, the collection is exhibited with the support of the Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation.
‘Jacqui and I are delighted that this collection will now belong to the Australian people and be cared for by the Australian National Maritime Museum. These objects and manuscripts tell extraordinary stories about how the world came to understand this continent and its peoples, and we hope they will inspire curiosity, research and reflection for generations to come.’
John Mullen AM
Shipwrecks, museums and a passion for collecting
John Mullen AM has been a guiding influence in maritime archaeology and at the Australian National Maritime Museum for more than 15 years. He has been intimately involved in the museum’s development, first as Chair of the museum’s Foundation (2016–19) and on the museum’s Council, and for the past six years, as Chair of the Council.
His passion for maritime history extends over four decades and he has spent much of his spare time diving for early shipwrecks, and collecting historical material from early maritime voyages to the Pacific, with a personal collection which includes some 2,500 items.
Featured object - Six Sheet Map of the World updated with Sir Edmund Halley’s celestial observations (1720)
This is a rare surviving 18th century world map and an exceptional example of the cartographic art. It was published in Amsterdam in 1720 by Frederick de Wit (c 1629-c 1706) and, importantly, includes the findings of Sir Edmund Halley (1656-1742).
A skilled cartographer, by 1680 De Wit was producing finely detailed world maps in atlases as well as large single sheets. This map shows the world known to European maritime powers at the beginning of the 18th century and, importantly, documents the discoveries by 16th and 17th century explorers, including Magellan, Tasman, Mendaña and Le Maire. This edition includes the findings of Sir Edmund Halley, one of Britain’s leading astronomers and natural philosophers. Fascinated by the night sky, he published star charts and, on a 1680 ‘grand tour’ of Europe, observed the first recorded appearance of a bright comet that would later be named after him.
Now on display
The exhibition includes some of the earliest maps and descriptions of ‘New Holland’ and its First Nations peoples, silver dinner plates that had once belonged to Viscount Sydney after whom our city is named, and lavishly illustrated accounts of two early 19th century French expeditions.
