Director's Choice

National Museum of Australia

Yumari, 1981 by UtaUtaTjangala

This painting was displayed in Dreamings exhibition in New York in 1988,an event seminal in the international recognition of Aboriginal art. Yumari combines several Dreamings that pass through the artist’s country. The painting’s title refers to the resting place of the Old Man, whose body formed the rock waterhole, but it is perhaps more appropriately entitled Short Legs, the Dreaming incarnation of the artist himself. Photo: NMA.

Cast of the fossilised bones of the Australian Muttaburrasaurus dinosaur

Muttaburrasaurus lived about 100–110 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, when Australia was part of the Gondwana supercontinent. It was a herbivore that probably fed on the conifer forests growing on the margins of the Eromanga Sea, which occupied much of inland eastern Australia at this time.Photo: NMA.

Molly Goodall’s 1955 FJ Holden and the Propert Company’s 1950s ‘Trailaway’ caravan

Together these two vehicles represent Australia’s changing patterns of leisure in the 1950s, with the availability of Australian made cars like the Holden, and the increasing popularity of caravanning holidays. Photo: NMA.