State Library of New South WalesSydney CBD
200th Anniversary Exhibitions: Amaze Gallery
Marking the Library's bicentenary, over 200 items on display including the Endeavour journals and a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta.
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The Library's smallest item is here: the Lord's Prayer, printed in a book 6mm square. It shares a wall of curiosities with 1960s bread wrappers a teenager collected, a lock of Mary Shelley's hair and fruit stickers gathered in Mona Vale in 2008 and 2009. Peel the sticker off your next Woolies banana with some respect.
The rest of the Amaze Gallery holds about 200 items picked from roughly six million. The curators pair old and new rather than isolating treasures: Karla Dickens' 2018 work Rum Runners sits among First Fleet journals, and William T Cooper's bird and plant paintings hang beside the earliest European drawings made on Gadigal land. You also get both volumes of Joseph Banks' Endeavour journal and a book of statutes copied around 1330 that contains Magna Carta.
Entry is free, on Level 1 of the Mitchell Building, and the galleries stay open until 8pm Monday to Thursday. The free Bloomberg Connects app has a self-guided tour in over 40 languages.
Look for
The 6mm Lord's Prayer
Look in the curiosity cabinet for the Library's smallest item, a printed Lord's Prayer in a book measuring 6mm by 6mm.
The hair jewellery
A gold brooch holding a lock of Sir Henry Parkes' hair, and a snake whose body is woven from hair, clutching a locket of plaited hair.
Hargrave's Diagram IX
Lawrence Hargrave drew himself in a harness slung under the bottom kite, recording the 4.8 metre lift he got at Stanwell Park in 1894.
Collard's ball for Governor FitzRoy
A chandelier-lit room near Port Macquarie in 1847, full of men in tails and women in swirling skirts, painted by Anna Sarah Rachel Collard.
The Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle
The first Aboriginal newspaper, handwritten from 1836 to 1838 by teenagers Thomas Brune and Walter George Arthur, beside the first Sydney Gazette.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Also at State Library of New South Wales
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Image credits
7
- Nolan: OriginsCourtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales
- Portia Geach Memorial Award 2026Courtesy of S.H. Ervin Gallery
- State Library of New South WalesBidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museum of SydneyElekhh, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Hyde Park BarracksJ Bar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Art Gallery of New South WalesBidgee / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 AU
- Justice & Police Museumsv1ambo, CC BY 2.0