Established in 1891, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery is one of Lanceston's premier cultural landmarks and is Australia's largest museum, not located in a metropolitan city. The museum houses a magnificent collection of colonial and modern art, exhibits on Tasmanian history and the history of natural science, with a particularly valuable zoological collection.
One of the most interesting exhibits is an authentic Chinese temple that was built in the 19th century by Chinese tin mine workers. There's also a working planetarium and an entire 19th century railway depot. In the museum's collections is the unique Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honour, which was awarded posthumously to Australian sergeant Lewis McGee of the World War I.
The museum's collections are housed in two buildings: a purpose-built building in Queen's Park and the former railway depot at Inveresk. One third of the impressive former depot space is now occupied by an art gallery, the rest of the premises are given over to the Academy of Arts, a joint brainchild of the University of Tasmania and the Polytechnic University. Here you can see dinosaur skeletons, Tasmanian Aboriginal postmortem masks and constellations of the southern sky.
