Music curatorship spans the care and exhibition of musical instruments and related material culture in museums, archives and libraries, as well as the technological aspects of audiovisual archiving, storage and metadata. It focuses on the long-term preservation of musical resources in collections and memory institutions, and on developing innovative platforms for public engagement with them. Student opportunities in this field include potential research placements with major memory institutions such as the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).

Research in this area is also supported by our exceptional collection of musical instruments from throughout history and around the world, which includes full sets of West African Ewe and Ashanti drums, Thai and Javanese gamelan orchestras, South Indian and East Asian percussion, and Australia’s largest collection of antique and reproduction Western keyboards, guitars and wind instruments.