National Museum of Australia director Mat Trinca delivers blockbuster farewell

There were ‘mixed emotions’ for National Museum of Australia director Mat Trinca on Thursday as he launched his final blockbuster after 10 years of running the Canberra institution.

NMA director Mat Trinca with Discovering Ancient Egypt curator Daniel Soliman in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

There were “mixed emotions” for National Museum of Australia director Mat Trinca on Thursday as he launched his final blockbuster – a trove of Ancient Egyptian treasures – after 10 years of running the Canberra institution.

The NMA’s longest-serving director, 59, is stepping down this week, having lifted visitor numbers by almost 50 per cent, completed the history museum’s biggest redevelopment and expanded its offering of homegrown, touring and imported exhibitions.

“This has been the most extraordinary job to have had,’’ said Trinca, who takes up a professorship at the Australian National University’s Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies in 2024.

The NMA’s latest blockbuster, Discovering Ancient Egypt, is its first collaboration with the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, and features more than 200 objects, including mummies in their original bandages, elaborately decorated coffins, a 4000-year-old table on which offerings to the dead were made and everyday items including bronze handheld mirrors.

“I feel very fortunate to be ending my time at the museum by opening this exhibition,’’ said Trinca. “It’s a knockout.’’

Daniel Soliman, curator of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities’ Egyptian and Nubian collections, attended the Canberra launch and said his institution’s holdings comprised “one of the foremost Ancient Egyptian collections outside Egypt’’.

He said the exhibition, which included ancient “masterpieces”, involved “careful communication and collaboration’’ between teams of experts in The Netherlands and Australia. The exhibition, he said, “shows visitors everything from the grandiose to the intimate”, and was “tailor-made” for the NMA.

A similar version of Discovering Ancient Egypt had already toured to Japan, Korea and the Western Australian Museum, he said. After the show’s Canberra season, it will move to Brisbane.

A 4000-year-old Eleventh Dynasty model boat.

Trinca denied he was worried about competition from the Australian Museum’s Ramses blockbuster in Sydney, which opened recently and sold almost 100,000 advance tickets. (A third ancient Egypt blockbuster, Pharaoh, which is drawn from the British Museum, will open at the National Gallery of Victoria in mid-2024.)

The NMA director said Ancient Egypt had appealed to ­people’s “collective imagination” for centuries, and marketing for the overlapping Sydney and Canberra shows would boost attendances at both exhibitions.

In a statement, NMA chair Ben Maguire paid tribute to Trinca and how his “vision and leadership have taken the organisation to new heights’’. Maguire said Trinca, who has worked at the museum for 20 years, boosted visitor numbers, forged collaborations with prestigious institutions including the British Museum and National Museum of China, and steered “the institution through difficult economic and social challenges, including Covid-19 closures’’.

Trinca said pandemic shutdowns were “incredibly difficult” for the museum, while serious funding shortages were only resolved this year when the federal government increased the budgets of national cultural institutions.

He listed among high points of his tenure the 2020 acquisition of late businessman Trevor Kennedy’s $15m collection of Australian historical treasures, “probably the greatest collection of Australiana that was in private hands’’.

He also mentioned the 2015-16 Encounters collaboration with the British Museum.

Rosemary Neill flew to Canberra with the assistance of the NMA