An Antipodean Attica

ABSTRACT The Lady Franklin Museum at Ancanthe, near Hobart, is a pivotal building. It represents a conscious attempt by Jane Franklin to evoke Attica in Australia, an important essay in the Greek Revival by James Blackburn, and a key element in Hardy Wilson’s interpretation of classicism in Australia. In its conception and its realisation it was enmeshed with two other projects—the unrealised scheme for St John’s College, New Norfolk, and the realised but mauled portico on the Government Offices in Hobart. All three were involved in the conflict between Blackburn’s Greek Revival and the collegiate Gothic espoused by the incoming Colonial Architect W. P. Kay. Historically the Museum, which was first conceived as a “glyptothek” and then as a natural history museum, is a core element in the development of the Tasmanian Society of Natural History and its successor the Royal Society of Tasmania.