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In 1958 Elizabeth Hahn (pictured top, centre) was offered the job of Curator of the Macleay Museum. At just 19 years of age she was the youngest person and first woman to be offered this role by her Zoology lecturers, who had overseen her work as a laboratory assistant and recognised her potential. Within a year they were writing to Senate that 鈥淢iss Elizabeth Hahn, is by far the most active and interested Curator the Museum has had for years鈥�.

In the four and a half years she worked at the Macleay, Elizabeth transformed the Museum in both practical ways (introducing pest regimes, lighting, hot water and phone lines, a cupboard for the 鈥榦ver-flowing鈥� fish collection, typewriters, assistants and even paper-lining the Macleay cases) and purposeful ones (publishing, curating, photographing, installing and labelling exhibitions and cataloguing well over 200,000 animals). With characteristic good humour and tenacity, she did all this whilst continuing a loan program that that allowed 2000 international research specialists access to specimens. She never returned to work in museums but continued to pursue her love of history, people and science throughout her life.听

- Jude Philp,听Senior Curator, Macleay Collections

Though none have yet been given the head role, many women have contributed to the Nicholson Collection鈥檚 160-year history of research, cataloguing, teaching, publication and management. One of the first was Louisa MacDonald (pictured top, left), who moved to Sydney in 1891, to take up the new position of Principal of Women's College, University of Sydney, which opened the following year. A trained classicist and former British Museum researcher and teacher, it was natural Louisa sought out the Nicholson Collection. During the late 1890s there was no formal curator of the Nicholson Museum. Rather, the museum was managed by a board of three Professors: Walter Scott, George Wood and Edgeworth David.

During this time, Louisa took on the monumental task of cataloguing and researching the Nicholson鈥檚 classical antiquities. Her work resulted in the first comprehensive research published on this part of the collection, a text titled Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases and of the Greek and Roman Lamps in the Nicholson Museum and published by the University of Sydney in 1898. Louisa鈥檚 work on the Italian and Greek material helped introduce the colonial collection to a global audience. Her catalogue remained the definitive work on the classical collections until the publication of the 鈥楬andbook to the Nicholson Museum鈥� by AD Trendall in 1948.

- Candace Richards, Assistant Curator, Nicholson Collection

One of Sydney's lesser-known modernist artists, Alison Rehfisch (1900鈥�1975, pictured top, right) was born in Sydney in 1900 and received early artistic encouragement from her mother, also an artist. After school she enrolled at Julian Ashton鈥檚 art school and went on to hold her first exhibition with Dora Jarrett in 1929 and began exhibiting with the Society of Artists in 1931. She worked closely with fellow modernists听,听,听听补苍诲听. From 1933鈥�38 she lived Europe and studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, London and exhibiting at the Society of Women Artists, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the British Empire Society in England, and in Paris with the Soci茅t茅 Nationale des Beaux Arts. She spent time in Spain, France and Germany.

Returning to Sydney she married fellow painter George Duncan (1904鈥�1974) and they exhibited regularly with Macquarie Galleries. In 1947 their studio was destroyed by fire, Rehfrish losing around 200 paintings. Duncan died from cancer in 1974 and bereft and with failing eyesight, Rehfrish took her own life in 1975. She is remembered for her unapologetic use of colour and carefully considered flower paintings, landscapes and still-life compositions. The University Art Collection acquired the celebratory 鈥楶arty Time鈥� in 2011 through the听Hon R P Meagher bequest.听

- Katrina Liberiou, Assistant Curator, Art Collection

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Top images (L-R):听Louisa Macdonald, 1982. Photography by Kerry & Co., 308 George St, Sydney (State Library NSW, P1/1055); Elizabeth Hahn;听Alison Rehfisch, image published in Rachel Power,听Alison Rehfisch: A life for art, The Beagle Press Sydney, 2002.