ABSTRACT
The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was particularly designed to restrict Asian immigration. After the Second World War the federal government initiated a massive and unprecedented immigration programme to fulfil its post-war reconstruction aims to boost the population and develop Australian industry. One primarily seeks to represent Australia's cultural diversity as integral to its national identity through collection and exhibition strategies that focus on the value of different that is non-Anglo-ethnic cultures. In 1986, Australia's first migration museum, the Migration and Settlement Museum, opened in Adelaide, South Australia. Textile Traditions is a model of what became a longstanding and widespread approach to representing migration through culture, particularly 'different' cultures. In 1998 Australia's second migration museum, the Immigration Museum, opened in Melbourne. The new museum's displays were in many ways updated versions of the South Australian Migration Museum's initial 1986 approach.
