ABSTRACT
Of all the many commemorations of Phar Lap, the mighty 1930s racehorse, why consider his stuff ed hide on display in Melbourne Museum?3 Other original relics of the horse exist elsewhere: his skeleton in Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington and his heart in the National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Other Phar Lap memorabilia and artefacts in Melbourne Museum and on its website could draw our attention.4 And other representations of the horse, multiple in scope and location, including fi lms, statues, postage stamps, books, web sites and illustrations tell compelling stories. Yet, as the opening comments suggest, the exhibited horse in Melbourne has long exerted a strong pull-pulling in adoring visitors, pulling apart offi cial and personal meanings, and pulling at museum rationales and orthodoxies. As a popular, dynamic and contested drawcard, Phar Lap reveals museums as places of ‘fl ux’, sites ‘in which “culture” can be made and remade in diff erent ways’ and off ers as much about museums, museology, memory and meanings as it does about the long-dead animal himself.5
