Museums - Dorman Museum

Founded by Sir Arthur Dorman in 1904, the Dorman Museum is one of three institutions run by the Middlesbrough Museums & Galleries Service of Middlesbrough Borough Council, along with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, with which the Dorman Museum shares certain collections. Though initially focused on geology, biology, and other natural sciences, the museum's holdings have come to include additional collections in pottery, local history, archaeology and ethnography, costume, and more. Having undergone a period of refurbishment, the museum reopened in 2003.
The Dorman Museum's ethnographic collection, which originated in the colonial era, numbers around 1,500 artifacts from around the world. Important donations of material from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and South Africa were made by George Lockwood Dorman, and a collection of northeast African beadwork was donated by Sir Alfred Pease. The Museum Service's most notable ethnographic collection is of Aboriginal artifacts, some of which were collected by G. L. Dorman and Dr. Weatherill, the remainder being donations from the Aboriginal Arts Board of Australia. At the time of its donation in 1980, the latter group constituted the largest collection of Aboriginal material outside Australia.