The things I think are so often swept away by the current, forgotten or lost in an unnamed space, unmarked on charts of other places. My thoughts are messages that sometimes sink, or drift to be washed up on a distant shore.

The things I think bob and jostle. They are a flotilla of tiny craft. They are an unstable raft on which to journey, on which to look back to where I've been, on which to stand and be seen.

– Patrick Hall, 2012

The Museum Cart is an object like no other: inquisitive, non-possessive, evolving, eclectic. It speaks to the collector in many of us, and the desire – individually and culturally – to be remembered.

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s Centre for Learning and Discovery commissioned the piece from well-known Tasmanian artist, Patrick Hall, in order to actively engage visitors – particularly younger visitors.

In many ways the cart, and its companion piece – the Art Cart – reflect the core of the Shaping Tasmania: A journey in 100 objects project. It asks, in one interactive artwork: what it is that museums can say of a culture – our culture – of Tasmania?