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Te Papa Honours 40 Years of New Zealand Chinese Diplomacy

19 April 2012 – 11.51am

新西兰国家博物馆庆祝新西兰与中国建交40周年

As the New Zealand and Chinese Governments mark the fortieth anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations, the National Museums of New Zealand and China are set to strengthen the bonds of the two cultures as they prepare to exchange exhibitions.

An announcement about forthcoming exchanges was made when Te Papa welcomed His Excellency Mr Jia Qinglin, Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference with a powhiri.

Te Papa Chief Executive Michael Houlihan told Chairman Jia and his delegation that sharing exhibitions will benefit New Zealand’s profile in China, and China’s in New Zealand.

“Our Beijing-based exhibitions Kura Pounamu and Brian Brake: Lens on China and New Zealand will deepen the cultural connections and understanding between our two nations. These exhibitions also share the stories behind some ofNew Zealand’s most significant cultural treasures,” says Mr Houlihan.

Michael Houlihan presented Chairman Jia with a gift of pounamu, symbolising the friendships and growing cultural links between the peoples of New Zealand and China.

“In bringing exhibits from the National Museum of China, Te Papa is looking forward to giving New Zealanders greater insight and deeper understanding into five thousand years of Chinese history and civilisation,” says Mr Houlihan.

Kura Pounamu and Brian Brake: Lens on China and New Zealand will open at the National Museum of China in November 2012. Following that the National Museum of China will be bringing an exhibition to Te Papa.

His Excellency Mr Jia Qinglin and Hon Minister Dr Pita Sharples sharing a hongi on Te Papa's Marae. Photograph courtesy of the Xinhua News Agency.

His Excellency Mr Jia Qinglin and Hon Minister Dr Pita Sharples sharing a hongi on Te Papa’s Marae. Photograph courtesy of the Xinhua News Agency.

正值新西兰政府与中国政府庆祝两国建交40周年之际，新西兰国家博物馆和中国国家博物馆决定通过互办展览的形式进一步加深两国文化交流。

近日，新西兰国家博物馆为前来参访的中国全国政协主席贾庆林举行了毛利传统欢迎仪式，并在仪式上宣布了两国互办展览的消息。

新西兰国家博物馆馆长胡历瀚向贾庆林主席代表团一行表示，互办展览将有助于提升两国在对方国家的形象。

“即将在北京举办的《毛利玉—新西兰的传世珍宝》和《布莱恩·布瑞克：镜头里的中国和新西兰》展览将进一步深化两国的文化交流和互信。这些展品也将向中国人民展示新西兰一些最为独特的文化瑰宝背后的故事，” 胡历瀚说。

胡历瀚馆长向贾庆林主席赠送了一块毛利玉作为礼品，象征了新中两国人民的友谊和两国日益紧密的文化交流。

“新西兰国家博物馆希望通过展出中国国家博物馆的展品，使新西兰民众更深入地了解中国5000年的悠久历史和文化”， 胡历瀚说。

《毛利玉—新西兰的传世珍宝》和《布莱恩·布瑞克：镜头里的中国和新西兰》展览将于2012年11月在中国国家博物馆展出。之后，中国国家博物馆将在新西兰国家博物馆举办展览。

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Wellingtonians – Save our Services with a Council Submission

17 April 2012 – 11.05am

As you’ve now heard, Te Papa is calling on its Wellington ratepayers to support our services by making official council submissions.

Wellington City Council has an interactive website where you can make official submissions online.

Remember, when you’re filling in the Online Submission Form – Wellington City Council classes Te Papa as a Visitor Attraction that develops Wellington’s economy so the key points we are encouraging ratepayers to support us with are:

  • The WCC should maintain Te Papa’s funding at $2.25 million per year. Funding should not be decreased.
  •  Wellington should support Te Papa as a major visitor attraction for the city that draws in tourists
  • Te Papa is the most popular activity destination in Wellington City.
  • 96% of Wellington City visitors come back more than twice and 60% visit 5 or more times every year.
  • Te Papa sustains employment equivalent to almost 1,500 Wellington city jobs annually

Also – thousands of you have told us what makes Te Papa special, we would also love you to tell the council that, take a moment to write about your special Te Papa experience and favourite Te Papa facilities in the comments boxes on the website or in your written submission.

Again, we’ve said it a lot, but we’ll say it again – the outpouring of support we have had through this campaign has been amazing. You’ve given us thousands of great ideas and messages of support, and we are truly grateful.

We are proud to provide services (childhood learning experiences, regular exhibition changes, Wellington Free days) to our local communities and want to be able to continue them.

And – here’s the latest from the SOS – Save our Services Board

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Wellingtonians – Tell your council to Save Te Papa – here’s why!

16 April 2012 – 2.04pm

Firstly, a huge huge HUGE thanks to our visitors who filled out forms and stuck post-its to the SOS – Save Our Services board over the Easter Holiday and Week One of the School Holidays. We are going to take your comments, share them with the community and also take them directly to Wellington City Council.

Wellington City Councillors have said that Te Papa’s funding cut lies in the hands of Wellington ratepayers. We need ratepayers to make official council submissions supporting a return of funding to its pre-cut level of $2.25 million dollars.

Why? Council is keen to get a steer from the community about what it values – and we have thousands of stickies (like this one below) telling us You value Te Papa. We just need you to tell the Council that directly now.

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Some Food for Thought

Council is trying to ensure that residential ratepayers get great Value for Money, which is something we all understand and support. However,  Residential Ratepayers aren’t responsible for the entire Wellington City Council contribution. Te Papa is classed as a Visitor Attraction in Council’s budgets for economic development and this budget is majority funded by the Downtown Levy (a Targeted Rate paid by the owners of commercial, industrial and business properties – check out page 118 of the Draft Annual Plan 2011/12 for more definitions).

Here’s the financial statement from the Wellington Council Draft Annual Plan (City Promotions, Attractions and Events) 2011/12 – In the figures for Funding you’ll notice that Targeted Rates (in this case, the Downtown Levy) contribute more than General Rates – this illustrates that for a fraction of the total Council contribution, residential ratepayers get a great value-for-money service from Te Papa, and its one we are proud to provide.

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So – while the Council’s big theme is ensuring residential ratepayers are being given value for money – we can prove that local Wellingtonians do get that bang for your buck! We’re proud that as Wellington businesses foot the majority of the bill , we’ve helped them by stimulating $59 million in visitor spending, and city residents can access Wellington City Free Days (to our premium exhibitions) and also be the first to enjoy our collections and displays free of charge.

We need our Wellington City ratepayers to tell the council directly – via official council submissions – written submissions open today – to find out more, go to Wellington City Council’s website

With a HUGE thanks from the team at Te Papa

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Taningia danae – a deep sea bioluminescent squid: The Dummies Guide

2 March 2012 – 11.02am

This post is brought to you courtesy of the rivalry and camraderie between Te Papa staff who have science degrees, and those who have arts and business studies degrees!

Earlier this week I was invited over to the cold store at Te Papa’s Natural Environment research centre to document the receipt of a new squid into our collection. Now, my scientific expertise stopped at sixth form chemistry, however that being said – this trip up away from the public relations office rekindled a love for learning about the natural world (notwithstanding my skills being at a very elementary level.)

What makes the Taningia Danae (or Squddly as we affectionately called her) special in this case is that instead of the usual large feeding tentacles one would expect to find, the Taningia has light-producing organs on the end of its. Bruce, our collection manager who hosted this trip, explained that the light-organs are a sort of eye, the light from each relevant tentacle beams out ahead of the squid and it can then sense the proximity of its dinner – much like the beams that guide aircraft or missiles etc.

 

And once the dinner gets into the clutches of the tentacles – what out for those rows of sharp teeth-like hooks!

Bruce was of the opinion that the short tentacles of this particular squid, and the large body was a record for Te Papa, in that one of these relevant dimensions hadn’t been found thus far.

For more information of research done chronicling the Taningia Danae – head to the Cephalopod Page.

 And, this trip wasn’t just restricted to learning about squids – a colleague and I were also given first hand experience of the preparatory work sea-life scientists do to examine their specimens. We had a moment of down-time while Bruce gathered some colleagues to help manoeuvre the squid onto an exam-table, where his colleague Andrew was working through his consignment of new specimens – when he came across a hagfish (made more famous thanks to the work of his colleague Vincent). If you’ve seen the videos already, you’ll know that the hagfish deters its predators through the instantaneous and somewhat explosive propulsion of slime (or more affectionately referred to as snot). Well, it can be a fair assumption that as Hagfishes die through trawling, or other non-being-eaten causes that they die with a certain level of slime/snot still in their bodies.

We discovered first hand just what the snot was like when it froze on the skin of the hagfish. So, the challenge was laid down, from scientists to artsy/businessy types, come and scrape out the snot!

 

Look at that snot! – Of course, what they don’t capture is the moment in which my colleague sighed and said “actually this is quite therapeutic”. And just in case you wanted to know – yes, it felt just like human phlegm.

There’s also video footage, and as soon as I can get the video editing softwares to work, I will post the action shots of the team discussing the find, the preparation of the squid for storage – and the scraping of the snot!

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Its a 14 Year old!!

14 February 2012 – 10.34am

Usually February 14 is a day where the lovers of the world get to indulge their romantic sides in the buying of fine food, nice flowers and maybe even jewellery of sorts, St Valentine’s Day at Te Papa has a second layer of celebration attached.

It’s our birthday!

So, as our social media person posted the great news on twitter – we’ve had some lovely feedback from our friends around the world… and back here in the office, despite there being a lack of birthday cake – discussions have turned to the wonderful world of the 14 year old. And here are a few thoughts to note:

Advice from Mums of 14 year olds:

  • “Follow your dreams; don’t worry what others think of you”
  • “Enjoy these years, you look fabulous”
  • *thump thump thump* ‘GET OUT OF THE BATHROOM”

Recollections of former 14 years olds:

  • Obsessions with labelled clothing
  • Being embarrassed by Mum and Dad
  • Developing a rebellious streak

Advice to the parents of 14 year olds

  • “its just a phase, they’ll grow”

In Te Papa’s first 14 years, we’ve grown up, our personality is developing, we’re finding new friends and interests. There’s a long way to go, and just like your 14 year old son/daughter/niece/nephew/YOU … Te Papa continues to need nuturing, friendship, guidance, excitement and interaction.

So, Happy B-day Te Papa … and thanks to our friends all overWellington, NZ and the World for sharing life with us this far.

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And here’s a wee selection of happy bday messages via Twitter

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Te Papa North – Now that’s got your attention…

22 November 2011 – 2.20pm

Okay, so the media have called me non-committal in the past week (and my friends have been ribbing me about the “real” reason why Im single, oh ha ha indeed) – and with good reason. Consider this the official PR spin from the Te Papa Museum Building at this point in time, but the concept idea of a facility in Auckland that could potentially host items in the national collection is very interesting, surely sharing the national collection, and the expertise of the people caring for and learning from the collection is a good thing huh?

You’d think so, however a dichotomy of response has become evident in the responses of the public to the media articles.

On one hand there was the argument to legitimise the superiority of an Auckland based location based on localised population – the term “400000 vs 1400000″ has been used a lot this week, versus the supremacy of all things “National” being housed in nations’ capital cities. Secondly there’s been the perennial criticism about Te Papa being an amusement park and not a “real” museum, based on peoples’ experience.

And from my last post – thanks to those of you who responded, there’s interest in our collection from kiwis who live outside of the capital – so even further impetus to be supporting the out-of-Wellington crowd!

These arguments intimate that there is a school of thought out there that a collection must be housed in a Te Papa kind-of place, and just where it should be is based on it being accessible to a large number of people.

Little has been said about the collection – the treasures that Te Papa houses, and as TV3 shared last week – we house a great percentage that don’t get to see the light of day due to space and display constraints and other things as well (sometimes people who donate to us don’t want to have their treasures displayed)… and then there are the taonga that are displayed, but not on Wellington’s waterfront.

And this is the point of today’s blogpost (I knew we’d get there eventually). Today’s question … why should Te Papa’s display be restricted to its facility on Cable Street Wellington, or to any facility named Te Papa (ie Te Papa North)?

The point I’m going to proffer is, that as long as a collection is accessible to as many people as possible – then where its housed should not matter at all, right?

One way that collections are shared with greater numbers of people than could visit Wellington’s stunning waterfront is to take collections “on-the-road”. Currently Te Papa has items from its collections being toured around the world. For instance the exhibition E Tu Ake has been repackaged as Maori, les tresors on une ame, or Their Treasures with Soul and is now wowing audiences in France. You may recall that Te Papa set up the Treaty 2 U exhibition to help educate people around New Zealand about our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi.

Should we do more of this in NZ?

What do you think of pop-up-museums? This is something that Te Papa hasn’t yet discussed, but should we be thinking about this… taking bits of the collection on the road … teaming with a theme. Yes the idea is vague, but what would possible viewers like to see, small touring exhibitions open for a limited time? Would you go to one? … Its like the pop-up mall in Christchurch’s city centre, the focus there is getting the public out and enjoying their city again and supporting local retailers without relying on buildings in the interim. Well a pop-up collaboration involving Te Papa could do something similar, helping communities interact with our collection, partnering with groups all over New Zealand and telling the NZ History story, through the national collection.

My email address mediaenquiry@tepapa.govt.nz or leave a comment below

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Is Te Papa Your Friend or Foe?

11 November 2011 – 8.46am

Well, Kia Ora everyone – Firstly, I’d like to introduce myself, I’m Filipo Katavake-McGrath, the communications person here at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa and you can find out more about me here

 I’m going to start up a discussion, the first of many for the next year … basically I’d like to keep tabs on what our blog-readers, friends, cohorts think about the online experience with Te Papa.

 SO… QUESTION ONE:  Tell me about what Te Papa means to you? Is it a friend? A foe? Does it excite you? Does Te Papa really p**s you off at times? Is there some other way you express what it means? Does it not really mean that much to you at all?

 And… why? Why do you feel the way you do about Te Papa (or not?)

 Think of this as an informal conversation, hopefully I’ll get some comments which will generate new strands of discussion and also hopefully in the mix I’ll throw in some crazy ideas as problem-solving suggestions (my colleagues are quickly realising, I’m the crazy ideas guy).

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: 1) Answer the questions … just get it off your chest… don’t be afraid to say what you feel (I know the majority of us kiwi’s don’t do that we just simmer never get it out … just say it!)

2) Be honest – if there’s something negative, say it but don’t say it for rudeness sake, explain why you feel that way as a member of the community who relates with Te Papa.

3) Don’t be a hater – don’t denigrate the responses of other people, our webmaster team will take care of clearly abusive responses… keep our eyes on the prize (sharing our views).

4) And if you want to say something, but don’t want everyone to see it… you can email it to me mediaenquiry@tepapa.govt.nz put Blog Response in the subject line

 Go to it, hope to hear from you all soon… ‘Lipo :o )

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Tape Art at Te Papa … all gone, but wow, what a picture!

5 October 2011 – 6.41am

Woops, yep sorry its a day or two late – however Te Papa would love to say a huge thanks to our visiting artists Erica and Struan – whose Tape Art adorned our whare over the weekend past and was pulled down amid the wind and rain on Monday.

But before we bid Tape art goodbye, here’s a couple of pics from its last few hours before it was torn down.

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Day Two: We have a Lighthouse!

30 September 2011 – 1.05pm

There’s no better way to capitalise on Wellington’s famous sunny day conditions than to continue building on the tape art experience from Day 1, and set against the backdrop of an inspiring blue sky above Whānganui a Tāra (Wellington Harbour) the tape art of Erica Duthie and Struan Ashby continues. And while yesterday it was pretty close to ground level with people and a hill being taped-up… today, enter in two cranes hoisting our artists to much loftier heights than yesterdays ladders could reach.

When today’s photos were taken, groups of school children off all ages were running past already itching to play with the tape – however, security bollards around the big cranes put paid to their little plans… but only for a short time we promise!

And on the wall – a hill, which on it sits a huge (4 story tall) lighthouse, and when I was walking past – a basket with people inside (above which I hope will be a hot-air baloon, OR some other mode of transport).

So, the plan is that the sand-coloured wall immediately to the left of the main doors to Te Papa will be covered in tape art… and it will be joined by more tape art on the grey wall to the right of the main doors this weekend – and at the end of the project, the tape will be torn down by members of the public (more or less, anyone who wants to come along and deinstall it).

Question – have you been along yet? If not, go – grab some pics of yourself there, add them to your own facebook album and then share them to https://www.facebook.com/#!/TePapa
or look out for our our blog on facebook and add your pics in we’d love to share your experiences with the world.

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Tape Art: Day One… it begins!

29 September 2011 – 1.24pm

 

It’s a sunny Thursday with lots of people popping past the front façade of Te Papa. What better conditions in which to transform the exterior walls of the national museum into a piece of impromptu social art. Tape artist Erica Duthie and her partner Struan Ashby will spend the next four days constructing images out of tape on the front walls of Te Papa. Once finished, the art will cover the two walls that create the boundary for the front entrance and forecourt (opposite the Circa Theatre).

Erica’s specialty is portraits of people – and that means everyone’s invited to come down and take a look… and even join in the fun. Here you can see Erica with one of her first portrait subjects Henriette. Both Erica and Struan say having people involved is a great thing, and that children will definitely be allowed to touch, in fact the pair will see people touching the tape and sticking it back up where it peels off as a matter of crucial maintenance.

“Oh, you’ve got to catch the weather here” says Erica. The project has actually begun a day early because of forecasted rain on Sunday. In previous media articles, she’s told reporters that she’s going to have to contend with Wellington’s famous wind, in one of the capitals windiest months.

We’ll be following the tape art as it goes up and then as it comes down in a big fun public tear-the-tape-off deinstallation on Sunday.

Where: Front walls of Te Papa (near the main entrance)
When: Thursday to Saturday
Why: Festival of Carnivale
Who: you… pop on down have a look, and see if you can get your portrait up there… and follow the posts or share your own pics to https://www.facebook.com/#!/TePapa

Erica Duthie, with one of her first portrait subjects, Henriette

 

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