The Learning Innovation team are very excited about the new activities featuring in Te Whare Toi in this upcoming season of Ngā Toi | Arts Te Papa. We have been playing around with the wonderful range of dress-ups for ‘Adorn yourself!’ in the office this afternoon. This activity relates to the exhibitions European Splendour 1500—1800 and… Read more »
In 2014 I was invited by the City Gallery in Wellington to curate a ‘Frock Room’ as part of Creamy Psychology, a major retrospective exhibition of photographer Yvonne Todd. The ‘Frock Room’ featured glamorous gowns from Todd’s personal collection which she used to create portraits of various women, real and imagined. I am currently working with Yvonne… Read more »
Clive Roberts is a fish biologist who joined the National Museum in 1990, shortly before it evolved into Te Papa. He has particular interests in the identification and distribution of New Zealand fishes within the wider Pacific region. This has included surveys of deep reefs, oceanic ridges and seamounts, and cataloguing the diversity of deep-sea… Read more »
Pat Brownsey is a fern specialist who joined the National Museum (now Te Papa) botany team in 1977, and is still finding fern mysteries to solve. Pat moved to New Zealand in 1973 after completing a PhD on ferns at the University of Leeds. The abundance and diversity of ferns in Aotearoa has kept him… Read more »
Bruce Marshall is a self-taught malacologist (shell expert) who has worked at Te Papa, and the previous National Museum, since 1976. As collection manager of molluscs, Bruce is responsible for a vast collection of several million specimens representing more than 4,700 New Zealand species. These range in size from tiny snails 0.48 mm in length… Read more »
The three kings (or three wise men or magi) are Christian icons – but how many people are aware that they have seaweeds named after them? The connection is via the Three Kings Islands north-west of Cape Reinga. Known as Manawatahi to Māori, they are one of only two localities in New Zealand that have… Read more »
Former museum director Alan Baker was a keen scuba diver with research interests in marine invertebrates (especially sea urchins and starfish), fish, whales and dolphins. Te Papa turned 150 years old on 8 December 2015. To celebrate 150 years since the opening of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, the exhibition ‘You called me WHAT?!’ is… Read more »
Former museum director John Yaldwyn specialised in crustaceans, but he also had a keen interest in extinct New Zealand birds, archaeology, and history. Te Papa turned 150 years old on 8 December 2015. To celebrate 150 years since the opening of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, the exhibition ‘You called me WHAT?!’ is open on… Read more »
Richard (Dick) Dell specialised in the study of marine invertebrates, especially molluscs (shells). His interests and expertise also included crustaceans, and one of the more memorable names that he coined was for a spectacular deep water crab. Te Papa turned 150 years old on 8 December 2015. To celebrate 150 years since the opening of… Read more »
Guest blogger Jared Davidson asks how historians and others have measured and defined dissent, sedition and conscientious objection to military conscription during the Great War. The new statistics he arrives at will surprise you. Jared opens his blog with the numbers of individuals known to have opposed conscription (and compulsory military training) even before the declaration of war in 1914,… Read more »