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At Te Papa, our scientists practice non-lethal whale research but in New Zealand where there are hundreds of strandings a year, opportunities arise to study animals that have died as a result of stranding.  Of course the best way to study whales is in their natural environment, but these kind of dissections can tell scientists a lot about whales.

Today our scientists dissected a baby killer whale that stranded near Haast in 2007.  Anton van Helden, Te Papa’s marine mammals collection manager worked with international killer whale scientists, Dr Steven Raverty of Canada and Dr Ingrid Visser of New Zealand.

Scientists dissecting the killer whale in Te Papa's necropsy room. © Te Papa, 2010

I’ll be posting a couple more blogs about the findings of the dissection today.  Do check out the link on Ingrid’s name to discover more info about killer whale research.

It seems the language of the Na’vi, the indigenous people of the planet Pandora, may be the latest addition to the family tree of Pacific languages. In recent publicity surrounding James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, it was revealed that the development of the Na’vi language was influenced by Maori language. As reported by Charlie Gates of The Press “Cameron used language expert Paul Frommer, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, to mould the alien language, mixing Maori with languages from Europe and Africa.”

In the Pacific, there is a ‘family tree’ of languages. When groups of people left their homeland and settled in new places in the Pacific, their languages began to change. Over hundreds of years, languages became quite distinct from the original language, or ‘proto-language’, of those languages left at home.

By comparing the sounds, words, and sentence structures of modern Pacific languages, linguistics researchers can trace historical relationships between different Pacific peoples and create what you could describe as ‘family trees’.  They can even reconstruct proto-languages that no longer exist. This gives us insights into the lives of the people who spoke those languages, sometimes thousands of years ago.

The connections between Pacific Islands languages have been important for telling stories here at Te Papa. In the exhibition Tangata O le Moana: the story of Pacific people in New Zealand language is an important strand of evidence highlighting the connections between Maori and their Pacific ancestors. For example, vaka, va‘a, and wa‘a are all words for canoe in various languages of the eastern Pacific. The Maori term is waka. Similarly fale, hale, ‘are and the Maori word whare are terms for house.

Next time you come to Te Papa visit the language barrel interactive in the Tangata O le Moana exhibition. Line up similar words in four Pacific languages, and listen to hear how they are spoken. You won’t hear Na’vi but you can decide for yourself whether Maori really is the proto-language of the native peoples of Pandora.

See the original news article

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3248069/Avatar-language-based-on-Maori

Michael Houlihan, Te Papa’s newly appointed CEO, is currently Director General of Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/

In a recent post on the Amgueddfa blog Michael talks about his decision to make the big move from Wales to New Zealand:

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/blog/?cat=409

I was checking out pictures on the Amgueddfa blog of the wildlife and woodlands in the snow at St Fagans the National History Museum.This open-air museum is one of the seven museums that make up Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/blog/?entry=236

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/

It might not be very warm or summery here in Wellington right now but spare a thought for everyone over in Britain where the winter conditions have been described as ”glacial”.  A note on the St Fagans home page tells visitors that the museum is closed “due to snow and ice”.

Brrrrr…. summer in Wellington not so bad after all?

Michael Houlihan, Te Papa's new CEO

Michael Houlihan, Te Papa's new CEO

Te Papa has a new CEO – Michael Houlihan.

Yesterday the Chairman and Board of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa confirmed the appointment of Michael Houlihan as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the museum.

http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/AboutUs/Media/Pages/NewChiefExecutive.aspx

Michael Houlihan was interviewed yesterday morning, shortly after the announcement, by Simon Morton on Radio NZ National’s Summer Report.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/summerreport/20100113

Listen to the interview here:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/srpt/srpt-20100113-0911-New_Te_Papa_CEOs_plans_for_the_museum-048.mp3

Incidentally, Simon Morton is no stranger to Te Papa  – he’s been going ‘behind the scenes’ getting to know the collections and the staff as one of the presenters of “Tales from Te Papa”. You can explore them here:

http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/ResearchAtTePapa/Pages/TalesfromTePapa.aspx

And so a new tale from Te Papa begins.

Jochen Flöthe's photos of the Killer whales or Orca in Wellington Harbour

Jochen Flöthe's photos of the Killer whales or Orca in Wellington Harbour

Here’s proof that there were indeed Orca’s or Killer Whales in Wellington Harbour on Friday. Proof too of what a small, interconnected world we live in!

This photo was sent to us by Jochen Flöthe from Kiel, Germany! Jochen’s daughter is back-packing in New Zealand. Her friend Mirja Schnabel took the photos,

and had sent family back in Germany photos of the six Orca she saw in Wellington Harbour. Jochen commented on my Friday post asking for photos and offered to send us some. Wow! I love social media when it works like this - so here they are!

But what makes this story even more amazing is that Jochen told me about a really amazing coincidence. Today (13 December in Germany), their local television showed a report about a painting that was discovered in an old church in Greifswald (GER) on the Baltic Sea.

Orca painted on a 16th Century wall in Germany. Wal und nördl. Seitenschiff

Orca painted on a 16th Century wall in Germany. Wal und nördl. Seitenschiff

This painting is from the 16th century and shows an Orca, which was caught by fishermen in the Baltic sea on 30 March 1545. They had never seen a big ‘fish’ like this before and thought it was a sign of god.
http://www.marien-greifswald.de/Wal.657.0.html

Thanks again Jochen. This really made my day today.
Watch the Orcas on YouTube
Where is Greifswald on Google Maps?

Jochen Flöthe's photos of the Killer whales or Orca in Wellington Harbour

Jochen Flöthe's photos of the Killer whales or Orca in Wellington Harbour

 

Staging the show

 I rest my eye for a moment on the frame, taking a break from the work of looking hard at the painting I have come to see. Then, returning to the work at hand, I become conscious, if only just, of an adjustment to my perception; that my perception has undergone a subtle shift. This sudden consciousness of the frame at its border colours my view of the artwork as surely as reading a label though its effect is at first purely visual.

 In my experience, the picture frame is not very often conscious to people, and this I suppose is as it should be. After all, the frame isn’t the artwork itself but ancillary to it.

 Marginal it may be, but never entirely neutral. As a physical entity it can’t do other than express some kind of cultural value that will inevitably help or hinder the viewer’s experience of the artwork. As a consequence it will be fitting or unfitting, or a bit of both, in varying degrees. There are paintings that rebel against the very presence of what we normally consider as frames and those that crave them.

 What do picture frames do, actually? And why? These are disarmingly simple questions. My job is to think very carefully through this relationship of artist, artwork and viewer as expressed through the frame.

 Please take a moment to consider these two framings of the same artwork, and perhaps come back to them after you have finished reading this blog post.

Installation shots from Toi Te Papa exhibition: Henry Lamb’s painting Death of a peasant, 1911. At left, framing by Te Papa about 1970; at right, frame put on by the artist in 1911, and now returned to the painting. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Installation shots from Toi Te Papa exhibition: Henry Lamb’s painting Death of a peasant, 1911. At left, framing by Te Papa about 1970; at right, frame put on by the artist in 1911, and now returned to the painting. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

 Since the frame impinges on how art is seen – and can impart negative or positive aspects to the experience of meditating on an artwork, I thought it worthwhile to look at some of its basics. In later posts I intend to look at style and technique: how frames’ shapes and materials evolved over time; the “what” and “why” set out here will be the reference points for the histories – the “who”, “when”, and “how”.

 Treasure chests

 Yes, its frame holds the picture safe, holds it safely on the wall, keeps it safe when being moved or stored. With the right fittings at the back, perhaps glazing at front, and sound structure a frame is the means by which the precious cargo is handled and supported. So frames have a protective function. They help to stop stuff colliding with what is inside.

 Treasure chests – frequently dowry chests – were containers for valuable goods in Renaissance Italy. The chests themselves became important symbols of the wealth, piety, etc of their owners. The means of the owners were signalled through the richness of decoration in their forms and on their surfaces. Such chests were called cassoni or “big boxes/chests”. To imitate this in form and idea, the most common type of frame at this important moment for art was called the cassetta or “little box”. This happened at the crucial moment in western art history when paintings and their frames first separated physically from each other and from the wall (as in murals), or other artworks (altarpieces). The idea of a “treasure contained” persisted into the world of art, and so did its symbolic value. What is inside is, in one sense or several, valued. (See further explanation of social context for cassoni and image examples here.) 

 So frames support and protect a value in material form. Let us attempt to get still closer to the matter.

 A very long and varied history

 Paintings and frames seem to have begun at more or less the same time in western art. In ancient Greek and Roman times the very idea of marking off the subject being depicted was apparently very important; the evidence from Roman and Greek artefacts, buildings, etc, is overwhelming: subjects get visually framed, even when the frame is simply depicted on the surface as in a mural or a Greek vase. The subject and its context seem to be inextricably linked through the framing device. (See here for images and here for a brief history of Greek vases.)

amphora

Greek amphora, about 500 BCE, Photograph by Robert Clendon. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

 This close association of painting and framing device, whether as physical frame or as a depicted edge, carried through time until the 20th century. In the last century the wall itself, particularly the white wall, was frequently used by artists to frame the painting with no other embellishment. But even this practice too was a conscious framing strategy for pace-setting and influential artists, (like Malevich, who referred to it in 1915 in relation to a “naked, unframed icon of our time”:

… it is necessary to do away with all dying systems of the past, with all their accretions, ….)

(See Kasimir Malevich, Russian painter here.)

 So frames may be with us even when they don’t appear to be.

Walters Karakia

Gordon Walters’ painting Karakia, 1977. Collection of Te Papa

Look out and look in

 To look from the paintings’ point of view out over the adjacent context, frames provide a degree of visual separation from the daily wall. Importantly they are markers for what is not a part of the work. The philosophers Kant in 1790*, and recently Derrida* use the concept ‘parergon’ from the Greek, a ‘by-work’, which is whatever is not within the work – defined by the work itself – and yet not the general milieu. Looking back into the work, the frame is tied more to the painting than to the general surroundings. The idea of ‘frame’ is bound to the idea of ‘painting’. (*see footnotes for book references.)
 By making it possible to perceive content separately frames promote that content, marking it as special in some way. They implicitly privilege what is encased however mutely. Indeed they are a sign for privilege – perhaps appreciation is a better word – because of what they do.
Daubigny Landscape with sheep

Charles-François Daubigny, Landscape with sheep, about 1855. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Clean unclean

 Frames stabilise the dynamic, potentially unstable – but should we say “delicately poised” – composition of the painting. The dynamism of the pictorial content of the painting is not allowed to infect its ordered architectural context through the system of right-angled and parallel lines at its boundary.

 Similarly, different kinds of visual disorder outside of the frame, such as wallpapers, wood panelling, textiles, etc, may be prevented from contaminating the very particular world of the artistic composition.

 It should be noted that the absence of an actual frame is frequently compensated for by the presence of compositional elements within the artwork that do at least some of the work normally enforced by the physical frame – such as ordering and stabilising.

Colin McCahon A letter to Hebrews

Colin McCahon’s A letter to Hebrews, 1979, in Toi Te Papa exhibition. © Courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust

 Illusion collusion

 Frames have always been a necessary support for the illusions inherent in perspectival art. Such systems require containment in order to help the viewer to believe the illusion of 3-D space, and for the illusion to have its proper effect. Certain forms (profiles) support the illusion more than others. However, note also that other means to depict relative depth (such as are used in abstract art) are not dependant on the support of the form of the frame. (See here for definition of the term ‘perspective’ and some examples.)

Margaret Carpenter Portrait of Mrs W Collins

Margaret Carpenter’s Portrait of Mrs W Collins, 1826. Frame original. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Summary

 So picture frames affect our reception of the paintings they contain. Through their protective function they have traditionally privileged value and difference, and been a sign for the presence of an important ‘other world’. They have marked boundaries and controlled the dynamics of depicted ideas and emotions. Even when not literally present they have been implicit in the conception of art.

 These thoughts are like the opening of Pandora’s box. In the box are so many subjects for discussion and elaboration that emanate from the study of the styles of frames and their relation to the decorative arts and painting. I intend to work through as many of them as I can in following posts.

 For those with a deeper interest in the picture frame, I recommend the website of the National Portrait Gallery in London, England which keeps a comprehensive global bibliography and many articles. Go here.

*references: Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgement, (ed. and trans. Guyer, and trans. Matthews, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Derrida, Jacques, The Truth in Painting, (trans. Bennington and McLeod, 1978), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Te Papa is saddened at the passing of Sir Howard Morrison, and extends sympathy to his whanau and friends.

Over a long and distinguished career, Sir Howard brought great pleasure to many with his fine singing voice, and his ability to charm and entertain.

New Zealand has lost a consummate entertainer who had a special connection with Te Papa. At the opening of the Museum on 14 February 1998 he sang the national anthem and also concluded that special day by singing “Now is the Hour” at midnight.

The Howard Morrison Quartet also featured in Te Papa’s first online exhibition Maori Showbands.

He was a seminal figure in the early days, influencing many of his peers….. In an historical sense all roads lead to, and from, Howard”

(Tainui Stephens)

We’re working to get this fabulous website back up, in tribute to Sir Howard. Let us know if you support this!

Tributes have flowed in for Sir Howard and you can find many of them online:

NZ Herald coverage of today ’s funeral

Biography of Sir Howard Morrison from NZ History Online

Film clips on NZ Onscreen including a wonderful documentary from 2002 “The Sir Howard Morrison Story” which includes Sir Howard’s explanation of his special connection with Tuhoe

Finally, here is the great man, singing one of New Zealand’s favourites “How Great Thou Art”:

This video clip is sourced from the YouTube website. Te Papa does not claim any responsibility for the contents or copyright status of the clip.

Last Friday (25  September) was designated Blue Friday, part of the bigger Blue September to help raise awareness of prostate cancer here in New Zealand – about 600 men die of this disease every year. Not good!

People from around New Zealand were encouraged to wear blue, decorate in blue to help raise this awareness as well as  funds. Out the front of  Te Papa 600 blue crosses were placed on the ground with people being invited to observe two minutes silence in memory of those men who have died.

While inside the building – back of house – the Social Committee had encouraged staff to go blue, as well as donate to this very worthwhile cause. And to think we were a bit worried no-one would dress up…

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

 Bet you never knew we have our own Scrubs division here at Te Papa did you?
 

© Te Papa, 2009.

National Services put on a lovely spread ALTHOUGH they’re kinda lucky their colour scheme is blue – notice the freaky blue biscuit things…

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

Even the scissor hoists decided to participate, although Theresa had to persuade them

 

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

Nani and the other lovelys in Admin chose a Blue’s Clues theme to decorate their area with…

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

… while the Repatriation Team were more refined in their tastes – albeit with more of those biscuit things.

We had some Superman entries:

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.' © Te Papa, 2009.

 

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

 And I thought you’d like to see our two IT gals considering you get to see & read a lot of their writing throughout our Te Papa blog:

© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

Heres Lucy
© Te Papa, 2009.

© Te Papa, 2009.

and this is Florence.

 

What did you do for Blue Friday at your workplace?  Have a look at the Blue September website gallery  and see what other workplaces around New Zealand did. It’ll be even bigger next year I’m sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you know from my previous post, Tales from Te Papa went live on TVNZ6 on 1 September. 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll post the mini-documentaries to the blog with more information – the stuff our staff weren’t able to fit into the Tales from Te Papa format and useful links to more info. 

We’d love to hear from you as well, so watch the clip and post comments  – is there anything else you want to know, do you have a suggestion for a future Tales from Te Papa episode?

Cloud by John Reynolds is a popular work in Toi Te Papa: Art of the Nation on Level 5 and it’s one of my favourites as well!  In the clip below, contemporary art curator , Charlotte Huddleston, talks with Simon Morton about the work.

Charlotte posted a blog shortly after Cloud was installed earlier in the year. 
More about Cloud with a video of the artist talking about his work

NOTE: Cloud closes on 17 January 2010 so we can prepare the gallery for the NZ entry to the 2009 Venice Biennale!

It’s not often we have an urgent request from the exhibition installers for help with Javascript!

But last week one of the project managers came, ashen face, asking if anyone could help her with javascript. Of course my team of developers leapt to help and so we became acquainted with the weird world that is currently being installed on Level 4 at Te Papa.

Installation of Reactive Architecture

Installation of Reactive Architecture

The exhibition is Reactive Architecture: smart buildings respond to the environment. It opens on Saturday 19 September.
More about Reactive Architecture

Even though it was just being installed it looks amazing. It has bicycles that power racing cars, umbrellas that open and close with light and I never did find out how these anemome shapes are going to move . I only know that hundreds of tiny plastic parts were carefully being assembled by a team of four.

Installation of Reactive Architecture

Installation of Reactive Architecture

And just in case you are curious, my team helped Uwe Rieger, one of the architects involved in the show, debug a movement sensor being installed on his spectacular umbrella installation. My photos don’t do it justice, I am IT not photography. They look so beautiful and I didn’t even see the piece going.

Installation of Reactive Architecture.

Installation of Reactive Architecture.

If you go up onto the bridge on the way from Level 4 to Toi Te Papa you might be able to spy some other great installation shots!

Personally I can’t wait to have a go on the bikes that power the toy cars. There are two so I reckon we might stage a few races. What is is about Te Pepa and racing cars at the moment!
Formula 1

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