• Composite of five photos of three young women and two young men holding their objects for the co-collecting project. They are holding a seafood shop uniform, a yellow shirt, a necklace, drum sticks, and a pillowcase

    Co-collecting with Tongan youth

    This week we’re celebrating Tongan Language Week by taking a look back at Project 83: Small Things Matter in 2017. This co-collecting project was developed by the Year 13 Tongan language class of Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate with the guidance of their teacher Mrs Maata Fusitua, HOD Lea Faka-Tonga.

  • The weight of a painting: McCahon’s Walk (Series C) and Gate III

    Adam Art Gallery Collection Officer Sophie Thorn writes about her experiences behind the scenes handling the work of Colin McCahon.

  • We need your help to decipher some buggy handwriting

    Are you a citizen scientist who could crack the code of George Hudson's registry notes? The Hudson Collection needs your help to read between the lines and the margins of grasshoppers, flies, wasps, wētā, and more.

Making a collection of Myosotis glabrescens (SP108859). Feb 2020. Photo by Heidi Meudt @ Te Papa.

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Botany Researcher Heidi Meudt is on a mission to find and make new research collections of all native New Zealand forget-me-nots. It can be a challenge to find some of them, particularly if we don’t know a lot about them or where they are to be found. Read more

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The struggles and joys of colonial exploration in Fiordland through a pair of stereoscopes. Both are from the Burton Brothers studio, one from the Alexander Turnbull Library and one from Te Papa. Te Papa’s Curator Historical Photography Lissa Mitchell investigates.Read more

Justin and Sam collecting forget-me-nots in Westland National Park. Jan 2019. Photo by Heidi Meudt @ Te Papa.

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Field work is a key aspect of biodiversity research to locate and collect new specimens to study. Botany Researcher Heidi Meudt took two South Island field trips in Dec 2018 and Jan 2019 with two university students in tow. Combining research and training is often a great way to get scientific research done – but was it successful this time?Read more

palm trees on a beach with the sea in the background

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The theme for Cook Islands Language Week 2020 is Kia pūāvai tō tātou reo Māori Kūki ‘Āirani i Aotearoa, That the Cook Islands Māori language may blossom throughout New Zealand. Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Humanities Grace Hutton looks at some of the history of the names and languages of the different islands that make up the Cook Islands archipelago.  Read more