The Torres Strait Islander Festival which happens once a year in Queensland, Australia, marks a rare opportunity to raise awareness of its important culture. The overall intent of the Festival is to celebrate the contemporary and historical culture of Torres Strait Islanders. The Queensland Museum exhibition Awakening: Stories from theRead more

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In: Behind the scenes
Westland Petrel, endemic to New Zealand on its breeding ground. Photograph by D Filippi

The advent of GPS in cell-phones and car navigation systems has done a lot to render this technology accessible for a variety of users, devices are now only 10-20 g in weight, and can cost as little as $100 a piece. Satellite telemetry was first used to study flying birdsRead more

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In: Science
Uneven varnish under UV

Now that the painting has had its layer of surface dirt removed, the next step in the treatment is the removal of the varnish layer.  A lot of the principles that we talked about with surface cleaning, also apply to the removal of varnish layers.  Therefore, prior to beginning it’s importantRead more

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In: Art, Pacific

In our last post we discussed the process of testing to identify the most appropriate cleaning solution to remove the surface dirt layer from the painting. After finding the best cleaning solution for the painting the surface cleaning can begin, but we always carefully monitor our progress to ensure thatRead more

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In: Art, Pacific
Loading up the Tranquil Image with gear

A Te Papa expedition, in collaboration with Massey University, is going to study the fish fauna of the Kermadec Islands, some 1000km North of mainland New Zealand. We left Tauranga aboard the MV Tranquil Image yesterday. Loading all the gear on the deck was a bit more of a challengeRead more

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Students from Petone Central School in the Starlab.

June is a busy month at Te Papa – it’s Matariki. And this year it’s going to be especially busy for the Education team! Our Term 2 Education programmes are fully booked this year with over 2500 students attending our Matariki education programme alone. This number includes: 916 students whoRead more

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In: Education, Māori

We recently rolled out a new feature for those of you in interested seeing where zoological and botanical specimens in Te Papa’s collections were collected from. We’ve been mapping individual specimens for a while now, but we’ve added the ability to see where specimens from a particular family, genus or species wereRead more

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Surface Cleaning

Now that we have cleaned the back of the canvas we can look at surface cleaning the front of the painting.  This is a separate procedure from the removal of varnish and overpaints and is completed first because surface dirt is the first layer encountered.  The reason we remove the dirt layerRead more

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In: Art, Pacific

    Model Tooth (Human), 1900s, Maker unknown. Gift of the Wellington School Dental Service Training School, Department of Health, 1994. Te Papa  90 years ago: the first intake of School Dental Service nurses began their training (4 April 1921).   The School Dental Service was a response to theRead more

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In: Collections Online, History

As the day of the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton draws  near, Te Papa too has  found itself in the grip of ‘wedding fever’. While the media continues to whip themselves into a frenzy trying to uncover the bride’s best kept secret – the name of her dressRead more

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In: History