Hello all!  Welcome to my first post here on the Te Papa Blog.  My name is Cindy Lee and I’m an intern working in the Object’s Conservation Lab at the Tory Street Conservation Laboratories.  This internship is a part of my degree requirements for  my Masters Degree in Archaeological andRead more

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Luke and Anton fish up the North Island in our Te Huka ā Tai Whānau Day | (c) Te Papa

On Wednesday, several children came to Te Huka ā Tai at Te Papa and fished up the Te Ika a Māui (the North Island).  And why not? After a long and lovely day soaking in some of the scariest, hairiest, chilling and thrilling myths and legends Aotearoa has produced, it justRead more

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Collections Online mapping

Mapping the collections This week we added a new feature to Collections Online, our first efforts to map our collection objects, specimens and other resources.  As you browse the collection, the Related Places section at the right of the page will generate a map of the places related to the collection itemRead more

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Paperskin – the art of tapa cloth exhibition is full of many wonderful tapa artworks.  But one Tongan tapa cloth (ngatu) in Te Papa’s collection is amazing because of its size – it is more than 22 metres long and over 4 metres wide. We have never been able to displayRead more

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Aptenodytes forsteri

Since we released the new version of Collections Online  in July last year we’ve made the odd fix, or a new feature here and there. You probably don’t notice them but hopefully they’ve made your browsing experience a bit easier.  However recently we’ve done a couple of things we thought wereRead more

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Smack bang in the middle of Matariki, the Maori New Year and all the creative (indoor!) activities that are taking place at the Matariki Festival at Te Papa, World Refugee Day is one of our key times to celebrate and discuss the diversity of our beautiful people and places, and theRead more

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We have just described a new species of Tmesipteris fork fern. Fork ferns are odd looking and only distantly related to other ferns. We now recognise five species in New Zealand. There are only about 15 species around the world, with Australasia their strong-hold. The new species has been namedRead more

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Have a look at this picture of New Zealand’s rarest stamp – see anything unusual about it? It’s a bit hard to see because of the post marks but the centre scene is actually upside down.  It’s known as the Taupo Invert and it’s the only survivor out of theRead more

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For the last few months, the Pacific team have been auditing the Niue collection, where objects are photographed, and the catalogue record updated. Niue also known as Nuku-tu-taha is located between Tonga and the Cook Islands. We had an enquiry from a scholar who was researching throwing techniques, and wasRead more

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Te Papa scientists recovering a video unit sent underwater to film deep-sea fish life.

As research scientist for the Marsden funded project on diversity of deep-sea fishes of New Zealand, I have to analyse hundreds of hours of video footage taken during our surveys. Sometimes, amazing creatures appear on the screen, often when you least suspect it. Here is a shot that really surprisedRead more

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Guests from Christchurch

On Saturday 10th April Te Papa opened The Mixing Room, stories from young refugees in New Zealand to the contributors, their families and of course the public. Over 250 people gathered from Nelson, Hamilton, Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington and Palmerston North in the Wellington Foyer and the Red Couches meeting room to eagerlyRead more

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Measuring leaf width (in mm) of a Te Papa specimen of Plantago spathulata with a digital calipers. Photo © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

As a plant taxonomist, most of my work involves determining how many species are in a particular genus of flowering plants, how they are related to one another, and what the correct scientific names for those species are. To do this, I gather and analyze data from a number ofRead more

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There has been some debate about the pose of the mounted skeleton of Phar Lap on display at Te Papa. Using digital photographs, an image of the skeleton has been superimposed over photos of Phar Lap and used to “prove” that the skeleton has been mounted incorrectly. Bone of contentionRead more

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