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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The earliest memory I have of my youth takes me back to approximately age three. I was finishing the weekly “playgroup” session with a few neighbours my age which had been held at my house that time. My mother was getting ready to drive the other kids home when myRead 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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In: Art, Collections Online, Pacific

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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Preparing to install some of the masks from Papua New Guinea.

This Saturday 19 June Te Papa opens it’s new tapa exhibition – Paperskin: the art of tapa. You’ll be able to see a stunning range of more than 40 tapa artworks from throughout the Pacific. Huge awe inspiring masks from Papua New Guinea,  Hawaiian tapa more than two hundred years old,Read 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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Jeff Thomson’s corrugated iron HQ Holden has been on display at Te Papa since the museum first opened in 1998 but, on Tuesday 25 May, the car will be moving to our collection storage area for a well-earned rest. The car is being moved so a new long-term history exhbition can be built  onRead 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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In: History, Pacific
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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