Spring cleaning at Te Papa this year means getting out our longest feather duster, as we freshen up information about Aotearoa’s native forget-me-nots (Myosotis) on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.Read more
There are a handful of bird species that are included on the New Zealand list based on a single specimen found storm-wrecked somewhere on New Zealand’s long coastline. Curator Vertebrates Colin Miskelly describes the discovery of the latest addition to this list.Read more
This month, Curator Vertebrates Alan Tennyson and the Department of Conservation’s Johannes Fischer, published a scientific paper that clarified the identity of a common subantarctic seabird. Alan explains why this was necessary and what a surprising and incredible history this research revealed.Read more
Tufunga Tātatau Terje Koloamatangi is of Tongan and Norwegian Sami ancestry. Born in Nuku’alofa Tongatapu with ancestral ties to Kolovai, Pangaimotu Vava’u, and Åmøya, in Northern Norway. He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Koloamatangi is an artist and cultural tattoo practitioner. His work is centred on the revival of tātatau faka-Tonga (customary Tongan tattooing), a passion he has maintained for over 20 years. His practice is built on historical accounts, gleaned from texts, museum collections, and Tongan oral traditions. Here, Terje Koloamatangi discusses the origins and uses of the Tongan custom of tātatau or tattooing.Read more
In this blog, Ainu scholar, artist, and activist Kanako Uzawa discusses the representation of Japan’s colonial history in museums and public spaces for Te Papa’s Cipiyak Project.Read more
Members of Te Papa’s whānau recently established an informal Takatāpui Rainbow Sharing group. The group is open to all Te Papa kaimahi and acts as a hub to share information on collections and upcoming events (internal and external) relating to our various communities. To mark this year’s Wellington Pride Festival Tū Whakahīhī e Te Whanganui-ā-Tara (3–17 September) some of our members have written about what Pride means to them.Read more
Recently our Fish Team processed some bycatch specimens that had been sent to us by MPI Scientific Observers. In one box were not one, but four specimens of a rare species of a frogmouth fish. Not only that, the biggest one was a world record.Read more
You can never assume what a person’s relationship to a language is, says Ya-Wen Ho in a conversation with Grace Gassin, Curator Asian New Zealand Histories, about her past and present connections with heritage Chinese languages.Read more
Last year, Te Papa received a grant from Lotteries NZ towards the digitisation of the Spencer Digby / Ronald D Woolf Collection of around 250,000 photographic negatives shot between the 1930s and 1980s. The project is now well underway! Imaging Technician Ashleigh James McKenna gives us an insight into how the negatives are managed.Read more
Museums are magical places where time travel happens almost on a daily basis and getting to know what our ancestors and their acquaintances were up to in the 1800s is not so far a reach. Botany Curator Carlos Lehnebach describes how the discovery of a box full of seed packets stored at Te Papa brought a botanist, a nurseryman and his great-great-granddaughter together more than a century later.Read more
The theme for this year’s ‘Epetoma o te reo Māori Kūki ‘Āirani – Cook Islands Language Week is ‘Ātuitui’ia au ki te Oneone o tōku ‘Ui Tupuna which means connect me to the soil of my ancestors. To mark the week Curator Pacific Cultures Rachel Yates has a taratara with current staff member Kate Ngatokorua about her experiences as Miss Cook Islands.Read more
What can you say of the humble mussel? At face value, probably not much. Natural History Technician contractor Lorenzo Ravalo looks at what’s in a name when it comes to flexing our marketing mussels overseas.Read more
Around the world, gobies are a major component of the benthic fish fauna of coastal tropical and temperate seas and estuaries – except around New Zealand. Here, triplefins (family Tripterygiidae) have evolved 30 species which have radiated to fill almost every ecological niche more usually occupied by gobies elsewhere. ItRead more
Should we ban all petrol cars? Should we limit tourist numbers? Should rubbish collection always include a separate food waste bin for composting, even if we all have to pay more? Exhibition Experience Developer Murphy Peoples and Digital Producer Amos Mann discuss Te Au | The Current, a forum for fresh ideas around Aotearoa New Zealand’s toughest environmental challenges. Te Au | The Current aims to collect and reflect diverse opinions that could spark real-world change. See how others feel and add your voice to The Current to help solve New Zealand’s toughest nature challenges.Read more
Huia are one of Aotearoa’s most well-known birds, despite going extinct over 100 years ago. Early European scientists were fascinated by the radically different bills of the male and female huia, a feature called sexual dimorphism. More recently scientists recognised the New Zealand wattlebird family, which includes huia, as one of three families worldwide containing the most extreme variation in bills. A new study by Massey University’s Gillian Gibb and Te Papa’s Lara Shepherd used DNA sequences to determine when the New Zealand wattlebird family and the extraordinary sexual dimorphism in huia evolved.Read more
