Rotuman Language Week celebrates one of the rarest languages in the world. Public Programmes Specialist Jacki Leota-Mua and members of the Rotuman community transport us from the safety of our rāhui bubbles to Rotuma, 500 kilometres north of Fiji, to discover more about the island’s kava ceremonies.Read more
Our building may be closed, but Lara Shepherd takes us through the important work that the Natural History team are doing from home. What has the team been working on in their bubbles? How is collection management continuing with no access to the collection? And what’s on the menu for our flesh-eating beetles?Read more
Eve Armstrong’s practice draws on the local landscape – just as Colin McCahon’s did. Here, the Wellington artist discusses her residency at the McCahon House and how it inspired a work now in the national collection.Read more
COVID-19 lockdown restrictions mean that much conservation work around New Zealand is on hold. But in a remote part of Fiordland, restoration efforts are continuing every night, regardless of access constraints, social distancing, and weather conditions. Te Papa vertebrates curator Colin Miskelly describes the pioneering efforts being made to attract seabirds back to Coal Island/Te Puka Hereka in Preservation Inlet.Read more
Te Papa staff were very sad to hear of the recent passing of Marion Florence Mackenzie (née Rodie) on 9 Apr in Queensland (1919–2020). We knew her as Mollie Rodie, the creator of many beautiful costume sketches for fundraising pageants and carnivals in the Second World War (1939–45), now held in Te Papa’s collections.Read more
Endangered giant snails that suck up earthworms like spaghetti are living in a small colony in Khandallah. Curator Invertebrates Rodrigo Salvador tells us more.Read more
In August last year a small green pigeon flew across the Tasman Sea – and into the history books. It became the first vagrant bird species to be intercepted at the New Zealand border and put down as a potential biosecurity risk. Te Papa bird expert Colin Miskelly tells the unfortunate story of New Zealand’s first rose-crowned fruit-dove.Read more
Did you know there’s an endemic species of mosquito that exclusively occurs in New Zealand’s thermal pools? We don’t know much about this species, so in October and March, bug expert Julia Kasper made it her mission to find it – a mission that included a harness and a gas monitor, ʻin case of toxic gas eruptions’.Read more
Victoria University summer scholar Laura Wilson has spent two months sorting through a box of bones and dirt. The aim? To identify and catalogue the huge array of species represented in Martinborough’s Cave of Bones.Read more
Mātauranga Māori curator Matariki Williams (Tūhoe, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Hauiti) dives into a series of paintings by Colin McCahon, commissioned by the Urewera National Park Board in the 1970s.Read more
A single specimen of toromiro – a close relative of our own kōwhai and extinct in the wild – has been discovered in our botany collection, where it’s been kept safe for 150 years.Read more
Valerie Carson, textile conservator, passed away on Tue 21 Jan surrounded by her family in Whanganui. Here, textiles conservators Rachael Collinge and Rangi Te Kanawa look back on her career.Read more
Today many people in Wellington are gathering for a public memorial service for Piri Sciascia, who passed away 18 Jan 2020. In this blog, we commemorate Piri and his enduring support for Te Papa, Māori art, and taonga.Read more
Sustainable indigenised practice in colonial museum models – is there such a thing? Kaihāpai Mātauranga Māori | Head of Mātauranga Māori Puawai Cairns explores the question.Read more
‘Adkin’s photographs provide an honest, in-depth insight into rural life in New Zealand during the first half of the 20th century.’ Danielle Campbell, a Museum and Heritage Studies student at Victoria University, discusses her three favourite Leslie Adkin photographs that she came across during her summer internship at Te Papa.Read more
