New Zealand expatriate artist Bill Culbert passed away on 28 March 2019. Here, curator of photography Athol McCredie, and Curator of Modern & Contemporary Māori & Indigenous Art, Megan Tamati-Quennell, reflect on some aspects of Culbert’s work. Read more
Conservator Robert Clendon takes us through the conservation techniques he’s using on some of the international material in our collections – two Greek objects around 2,500 years old, and a 1894 copy of the famous Portland Vase.Read more
Every year, Te Papa partners with Victoria University in their Summer Research Scholarships initiative. Here, we introduce them and the projects they worked on.Read more
University of Auckland student Susannah Whaley has spent her MA year intrigued by Rita Angus’s goddess portraits. As our guest blogger, she focusses on three fascinating, but little-known works, and asks whether they are self-portraits, goddesses, or both.Read more
Drew Hadwen, co-director of the Wellington Pride Festival 2019 (8–24 March), recently spoke to the Friends of Te Papa about the work that has gone into celebrating Pride in Aotearoa. Here, we share their speech with you.Read more
Triggered by Suffrage 125 last year, Te Papa curators have been collecting objects around women’s rights, and researching our collections to better reveal women’s stories. One of our aims is to improve the gender balance in our collections. Here are some favourite examples from our curators.Read more
This week Te Papa lost a very significant former kaimahi | staff member, Hema Temara (Tūhoe, 10 Feb 1948 – 27 Feb 2019), who passed away in Whakatāne.Read more
Museums can sometimes feel like alien spaces for young learners, a place where words like ‘play’ and ‘explore’ might not always be an immediate association. But for educator Martin Langdon, these are the key drivers he keeps in mind when designing learning programmes aimed at learners under 5-years-old.Read more
Valentine’s Day would be lonely indeed without a blog from Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art. Here he explores the lovely, love-related lithographs of Jenny Doležel.Read more
Summer research scholar Katrin O’Donnell explains why we need people to care about the weird and wonderful invertebrate animals which make up the majority of the planet’s biomass, and her investigations into how invertebrate scientists around the world can engage with non-scientists and vice-versa.Read more
Natural history researcher Rodrigo Salvador is out and about looking for initiatives that join science and pop culture. He did not need to venture too far in Welly to find this one, though.Read more
This is the second part to Dr Mark Stocker’s series of blogs asking you to help identify a number of butterflies, moths, and other insects in a series of 17th century prints by Anglo-Czech etcher Wenceslaus Hollar.Read more
Yuk King Tan and Emma Ng discuss King Tan’s The New Temple – I give so that you may give, I give so that you may go and stay away.Read more
In an ongoing series of guest speakers, the Mātauranga Māori curatorial team was recently joined by our previous manager, Dr Wayne Ngata (Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Ira, Ngāti Porou). Mātauranga Māori curator Matariki Williams recounts his kōrero.Read more
It’s around this time of year that a great debate swells into kiwi conversation and proximity to ice cream is weighed up against sunshine hours and sand preferences. While our personal connections to the takutai (coast) mean that there can never be a definitive list of Aotearoa’s best beaches, here is our version, compiled by Te Papa staff with images from Collections Online. Read more
