I recently delivered a paper on the New Zealand sculptor Margaret Butler (1883-1947) at the University of Otago conference, ‘Making Women Visible’. Although one or two of her sculptures are occasionally exhibited, she is next to invisible to the wide public, certainly far more obscure than her older contemporary FrancesRead more
Filmy ferns add a delicate, enveloping beauty to New Zealand’s forests. Most are translucent, with fronds only one or a few cells thick. Most are small, but they can carpet large areas of the ground or be prominent on the trunks of trees. New Zealand is home to 31 speciesRead more
Today we launch an updated version of our website. In a weird kind of way, we hope it’s not that big a deal to you. It’s a website, you come to it when you need it, and you hope you find the information you need. Like a lot of things,Read more
Over the following six months, My Little Pony collector Tanya Marriott will be sharing her passion, and knowledge about her collection with us. Part of Tanya’s collection is currently on display at Te Papa in the Inspiration Station Discovery Centre on Level 4. My Little Pony has been around for thirty three years,Read more
Amos Mann, a Digital Content Producer at Te Papa, finds tensions, connections, and conversations within #tepapaphoto, an Instagram photo sharing project currently underway. We love taking photos. We love sharing photos. And now, more easily than ever before, from across town and across the world, we can instantly show each other whereRead more
Today is International Women’s Day – a time to ‘reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.’ This year’s theme is Planet 50-50 by 2030 which envisages ‘aRead more
Despite their age Carleton Watkins’ photographs have an enduring appeal. Their large scale and simple beauty makes them stand out amongst the vast array of nineteenth century landscape photographs. Often Watkins’ photographs don’t simply document or show facts – they disorient our sense of identity and place in frontRead more
Over the Christmas holidays, Australian researcher Stephen Marshall visited Te Papa to view a little-known watercolour in our collection: John William Tristram’s ‘A Tremulous Dusk‘, painted in 1904. Stephen is currently writing a book on the artist, and wrote this blog to tell us more about the beautiful painting heRead more
The Kerguelen Islands are among the most remote islands on the planet, lying in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean about 7300 km west of New Zealand (or 17,000 km east if you prefer). Yet they have at least two unlikely connections with New Zealand – a plant andRead more
The End of Fashion, College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, 8-9 December 2016 Conference conveners: Professor Vicki Karaminas, Massey University, Wellington and Professor Hilary Radner, University of Otago, Dunedin Keynote Speakers: Valerie Steele, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York Pamela Church Gibson, London College of Fashion RaphaëlleRead more
He poukaiāwhā nō te pātaka iringa kōrero, kua hinga. He ahorangi nō te whare wānanga o te ao hou, kua okioki. He ringa i mau ki te rākau ā te Pākehā hei taokupu titi rawa ki te manawa o te tangata tiriti, kua takoto. E te uri o Muriwai, oRead more
In late March 2015, a crabeater seal swam up the Hutt River (which flows into Wellington Harbour) and died. It was a remarkable occurrence – the crabeater seal is an Antarctic species rarely recorded in New Zealand – but no-one realised at the time that this was precisely the placeRead more
People often ask me where they can find images of collection items that they can reuse for free. There is no single website hosting all of the reusable images available so I thought I’d list my favourite galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) that make at least some images of theirRead more
I have posted a couple of blogs about Rekindle, the Christchurch-based collective dedicated to tackling the issues of wasted ‘waste’ materials. Rekindle was originally spurred into action by the Canterbury earthquakes, which resulted in the devastation of inner city Christchurch and the creation of massive piles of demolition waste, including ‘mountains’ of native timber. Te Papa is proudRead more
The Te Papa-hosted website New Zealand Birds Online has reached another milestone, with the 9000th image loaded on 12 January.Read more
