On Sunday we’ll be saying goodbye to our multimedia exhibition OurSpace to make room for the next exciting step towards Te Papa’s flagship exhibition commemorating 100 years since WWI. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed images and videos to OurSpace, which opened in 2008. More than 10,000 images and videos wereRead more
In honour of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, here are a number of kupu Māori (Māori words) that I constantly use in my everyday mahi/work as a curator at Te Papa, and especially in my research for the First World War exhibition we are presently developing. Many of the sources written inRead more
For many of New Zealand’s indigenous plants, the Māori name is the ‘common’ name, and English names are rarely, if ever, used; think rimu, tōtara, kauri, pōhutukawa, and mamaku. Other species have both Māori and English names, but it is the latter that is predominant, at least in my experience.Read more
This coming August marks a climax of Te Papa’s Berry Boys soldier identification project, with the screening of a documentary on seven of the soldiers on TVNZ in early August (details to come), and the launch of Berry Boys: Portraits of First World War Soldiers and Families by Te Papa Press. The latter bringsRead more
When I was nine or ten I used to go to Jenkins Gym in Manners St, Wellington on Saturday mornings with a friend. I hated it but I suspect our respective fathers thought we needed toughening up. The good bit was that after the long trolley bus trip home (noRead more
This week we are changing over a number of garments in The WOW Factor, an exhibition celebrating the wonderful, creative and inventive World of WearableArt™. The exhibition itself has been extended to 2 November 2014 so that this year’s show attendees can also enjoy seeing a number of garments up closeRead more
By Riah King-Wall, intern Kia ora – I’m Riah King-Wall, and for the past five weeks I’ve been digging into some of the fascinating bits and pieces housed within the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Here on placement from the Master of Museum and Heritage Studies programme atRead more
By Rebecca Nuttall, intern “Banana playing a blue accordion.” What? My name is Rebecca Nuttall. I’ve been an intern at Te Papa and I’m describing this print to you. You’re going to love it. That’s not true. You may hate it. But how would you know? I don’t think youRead more
On 20 March 2014, Helen Smith and Gwenda Pulham had nearly completed bird surveys for the day when they saw a bird that was unfamiliar to them. The two members of Birds New Zealand (a.k.a. the Ornithological Society of New Zealand) had been counting New Zealand dotterels at the bombingRead more
I suspect that this is a question that few people have given much thought to. The answer should be as much a part of our conservation heritage as our first national park (Tongariro, 1887). The national park answer can be found in many conservation reference books and websites, but fewRead more
by Ricardo L. Palma, Curator of Terrestrial Invertebrates Evolving without wings, humans dreamed about flying for thousands of years… but only just over 100 years ago they invented a heavier-than-air machine which could fly and take them to the skies. However, long long ago, natural evolution had already provided theRead more
I am quite fond of some of the new photographs in the collection which are a set of cabinet card format studio portraits from the late nineteenth century. Many of them were taken by photographers working in the South Island in places such as Lyttelton, Ashburton, Gore and Blenheim. I’mRead more
Last year to celebrate Cook Islands Māori Language week, Grace Hutton (Collection Manager Pacific Cultures) wrote a blog about photographer George Robson Crummer who resided in the Cook Islands from 1890. Te Papa has over 240 items from Crummer including 227 black and white negatives some of which are badlyRead more
Recent work on Ohinau Island, Coromandel reinforced for me how fine the boundary is between the sciences. We were working on the biology of shearwaters nesting at an important historical site for Ngati Hei, an iwi from the eastern Coromandel. The island has been inhabited in the past, and wasRead more
E te rangatira, e te totara haemata, e te pou matua i whakapau kaha ki te tiaki i nga mahi toi me nga whare pupuri taonga o Aotearoa, haere, haere, haere atu ra. Kua ripia kua haehaea mai te tau o te ate i te mamae, i te paapouri oRead more
