Una Dubbelt-Leitch spent four months working alongside Amber Aranui as part of her Master of Museum Practice placement on the Acknowledging our Colonial Past project. This project contributed significantly to understanding Te Papa’s taonga Māori collection, a large proportion of which is currently unprovenanced. This blog is based on theRead more
When we think about New Zealand’s national museum, we often think about Te Papa, with its enormous building on the waterfront and bicultural philosophy. ‘Our Place’. Or we might imagine the National Museum at Buckle Street with the National War Memorial or the carillon standing tall in front – a place you might remember visiting as a child. But our national museum’s history begins over 100 years before that, in 1865, to be exact. Curator Mātauranga Māori Amber Aranui takes us back to this creatively documented time. Read more
Melanie Ioane-Warren, one of our Natural History interns, talks about the important collection of bird bones gathered by the late Augustus Hamilton. Melanie is working on this bone collection together with Curators Alan Tennyson and Rodrigo Salvador, and GNS scientist Karyne Rogers. In 1875, the clipper ship Collingwood departed EnglandRead more
Our national museum’s second director was an ethnologist with broad interests in natural sciences. Te Papa turned 150 years old on 8 December 2015. To celebrate 150 years since the opening of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, the exhibition ‘You called me WHAT?!’ is open on Level 3 until theRead more
I’ve only been a curator for 7 months and even if you were the brainiest most well read person in the world, a curator is really only as good as their knowledge of their museum’s collection. So in familiarising myself with the Taonga Māori collection at Te Papa, I’ve been systematically goingRead more
