In 2025, Te Papa acquired four watercolours by the nineteenth-century British artist Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (1837–1924). Over summer, art history lecturer Dr Victoria Munn, and student and artist, Catherine Shone, brought new light to bear on Gordon-Cumming’s artistic practice and process. Who was Constance Gordon-Cumming? Constance Gordon-Cumming (1837–1924) was aRead more
As part of the Digital Collections & Access team, Collections Data Manager Gareth Watkins supports kaimahi across the museum to input and maintain accurate information in EMu, Te Papa’s Collection Management System, ensuring it supports the documentation and management of more than a million collection taonga objects and natural historyRead more
Te Papa collection manager and kaitiaki taonga Moana Parata shares a story of her recent journey to Los Angeles to bring home a precious taonga, a raranga vest collected by Carl Freeze, an American Mormon missionary in the early 1900s.Read more
Many of New Zealand’s native orchids need our help to secure their long-term survival, but it is hard to help when we know so little about them. Master’s student Rebecca Greenwood (recipient of Te Papa Foundation Orchid Conservation Scholarship) is embarking on research to explore the pollinators and fungal-root interactions of a small group of spider orchids from south Auckland. Read more
It would be hard to miss that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen an exponential rise in programming, availability, use, and debate in the last few years. Here at Te Papa, we’ve been looking at possible use cases for the Digital Museum, and investigating safe ways to connect the collections to visitors. In this blog, Collections Data Manager Gareth Watkins describes his experiments with ways Generative AI can tell richer stories and enable deeper connections to our collection database.Read more
Lya Riley passed away on 18 May, 2024, aged 103. In 2022, Lya generously gifted Te Papa a collection of treasures from her early years in Austria and her married life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, Curator New Zealand Histories and Cultures Katie Cooper shares some of Lya’s story and looks back on a very special day spent with Lya and her whānau.Read more
Polynesians arrived at and lived on Motu Maha Auckland Islands in the 13th or 14th century, but it wasn’t until 1806 that the first European ship reached the archipelago. Since then, several botanists have visited Motu Maha as part of scientific expeditions, increasing our understanding of the flora. In herRead more
Botanists and mycologists have collected and studied fungi from the subantarctic islands since 1840. However, there is still much to learn about the mycoflora of these islands. We were fortunate to have a mycologist, Toni Atkinson, on our research team as part of the Strannik 2023 Auckland Island Expedition. Learn more about some of the collections we made and research being done on the fungi of Motu Maha Auckland Islands.Read more
The eleven researchers and crew on the Strannik 2023 Auckland Island Expedition journeyed to the Auckland Islands in January 2023 to undertake botanical field work over four weeks on the main Auckland Island. For Te Papa Botany Curator Heidi Meudt, this was her first ship-based field expedition, so many thingsRead more
As a botany curator, Heidi Meudt pays a lot of attention to plants, however, she is also curious about the other living things she sees when out in the field. When she was on Motu Maha Auckland Islands in January 2023, she tried to photograph as many of these non-plantRead more
Three species of Aotearoa New Zealand forget-me-nots (Myosotis, Boraginaceae) have been described in a paper by Te Papa Botany Curator Heidi Meudt and her colleague, Jessie Prebble (Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research). Each of these species is endemic to the South Island but has a restricted geographic distribution. Meet the new species below and find out how to recognise them in the field. All three species have also been beautifully illustrated by Bobbi Angell.Read more
Massey University student Hayden Jones and Botany Curator Carlos Lehnebach are launching a citizen science project aiming at solving the identity crisis that surrounds one of our most common terrestrial orchids and your observation could provide the clue to solving this taxonomic imbroglio. Maikuku – the white sun orchid (ThelymitraRead more
Why is a specimen of New Zealand’s indigenous carrot on display at Te Papa for the next few months? Curator of Botany Leon Perrie explains. Among the most significant plant specimens in our care are collections made in 1769-1770 from Aotearoa New Zealand by botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander.Read more
Recently the Botany team at Te Papa dedicated a week to curating several boxes of plant specimens – we called it the Botany Blitz! Our aim was to crack open boxes that have been patiently waiting – months, years, or in some cases decades – to be processed and databased. During our Blitz, we catalogued many specimens, learned new things about our collections, and discovered many fascinating stories along the way. Botany Curator Heidi Meudt processed one of the boxes from the botanist Thomas Kirk.Read more
When we think of Te Papa’s collections, we generally think of boxes neatly arranged systematically on shelves, everything in its place. But perhaps every collection / Collection Manager at Te Papa has a pile of material in boxes or on shelves in the ‘waiting to be processed’ category. Maybe this material needs more information, maybe someone else needs to look at it, or maybe it was put aside because it was ‘too hard’ or perhaps just forgotten about. Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Bridget Hatton describes the Botany Collection’s recent Botany Blitz along with some of the findings. Read more
