Colin McCahon is a household name in New Zealand because of his paintings – but did you know he dabbled in jewellery? Decorative art and design curator Justine Olsen writes about a lesser-known part of McCahon’s life.Read more
‘We just want other people to be able to do this!’ User experience designers Kate Wanless and Karyn Brice talk about how they’re using a user-centred design process to create an earthquake interactive for the new Taiao | Nature zone coming in 2019.Read more
The typeface used in the exhibition ‘Ko Rongowhakaata: The Story of Light and Shadow’ was developed in 2017. But its origins date back to the early 1800s, and is intimately connected to the iwi. Here is its story.Read more
What comes to mind when you think of textile design? Fashion? Furnishing? Cloth? Curatorial intern Sonya Withers looks at the work of Greta Menzies. Textile designers are hard to pin, as their practice can span multiple mediums, spaces, and creative thinking. International examples have shown technical experimentation in the defenceRead more
“It’s my product. It’s my vision. It’s my dream. It’s my life,” writes Laurie Foon, founder of the Starfish fashion label in the late 1990s.Read more
It’s not every day that you get to delve into the nitty-gritty details of a fashion label. Te Papa’s assistant archivist Gareth Watkins is going through Starfish’s archive, recently gifted to Te Papa.Read more
Curator decorative art and design Justine Olsen chooses her top ten objects exhibited in European Splendour: 1500–1800. The objects below are mainly decorative and through them we see changes in style, materials, and techniques. They offer a valuable insights into a bygone age and highlight the impact of religion, trade, culture, and theRead more
When Helen Hitchings launched her gallery in 1949, it was a landmark moment for modernism in New Zealand. Te Papa celebrates this event with the exhibition in Ngā Toi /Arts Te Papa with the Gallery of Helen Hitchings. Former advertising assistant and theatre designer, Hitchings had established her dealer galleryRead more
To commemorate the life of the late New Zealand potter Peter Stichbury our curator of art and design Justine Olsen looks back over his life’s work. It is with great sadness that we farewell Peter Stichbury – the last of the Leach generation of New Zealand studio potters. Equally at home behindRead more
When Te Papa purchased Easy Chair two years ago, we acquired it for its associations with modernism and with the Auckland store jon jansen. But we wanted to verify the designer. Detailed research – surveying design publications, comparing similar chairs, identifying woods – finally led me to the original SwedishRead more
This week New Zealand in Vogue was installed in the Eyelights gallery on the 4th floor. Its simple 1960s lines replaces the razzle dazzle of Enriching Fashion. As I mentioned in my last post on Wool Week, the exhibition is inspired by Vogue New Zealand, the pages of which haveRead more
In 2008, I co-curated a small show in our Illot Gallery about Samoan-born graphic designer Joseph Churchward, who has hand-crafted about 570 fonts to date. Last year, Joseph received the John Britten Award, from the Designers Institute of New Zealand, for outstanding leadership, vision and achievement in the field of typeRead more
