All That Remains: WWI objects in New Zealand museum collections

ATR-BANNER-PRINT 350

We’re very excited to introduce All That Remains: WWI objects in New Zealand museum collections | He Waihotanga Iho mai i te Pakanga Tuatahi – www.allthatremains.net.nz In July, the world marks the centenary of the beginning of World War I (WWI). New Zealand’s museums hold many memories of wartime through the objects in their collections…. Read more »

Objets trouvés : Signs of humanity at Ohinau Island.

  • Locations in coromandel
  • A shard of glas, with one bevelled edge found at the site of the old light-house in the South of Ohinau Island. Photo: Susan Waugh. Copyright: Te Papa.
  • rabbit rather dead
  • Sharp, and apparently worked pieces of stone found on the shearwater colonies at Ohinau Island. Photos: Susan Waugh, Copyright, Te Papa.

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 was an important food gathering site… Read more »

Watching goldfish in the nude: Thomas Benjamin Kennington’s Idlesse

T. B. Kennington, Idle Hours (The Goldfish Bowl

Is the painting Idlesse by Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856–1916) a late Victorian time-bomb, which would have delighted intellectual guru Michel Foucault, author of The History of Sexuality? Or is it an unjustly overlooked, chaste, white masterpiece, a victim of prudery and puritanism in its lack of exposure since its acquisition by the New Zealand Academy… Read more »

One week to talk on the Trekka

Martin Trekka Trekka 003

On Thursday 26 June Te Papa hosts a talk by journalist Todd Niall who discusses the Trekka – the vehicle and the art work. In the run up to the talk we’re collecting memories of the Trekka vehicle – good and bad. What did you think of it? Email your recollections, opinions, anecdotes or even… Read more »

Her Majesty’s bloomers

Bloomers front

Among the many treasures in the textiles collection at Te Papa there is one very large pair of drawers (or bloomers). These drawers were owned by Queen Victoria. After her death in 1901, Queen Victoria’s underwear was distributed to members of the Royal Household. This particular pair was owned by Lady Louisa Seddon, wife of… Read more »

The Iberian lynx and its unique louse

Male of the very endangered Iberian lynx louse, Felicola (Lorisicola) isidoroi Pérez & Palma, 2001. This is the only specimen known of this species, and is kept in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

By Ricardo L. Palma, Curator of Terrestrial Invertebrates Managing the survival and conservation of animal species which are in danger of extinction has become a widespread activity in many parts of the world.  Until now, most of the conservation effort has been concentrated on birds and mammals, probably because they are relatively large, popular, warm… Read more »

Whiti Te Rā! The Story of Ngāti Toa Rangatira – now open!

  • Te Kura Maori o Porirua kapahaka
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  • ngati toa opening_197
  • ngati toa opening_197

Kia ora koutou. The exhibition opening and celebratory weekend was amazing. Thank you to all the many people of Ngāti Toa Rangatira who helped make this day happen. Also our acknowledgements to our past iwi in residence, and all those who came to the dawn opening, travelling from far and wide. There were over a thousand people in… Read more »

Nostalgia for the Future

Sameshima - Portsmouth motors

If you are feeling nostalgic you are probably sentimentally yearning for a period in the past – for a happy, simpler time. But the past often thinks about the future, and its sometimes naïve and romantic imaginations can make you feel nostalgic too. Here’s Bernard Roundhill 1956 vision of Auckland in the year 2000. How we loved transport… Read more »

Paula Green: The Life of a Poem

At the end of 2013, Te Papa started working on a series of creative responses to Colin McCahon’s Walk (Series C) (1973) – long an artistic trigger. We approached poet and writer Greg O’Brien who agreed to work with us. Greg contacted some of New Zealand’s most well-known poets. Over the summer, they wrote and… Read more »