Blog

Auckland War Memorial Museum has recently completed the formal acquisition and cataloguing of memorabilia gifted by the 21st Battalion Association, and this blog details the elaborate process every item goes through as it joins the collection.

Floras are an exhaustive listing and descriptions of plants with a geographical focus. To celebrate Fiji Language Week, Yumiko Baba (Associate Curator, Botany) and Paula Legel (Associate Curator, Heritage Publications) examine an exquisitely illustrated 19th century flora.

Nina Whittaker (Cataloguing Librarian) and Geraldine Warren (Māori Resources & Mātauranga Advisor), in conversation with Leone Samu and Te Whai Mātauranga Smith about how the exclusivity of English-language cataloguing is excluding Reo speakers.

Head of Collection Care Vasiti Palavi describes what a gift like the one the 21st Battalion donated to the Museum means for the collection, and what a massive undertaking it is to make it accessible to audiences.

Photographer Richard Ng reflects on the work involved in photographing a huge collection, and the importance of getting each image absolutely right.

Auckland Museum’s Head of Natural Sciences and avid fish expert, Tom Trnski, shares how a recently opened old box of hand-written notes fills in some long-standing gaps, and opens up a conversation with Cook Island knowledge holders about the Cook Islands language.

Read about the experience of Kahutoi Te Kanawa being part of the Taumata Māreikura in the Te Awe Project

The Orange Coronation Ballroom on Newton Road in Auckland, also known as The Orange Ballroom or The Orange, was Pacific music central in Auckland from 1954 to the mid-1970s. Bill Sevesi and his Islanders played night after night to audiences who thronged the dance floor. Read more about this period in New Zealand's music history here.

The Manumea is the national bird of Samoa and is found nowhere else in the world. A species of ground pigeon, the Manumea has a large head and hooked beak. One of the closest living relatives of the extinct dodo, the scientific name for the species (Didunculus strigirostris) means little dodo.

A look at Waiheke Island’s history as one of Auckland City’s favourite island getaway locations.

2020 marked the first year that Gasav Ne Fäeag Rotuạm – Rotuman Language Week, officially joins the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ Pacific Language Week celebrations. In this blog we look at Tales of a Lonely Island (1939), an early twentieth century collection of Rotuman legends.