Blog

It's Cook Island Māori Language Week and Mama Piri highlights her favourite collection item – a 1960's Tivaivai. Much more than a decorative textile, this tivaivai tells the story of a family and the strong bond between the makers. Written in both Cook Island Māori and English.

How do you assess ancient maps or charts, without risking further deterioration? How much restoration is too much? Auckland Museum’s map librarian Julie Senior faced a huge challenge preparing a 125-year-old chart for display in the Entangled Islands exhibition.

The rising of the star constellation known as Matariki is an important time in the Māori calendar. The team at the forefront of Auckland Museum's Matariki celebrations reflect on its historic significance and how it now plays a pivotal role in highlighting environmental awareness.

To complement our 'Entangled Islands' exhibition we begin a series of articles which explore the personal stories of those involved in New Zealand's first action in WWI, the occupation of German Sāmoa. The series opens with an interview with Sāmoan-born Albrecht Stünzner of Auckland, grandson of Friedrich Stünzner who first travelled to Western Sāmoa in 1896.

The exhibition 'Entangled Islands: Sāmoa, New Zealand and the First World War' is the first of the centennial exhibitions commemorating the First World War at Auckland Museum, and the first to concentrate on this shared Sāmoan and New Zealand history. Consultant historian Damon Salesa helped shape the exhibition, and here in his opening night speech he sets the scene on this little-known part of our shared history.

In this open letter, Director Roy Clare recognises the dedication and hard work shown by Auckland War Memorial Museum's 300-strong volunteer community.

Associate Curator Māori Nigel Borell reflects on the career of Kura Te Waru Rewiri, one of five contemporary artists featured in the Five Māori Painters exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

For a day in early April the auditorium lobby was turned into a temporary classroom to give students from the University of Auckland’s World Archaeology course an opportunity to encounter objects commonly seen only in text books.

For the month of February 2014 a group of five young women were chosen to participate in Auckland Museum’s Urbanlife Summer Youth Programme. The group immersed themselves in the Museum’s rich history, its collection stories, and spent time with collections and research staff to understand the work that Museum staff do.

Protest photography was one of the themes during our exhibition A Decade of Days – Auckland through Robin Morrison’s eyes. Sharon Hawke and Jos Wheeler, all too familiar with conflict beyond the lens, reflect on Morrison’s images from Bastion Point and the Springbok Tour of 1981.

For Easter, we visited our Applied Art and Design galleries to photograph this beautiful enamel missal cover. Curator Damian Skinner provides a short history of how the French city Limoges, where the cover was made, became famous in the Middle Ages for this style of champlevé enamel.

As part of our exhibition A Decade of Days – Auckland through Robin Morrison’s eyes, we collaborated with Manukau Institute of Technology, Fresh Gallery Otara, the public and invited experts to explore people, places and themes represented by photographs within the exhibition.