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This feed currently contains the following newsitems (total count 1557):

    • Exploring nature in our cities – new documentary released
      • For the past four years, Te Papa’s scientists Lara Shepherd and Leon Perrie have participated in the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge – a global competition that connects people with nature by encouraging them to record the wildlife in our cities. This year, as well as being behind the camera, we also had fun in front of the lens whilst being filmed for a short documentary about the challenge and goals.

    • Vampire folklore and the diseases transmitted by bloodsuckers
      • With Halloween coming up and summer around the corner, it is time for bloodsucking beasties to come out. Insect curator Julia Kasper specialises in flies and bloodsucking insects and has a strong interest in the historical and cultural aspects of entomology. Here, she sheds a bright light on the vampire world and explains what actually caused the diseases that were blamed on – and furthered the belief in – the vampire.

    • A rabbit’s fur: Documenting the natural world through art
      • This September, students from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Design Innovation visited Te Papa to learn about animal illustration. Art curators Rebecca Rice and Lizzie Bisley showed them a group of artworks from across the collection. Starting with Albrecht Dürer’s 1505 engraving The large horse, the works ranged from the 16th to 20th centuries, showcasing a huge variety of styles, techniques, and approaches to representing animals. After looking at these works, the students drew their own animal illustrations in Te Papa’s Te Taiao | Nature space. Curator Art Lizzie Bisley discusses how it went.

    • Museum collecting: Acknowledging our Colonial past
      • When we think about New Zealand’s national museum, we often think about Te Papa, with its enormous building on the waterfront and bicultural philosophy. ‘Our Place’. Or we might imagine the National Museum at Buckle Street with the National War Memorial or the carillon standing tall in front – a place you might remember visiting as a child. But our national museum’s history begins over 100 years before that, in 1865, to be exact. Curator Mātauranga Māori Amber Aranui takes us back to this creatively documented time.

    • The pāua that clings to the sea: a new species of abalone found only in waters off a remote New Zealand island chain
      • The discovery of the Manawatāwhi pāua, unique to the Three Kings Islands, highlights the need to build taxonomic expertise to speed up work to describe thousands of as-yet unnamed species. Authors Kerry Walton, Curator Invertebrates, Te Papa, Hamish G Spencer, Sesquicentennial Distinguished Professor of Zoology, University of Otago, and Nic Rawlence, Associate Professor in Ancient DNA, University of Otago discuss the ramifications of the new find. This article was first published on The Conversation, 3 September, 2024.

    • The blob blog
      • This Psychrolutes microporos, also known as “Mr Blobby,” the blobfish, is the iconic ambassador for The Deep Sea and personifies everything we air-breathers seem to find weird about it. The image, one of the internet’s first viral memes, has been claimed by a myriad of organisations, usually without the actual photographer

    • Experiment to plug Te Papa collections into ChatGPT
      • 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.

    • Enamelling tools at Te Papa: inside the Blaxall Collection
      • In 1997 Te Papa purchased approximately 1000 nineteenth- and twentieth-century silversmiths and jewellers’ tools. The collection was started by jeweller Norris Blaxall in the early 1920s and his son Kevan continued to assemble and document the collection. Jessa Roylands, a Museum Studies student at Victoria University of Wellington, has been researching the tools, and shares some insights into the process of creating beautiful, glossy enamelled jewellery.

    • The Sāmoan Manumea – how can museums help to protect this national treasure?
      • The Manumea, or tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), is an endemic bird of Sāmoa, currently on the brink of extinction. How can museums help to protect this national treasure? In this blog, Research Assistant Annika Sung examines how Te Papa’s collections can teach us about the Manumea and its entwined relationship to various aspects of Sāmoan life and culture.

    • Researching the research (expeditions)
      • As Wikipedian in Residence at Te Papa, Siobhan Leachman researched the research expeditions the museum has undertaken since the Colonial Museum was founded in 1865. Siobhan and Digital Channels Outreach Manager Lucy Schrader show how sharing this information through the open linked data platform Wikidata has made it easier to learn about the expeditions and what they discovered.

    • Online learning with Te Papa and Khan Academy
      • Te Papa is excited to announce a new partnership with Khan Academy, a not-for-profit educational organisation with a mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Online Course Content and Facilitation Lead Mel Thompson explores what courses are available.

    • Hidden pāua of Collections Online
      • Collections Online hosts over a million items from Te Papa’s collection, each with its own unique story. As part of an internship exploring how blackfoot pāua are represented in Te Papa, Sara Joyce Macdonald highlights a few collection items showing the varied uses of pāua and the importance of that unique taonga to Aotearoa New Zealand.Read more

    • Matariki kōrero: What’s in an exhibition?
      • As part of this year’s Matariki celebrations, Exhibition Experience Developer Dan Parke talks about creative storytelling in the Mānawatia a Matariki exhibition space on Rongomaraeroa, the marae here at Te Papa. This piece originally appeared in The Post on Wednesday 12 June.Read more

    • At Nancy Adams’ Desk: Juvenilia and wildflowers
      • As part of a summer research project, Lucia Adams from Botany and Annie Barnard from Art worked with Te Papa’s collection of Nancy Adams’ works. Annie and Lucia digitised botanical specimens that Adams collected, enriched catalogue records of her artworks and archival material, and did research and writing about her work and influence. They took a series of field trips to sites that were important in Nancy’s life and work. Here is the third and final in a series of blogs documenting these trips.Read more

    • Lya Riley (née Kleinmann), 1921–2024
      • 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

    • Matariki kōrero with Aroha Matchitt-Millar
      • As part of this year’s Matariki celebrations, Public Programming Specialist, Kaupapa Māori Aroha Matchitt-Millar (Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāti Tarāwhai, Ngāi Tūhoe) talks about her connection to mātauranga Māori and shares her kōrero about this year’s theme, Matariki Heri Kai, the feast of Matariki. This piece originally appeared in The Post on Wednesday 5 June.Read more

    • ‘Ahu: Ngā wairua o Hina – Making for the past, present, and future
      • In 1787, a series of books composed of samples of barkcloths collected from Hawai‘i, Tahiti and Tonga were published by Alexander Shaw. James Cook collected the cloths during his voyages to the Pacific, and while the books contain only fragments of much larger creations, they highlight the variety of textures and artistry attained through the practices, knowledge and skills of Pacific peoples. Mātauranga Māori Curator Isaac Te Awa and Co-Director Pauline Reynolds take us through some of the makers’ reactions to the Shaw book at the recent wānanga in Tahiti.Read more

    • Mataaho Collective win the Golden Lion
      • Mataaho Collective have won a Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale 2024, for their large-scale installation Takapau. Curator of Contemporary Art Hanahiva Rose reflects on this remarkable achievement.Read more

    • Alexander Shaw’s Tapa Sampler at Te Papa
      • In 2019, Rachel Yates (Vaisala, Savaii), then Curator Pacific Cultures, lead the acquisition of one of Alexander Shaw’s tapa samplers into Te Papa’s collection, supported by Curator History Katie Cooper, Curator Historical Art Rebecca Rice, and Senior Librarian Martin Lewis. The sampler was presented as a gift by the TeRead more

    • Highlights from the 2024 City Nature Challenge in Greater Wellington
      • The iNaturalist City Nature Challenge is an annual event where cities around the world compete to record the most observations and species, and have the greatest number of participants over a four-day period. Science Researcher Lara Shepherd highlights some of the interesting discoveries made during the challenge, in what isRead more

    • ‘Ahu: ngā wairua o Hina – a tapa making wānanga in Tahiti
      • In 2021, Te Papa acquired a rare book of tapa cloth (bark cloth) samples cut from larger pieces of tapa collected on Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific (1768, 1772, 1776) and represent tapa-making practices from various islands including Hawai‘i, Tahiti and Tonga. Rachel Yates (former Curator Pacific Cultures) initiated the collecting proposal and one of her key intentions behind acquiring the sampler was to ensure that it would be accessible to Pacific communities. In the first of four blogs about this kaupapa, Senior Curator Pacific Histories and Cultures Sean Mallon introduces the continuation of this project and a wānanga that happened in Tahiti in late 2023.Read more

    • Another PhD student flies the nest!
      • Each year, several biology and ecology postgraduate students are co-supervised by Te Papa natural history researchers. One of these students, Weixuan Ning, has completed his PhD at Massey University in Plant Biology. His co-supervisors – Botany Curator Heidi Meudt and Associate Professor Jen Tate – talk about his time as a Massey and Te Papa student, and the mahi he has been involved in.Read more

    • Jellies, clowns, and stars: spectacular wildlife beneath Wellington’s waves
      • Wellington is known for being a biodiversity-rich city with many of its surrounding hills protected in reserves and birdlife booming from active predator control. But Wellington is also a harbour city with spectacular wildlife concealed beneath its waves. Luckily, Wellington is also home to numerous talented underwater photographers, providing glimpses of these otherwise hidden treasures. Te Papa researcher Lara Shepherd shares her favourite photos of Wellington’s amazing underwater life and, just in time for the upcoming iNaturalist 2024 City Nature Challenge (April 26–April 29), provides suggestions for how to learn more about the oft-overlooked critters in our marine ‘backyard’.Read more

    • Sāmoan Portraits: an exhibition celebrating change and continuity
      • As part of the Sāmoan Multiplicities research project, Research Assistant Annika Sung curated an exhibition at The New Zealand Portrait Gallery using Te Papa’s historical photography collection and the works of contemporary artists. In this blog, Sung explains some of the background and themes of the exhibition. Here, Annika takes us through the work involved in the exhibition and the results. This post was first published on IndeGen, 2 April, 2024. Read more

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