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Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
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The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's
national museum, located in Wellington. Known as Te Papa, or "Our
Place", it opened in 1998 after the merging of the National Museum
and the National Art Gallery. More than 1.5 million people visit
every year.
Te Papa Tongarewa translates literally to "container of treasures".
A fuller interpretation is ‘our container of treasured things and
people that spring from mother earth here in New Zealand’.
Te Papa's philosophy emphasises the living face behind its cultural
treasures, many of which retain deep ancestral links to the
indigenous Māori people. The Museum recognises the partnership that
was created by the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, te Tiriti o
Waitangi, in 1840. |
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The five main collections areas are Arts, History, Taonga Māori,
Pacific Cultures, and Natural History.
Online access to Te Papa's collections is available at Collections
Online.
The History Collection includes many dresses and textiles, the
oldest of which date back to the sixteenth century. The History
Collection also includes the New Zealand Post Archive with around
20,000 stamps and related objects, and the Pacific Collection with
about 13,000 historic and contemporary items from the Pacific
Islands.
There are significant collections of fossils and archaeozoology; a
herbarium (WELT) of about 250,000 dried specimen; a collection of
about 70,000 specimen of New Zealand birds; significant amphibians,
reptiles and mammals.
The museum has the world's largest specimen of the rare colossal
squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). It weighs 495 kilograms (1,091
lb) and is 4.2 metres (14 ft) long.[24] The squid arrived at the
museum in March 2007 after being captured by New Zealand fisherman
in the Ross Sea off Antarctica.
The cultural collections include collections on photography, Māori
taonga (cultural treasures), and Pacific cultures.
Te Papa has a mixture of
long term exhibitions of cultural objects, hands-on and interactive
exhibitions, cultural spaces and touring exhibitions. The long term
exhibitions of cultural objects focus on New Zealand history, Māori
culture and New Zealand's natural world.
Getting
There
This tourist attraction
is well serviced by public transport including taxis, buses and
shuttle.
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