16 Facts About Te Papa

1.

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's national museum and is located in Wellington.

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2.

Usually known as Te Papa, it opened in 1998 after the merging of the National Museum of New Zealand and the National Art Gallery.

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3.

Te Papa's philosophy emphasises the living face behind its cultural treasures, many of which retain deep ancestral links to the indigenous Maori people.

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4.

Te Papa was established in 1992 by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Act 1992.

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5.

Part of the remit for Te Papa was to explore the national identity of New Zealand.

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6.

Main Te Papa building is built on former Wellington Harbour Board land, on the waterfront in Wellington, on Cable Street.

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7.

Te Papa was designed by Jasmax Architects and built by Fletcher Construction.

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8.

In 1946 the Dominion Museum one of Te Papa's predecessors received a bequest of some Fernside Homestead's finest antiques from Ella Elgar's will.

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9.

Te Papa has a mixture of long term exhibitions of cultural objects, hands-on and interactive exhibitions, cultural spaces and touring exhibitions.

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10.

In October 2018, Te Papa management promised to review restructuring plans, indicating that plans would be scaled back.

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11.

Between April and May 2019, Te Papa advertised a research position for a molluscan curator and awarded the job to an alternative candidate to Bruce Marshall.

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12.

On 23 June 2021, Te Papa Museum closed for two days for deep cleaning after an Australian tourist who visited the museum and its Surrealist Arts Masterpieces exhibit on 19 June tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant.

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13.

Te Papa staff became the target of abusive and threatening phone calls and letters.

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14.

Te Papa responded by refusing to remove the offending artwork.

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15.

Taranaki tribal elders raised objections to a 19th-century Te Papa-owned painting that the museum planned to lend to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth in 2019.

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16.

Te Papa said it hoped the piece, View of Mt Egmont, Taranaki, New Zealand, taken from New Plymouth, with Maoris driving off settlers' cattle, painted by William Strutt, would spark a conversation about historical perspectives.

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