THE AUCKLAND WAR MEMORIAL MUSEUM, TAMAKI PAENGA HIRA

Assembling material for the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London was the catalyst for collecting in early Auckland, and the first items gathered for a nascent museum in 1852 reflected the emphasis on resources considered appropriate for British colonies. A duality of focus on natural and cultural history continued to characterise exhibits in various temporary premises and in the first purpose-built museum erected in Princes Street in 1876 under the auspices of the Auckland Institute. Today the museum occupies a monumental three-storey building overlooking the city and its harbour from the elevated volcanic hill-site of Pukekawa in the spacious parkland of the Auckland Domain. The majestic Greek Revival edifice has an additional purpose, for it was built in the 1920s not only to accommodate the ever-growing collections, but also to commemorate the servicemen of Auckland district who died in World War I. This is the reason for the Court of Honour and Cenotaph in front of the museum, as well as the inscription of Pericles’ funeral oration for Athenian soldiers above the columned portico, the names of foreign battlefields in the window embrasures, and the building’s unique Doric frieze with its carved reliefs on military themes.

Figure 18.1 The Auckland War Memorial Museum

Photograph: Krysztof Pfeiffer. Reproduced with permission of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

The uppermost floor of the Auckland War Memorial Museum is dedicated to the war dead, both in the original Hall of Memories for World War I and another for World War II, each with a Roll of Honour inscribed on marble panels, paying tribute to the thousands of fallen who had come from Auckland families of both European and Maori descent. The losses of the latter war necessitated substantial extensions in 1960, again with the joint purpose of providing space for collections and commemoration. Today the building is once more undergoing extensive expansion, scheduled to open in late 2006, following a major program of structural renewal and refurbishment in the 1990s. The focus is now exclusively on museum agendas, directed at the more proactive roles museums are expected to play in contemporary society – although the temptation to move to overly ‘hi-tech’ interactive exhibits has been resisted in favour of a continuing strong focus on objects. The museum, with its fine library and resource centres, has a distinguished record in field work, publication and research, and a longstanding interest in education (the current lively children’s discovery centres Weird and Wonderful, and Treasures and Tales trace their origin to school programs inaugurated in 1930). The additions will extend outreach possibilities with a new educational unit, auditorium and conference centre, as well as a generous temporary exhibition venue, underground parking, restaurant and retail facilities – amenities expected by today’s audiences, which will also provide financial support for the institution. Expanded storage facilities are included to house the impressive holdings on site, particularly the very large Maori and Pacific collections, which are among the finest in the world and are fittingly predominant in the museum’s displays.

Old style exhibits that presented the culture of the region, natural curiosities and imported objets d’art side by side – such as intriguing juxtapositions of the superbly carved Maori storehouse (Te Oha), a moa skeleton and a plaster Apollo Belvedere recorded in old photographs of the museum at Princes Street – have long since been overtaken by more conventional classifications of ecology and ethnography. A few of the casts of Ancient Greek sculptures acquired in 1878 to introduce ‘high art’ to the colony (though not the Apollo) are still to be found unexpectedly in hallways, as is the recently restored Egyptian mummy Ta-Sedgemet. Renewal of exhibitions is ongoing, but many such objects are currently in storage, including the fine collection of Asian art, except some items in Civilisations, a small exhibit of antiquities. The museum’s focus today is indisputably on Aotearoa New Zealand, and the division of nature and culture is clear. The natural history exhibits of the land and its oceans are housed on the first floor. With their high cultural significance, the Maori and Pacific collections occupy prime ground floor sites – a practical as well as symbolic position, as they are the chief drawcards for visitors, particularly tourists.

The Maori Hall, the largest exhibition space at the heart of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, retains features reminiscent of its original installation, particularly the magnificent carved meeting house Hotunui, which was built into the fabric of the hall when the new museum opened in 1929. One obvious difference is the absence of the imposing Pukaki, a major carving from the collection which featured prominently in the acclaimed 1985 Te Maori exhibition that toured the United States and New Zealand. Acknowledging its responsibility to repatriate objects acquired through collecting practices that are no longer considered acceptable, the museum returned Pukaki to the Te Arawa people of Rotorua in 1997, and has negotiated the restoration of other holdings also. Notwithstanding any such significant de-accessions, the Maori collection is an extraordinarily rich one that represents all the tribes of Aotearoa New Zealand. The expansive Maori Hall incorporates many monumental taonga – carved houses, gateways, and the last of the great war canoes, Te Toki-a-Tapiri, which stretches along nearly half the length of the display area – together with spacious, spotlit display of smaller pieces, creating a celebration of aesthetic quality as well as spiritual values.

Figure 18.2 The Maori Hall at the Auckland War Memorial Museum

Photograph: Krysztof Pfeiffer. Reproduced with permission of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

The present classification of the Maori artefacts is predominantly taxonomic, with items grouped by type rather than according to ancestral affiliations, which would arguably be of more direct interest to Maori themselves. To counter this western ethnographic framework that seems designed to meet the expectations of international visitors, the lead texts for wall panels are in Maori, and the Te Kakano information centre installed within the exhibition hall offers Maori audiences alternate ways of accessing the collection. The centre’s name means ‘the seed’, acknowledging Maori ancestry in Polynesian culture, and its special data base is a resource that can be searched by area or tribe to ascertain the museum’s holdings related to a visitor’s personal affiliations.

Te Kakano also caters for the many Pacific Islands people who live in Auckland, said to be the largest Polynesian city in the world today. In the case of the Pacific Islands collection, housed in the exhibition spaces to left and right of the entrance atrium, different strategies have been deployed to present the artefacts, although both share striking centrepieces of great canoes, affording opportunity not only to place such large items on show, but also to mark the seafaring prowess of the peoples of the Pacific. The first gallery, Pacific Lifeways, is devoted to a more traditional ethnographic approach, incorporating two types of display, both with extensive explanatory texts. One set of cabinets is devoted to works grouped by themes, the other by communities, particularly those living in Auckland – Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati, Niue, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are all represented. The artefacts are there to tell the stories of the nations they represent and provide an introduction for visitors seeking to understand Pacific culture. The other gallery, Pacific Masterpieces, shows objects in typological groupings, with minimal labelling, although a supporting interactive visual presentation supplies socio-historical information. The emphasis is on the aesthetic qualities of Pacific design, but the atmosphere is quite different from contemporary art galleries, both because of the low-level lighting needed for the conservation of precious fibre items and the quantity of artefacts on display in their specially designed glass cases. The aim is to share the richness of the collection with visitors and give them the opportunity to view as many fine items as possible.

On the ground floor beyond the Maori and Pacific halls are galleries that have been used for temporary exhibitions and for permanent displays relating to the settler culture of New Zealand. Other than some changing exhibits of applied arts, and historical objets d’art from the eclectic Mackelvie donations of the 1880s displayed as a collection on the first floor, there have been few European-derived cultural artefacts on show recently, such as there used to be in lavish displays of fine English furniture and pottery, for example. Two galleries for design and decorative arts are planned, however, one New Zealand, the other international, in space freed up by the new extensions and in the area that until lately housed the City exhibition on the founding and development of Auckland, created in the 1990s. While another installation from that time remains – Wild Child, exploring New Zealand childhood past and present – an older exhibit on colonial Auckland, sponsored by the store Milne and Choyce Ltd. for their 1966 centennial, is also due for dismantling, although this has been delayed more than once because of its great popularity with visitors, who enjoy wandering through diminutive nineteenth-century streets and peering into domestic interiors and quaint shops.

While the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s pictorial and photographic collection is an outstanding resource on colonial culture, exhibition space devoted to this field is modest at best, and there is no attempt to recount a history of European colonisation. Only the top-floor exhibition Scars on the Heart, a 1993 development replacing the old war-trophy displays of ranked armaments adjacent to the memorial halls, and renewing the commemorative purpose of the museum, addresses one thread of that history. Its compelling narrative of New Zealand at war opens with colonial conflicts of the nineteenth century, where it is the goal to represent both a Maori and a colonial perspective through paired displays, and in a video presentation especially created for this exhibit.

The museum’s resolve to ensure that indigenous voices are represented is found even in the galleries depicting the country’s flora and fauna and diverse ecological regions in impressive displays dating from the 1990s renewal program. Adjacent to these, and providing a different perspective on their accounts of natural history, is the highly innovative exhibition, Te Ao Turoa, where the origin myth of the division of the heavens and the earth in the separation of the first gods, Rangi and Papa, the father and mother of all, is represented by the starry sky and the land beneath. Bringing together culture and nature, the exhibition offers a Maori interpretation of the world, recounted through a combination of artefacts and oral history with natural specimens.

The desire to acknowledge Maori has been expressed in many different ways since the museum’s inauguration, with Maori artefacts collected from the outset. Even the architecture of the 1929 memorial museum, despite its classical origins, signals the earliest culture of Aotearoa New Zealand in the ingenious capitals and friezes of the interior which incorporate Maori designs. But perhaps the most potent part of the bicultural underpinning of the Auckland War Memorial Museum lies not in its architecture, collections or exhibitions, significant as they are, but in the institution’s governance. The Auckland War Memorial Museum Act 1996 established a Maori advisory committee, Taumata-a-Iwi, representing the main tribes of the Auckland region, and with a seat on the museum’s new Trust Board. In addition, the Maori Values Team of staff members works in parallel with customary line management to ensure operational accountability. This unique structure guarantees, in the words of Director Maori Paul Tapsell, ‘a new level of integration of Maori policy, practice and procedure in all aspects of Museum operations’ (Auckland War Memorial Museum 2002, 10).

REFERENCE

Auckland War Memorial Museum. 2002. Guide. Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum.

FURTHER READING

Cheeseman, T. F. 1917. The first fifty years of the Auckland Institute and Museum and its future aims. Auckland: Wilson and Horton.

Kawharu, Merata. 2002. ‘Indigenous governance in museums: A case study, the Auckland War Memorial Museum’. In The dead and their possessions, edited by Fforde, C.; Hubert, J; Turnbull, P. London and New York: Routledge.

Park, Stuart. 1986. An introduction to Auckland Museum. Auckland Institute and Museum.

Powell, A. W. B., editor. 1967. The centennial history of the Auckland Institute and Museum. The Council of the Auckland Institute and Museum.

Stead, Oliver, editor. 2001. 150 treasures. Auckland: David Bateman and the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Tapsell, Paul. 2000. Pukaki: A comet returns. Auckland: Reed Books.

Tapsell, Paul. 2006. Maori treasures of New Zealand. Auckland: David Bateman and the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Wolfe, Richard. 2004. A noble prospect: 75 years of the Auckland War Memorial Museum building. Auckland: The Auckland War Memorial Museum.

 

Cite this chapter as: Rankin, Elizabeth. 2006. ‘The Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tamaki Paenga Hira’. South Pacific Museums, edited by Healy, Chris; Witcomb, Andrea. Monash University ePress: Melbourne. pp. 18.1–18.5.

© Copyright 2006 Elizabeth Rankin
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