Amber Aranui and write about the provenance of the taonga (= treasure) collection:
the early acquisition records of the Colonial Museum in Wellington (the current Te Papa Museum) were examined in order to identify the origins, histories, and kōrero of taonga Māori in Te Papa’s collection. This process brought to light just how recent and how bound the colonial past is to our national museum.
The Colonial Museum is the foundation of Te Papa’s collections. Many significant taonga Māori in the collection today were acquired during this time. A considerable number of taonga have lost their provenance and accession information due to inaccurate recording and a major change that occurred in 1904, when directorship changed from James Hector to Augustus Hamilton.
Image of the first page of the Colonial Museum register. Courtesy Te Papa
The earliest museum registers describe each acquisition by date, object type, location found (often blank or simply “N.Z.”), whether it was gifted, donated, or deposited, and the name of the sender.
We identified around three hundred taonga Māori acquired by the museum over the course of four decades between 1865 and 1905, and located forty of these taonga within the current collection…
The authors focus on one particular taonga and make imporant discoveries…
Courtesy Amber Aranui
