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President’s Column – June 2021

President’s Column – June 2021

Kauri Museum, image by K. Kuiper

As a national museum can’t do everything New Zealand is lucky in having many museums. Any idea how many? There are  hundreds of museums and art galleries in Aotearoa. The list of members of Museums Aotearoa will give you an idea. Some of them are specialized and do a superb job focusing on a particular area.

Coaltown in Westport houses reminders of the coal industry of the Westcoast including a representation of how the Denniston incline was created and how it worked. The mining museum in Thames is associated with the school of mining in Thames. On their tour of the Waitangi Museum at Waitangi a year or two back, Friends will have seen a specialized museum whose aim is to background the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi, how it came to be signed and more. You may not have been to the amazing Kauri museum in Matakohe.

Image by K. Kuiper

Friends of many of these museums are not just Friends; as volunteers, they keep the museum going. So the Friends of Te Papa are working to establish on-going relationships with these other Friends. All of the Friends of Te Papa members will have been to other museums in New Zealand as individuals but your Executive Committee would like to see how we can establish relations which allow all these other Friends to know what we are doing and so that we can know what they are doing. If you are going to New Plymouth or Hamilton it might be useful to find out what is going on at the museums there. When you are travelling from one place to another, there might be a museum on the way that is worth a visit.

We will keep you posted on progress with this venture on our web site and with newsletters.