A new website to explore collections across Aotearoa, www.kotuia.org.nz has just been launched.
Kōtuia ngā Kete (Kōtuia) is a collection-sharing site developed by National Services Te Paerangi at Te Papa. The site connects collections and taonga across Aotearoa New Zealand with people, places, and stories.
Kōtuia brings together over 1.4 million digitised taonga | treasures and toi | artworks from over 75 whare taonga, museums, and galleries.
A growing repository of collections across Aotearoa
The site enables users to search across collections from our major institutions (including Te Papa), regional museums and galleries (including Nelson Provincial Museum, Te Manawa and Tairāwhiti Musuem) and many of our smaller community collections from Te Ahu Musuem and Archives in the Far North to Mataura Museum in Southland.
Kōtuia has a comprehensive directory service for museums, galleries and whare taonga across New Zealand featuring more than 400 museums, galleries and whare taonga.
As more organisations digitise and share their collections, a more comprehensive picture of collections held across Aotearoa will become available on Kōtuia, so keep coming back to see what has been added!
A place to make connections
Kōtuia provides connections between collections through Kete | Sets and Kōrero | Stories.
Kete are sets of taonga that are connected by theme or by people and place.
Kōrero consists of articles and personal essays that give our readers a richer understanding of the taonga held in our national collections and the connections between them.
These are opportunities to highlight taonga within a collection or across collections, providing a spotlight for some of our smaller organisations alongside our larger collecting institutions and building a repository of additional information linked to these collections.
You can see some of the Kete and Kōrero which have recently been added on our Explore page.
We invite contributions to Kete and Kōrero from both professional interest and individual history and perspectives.
Contact National Services Te Paerangi if you are interested in contributing, or would like to know anything further about this project.