Tuhinga 21: 43-58, doi: 10.3897/tuhinga.21.e34183

Representing community exhibitions at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Stephanie Dawn Gibson^‡, Sean Mallon

‡ Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Gibson S, Mallon S (2010) Representing community exhibitions at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Tuhinga 21: 43-58. https://doi.org/10.3897/tuhinga.21.e34183

Abstract

Exhibitions at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) are represented and promoted through a title and ‘hero’ image. Te Papa works with external community advisors to determine titles and images for community-focused exhibitions. The authors analyse two exhibition case studies in terms of ommunity consultation, the representation of complex communities, and authenticity of the images used: The Scots in New Zealand and Tangata o le Moana: the story of Pacific people in New Zealand.

Keywords

Community, exhibition, Te Papa, representation, authenticity, graphic identity, hero image, Pacific people, Scots.