Ngai Tahi Kaiwhakahaere Mark Solomon: “We intend to have representatives at every level of planning going forward.”

“This is the only metropolitan-wide disaster New Zealand has experienced during the modern age of art galleries, museums and an art scene and there’s an enormous opportunity here to learn lessons for the future,” Neil Semple.

‘But for all the sadness and destruction there have been dozens of positive stories. The public sculptures that stood firm while everything crashed around them; the artists who banded together to stage exhibitions and raise funds for their struggling friends; the teams who set about saving as many artworks throughout the city as possible. Those are the things I like to focus on and I’ll be visiting all of those subjects on this blog in the coming weeks.’

When I stepped into Taupo Museum a few months ago, I was immediately drawn to their nostalgia-ridden caravan display – a squat little 3-berth, New Zealand-made Anglo Imp, which the museum purchased when it was discovered abandoned in someone’s garden.

Adrienne Rewi reviews The Dress Circle, an exquisitely illustrated book co-authored by three New Zealand museum professionals: Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Claire Regnault and Lucy Hammonds.

The sign on the door of the Hawke’s Bay Museum & Art Gallery in Napier may say ‘closed,’ but inside it’s all hands on deck as the museum team prepares for the building’s $18-million redevelopment.

The foundation stone for Otago Museum on its current Dunedin site was laid in December 1874. Two years later, ‘half a world away,’ the foundation stone for the Albert Hall Museum, in Jaipur, Rajasthan in Northern India (above), was laid by the Prince of Wales in 1876.