Tauhere_Issue_1

Tauhere | Connections, Issue 1, May 2016. 1
Issue 1, May 2016.
H
āngaitanga
| Relevance

Committee members:
Rebecca Keenan, editor
Tamara Patten, editor
Shelley Arlidge, sub-editor
Jessica Mio, sub-editor
Serena Siegenthaler, designer
Milly Mitchell-Anyon, web
developer
MA Board liaisons:
Talei Langley
Daniel Stirland
With much gratitude for the
support and advice of:
Elspeth Hocking
Migoto Eria
Ashley Remer
Emerging Museum Professionals Group
c/o Museums Aotearoa, 104 The Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand.
www.tauhere.org | tauherejournal@gmail.com
ISSN 2463-5693

Content
Page 3 Editorial
Page 5 The Dowager Empress Cixi’s comb: A provenance treasure hunt
Jane Groufsky
Page 10 A Māori perspective on the localised relevance of museums
and their community relationships
Teina Ruri
Page 17 Cultural institutions and the social compact
Courtney Johnston
Page 24 Potential
Chloe Searle
Page 28 Exclusion in the art gallery
Elspeth Hocking
Page 32 Curating outside your comfort zone
Aimee Burbery
Page 38 The Canterbury Cultural Collections Recovery Centre:
Reflections of an intern
Moya Sherriff

Each piece approaches the relevance
of museums in a unique way, with
discussions around the following:
collection care in the wake of the
Canterbury earthquakes, major
developments in a regional museum
context, researching an object’s
backstory, the challenges of curation
in an unfamiliar subject area, an
exploration of tikanga Māori in a
museum context, comparing and
contrasting ‘art speak’ at two very
different exhibitions and a look at
potential concerns surrounding the
collection of data from museum visitors.
As our first issue came together, we
learned a lot more about the journey
a publication takes from inception to
delivery. This knowledge is invaluable
as we work to develop a theme for our
second issue.
We are dedicated to ensuring the
continued relevance of Tauhere |
Connections as an accessible platform
from which museum professionals can
share their insights into our sector. If
you have any feedback on this issue or
suggestions for future issues, please
contact the editors at
tauherejournal@gmail.com.
Ngā mihi nui,
Tamara and Rebecca
Editorial
Nau mai, haere mai.
Welcome to the inaugural issue of
Tauhere | Connections.
Tauhere | Connections was
conceived by the Emerging Museum
Professionals group as a way to
address a gap in New Zealand’s
museum publications offering – a
professional journal for the museum
sector that is not tied to the work of a
single institution. It is intended as a
forum for early and mid-career GLAM
sector professionals to publish their
research, reviews and opinion pieces,
and for emergent researchers and
writers to build up their publishing
credits.
The journal’s name, Tauhere |
Connections, echoes the bicultural
nature and practice of the museum
sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. It
also reflects an important aspect of
developing a career in the museum
sector – making connections, forging
relationships, building networks,
connecting with visitors to our
museums and with each other. We
hope that Tauhere | Connections will
provide another avenue for such links
to be made.
The pieces in this inaugural issue
cover a diverse range of subjects
relating to our overarching theme,
Hāngaitanga | Relevance, which
is also a focus of the Museums
Australasia 2016 Conference.
Tauhere | Connections,
Issue 1: Hāngaitanga | Relevance

T h e D o w a g e r E m p r e s s C i x i ’ s c o m b :
A p r o v e n a n c e t r e a s u r e h u n t
Jane Groufsky
Associate Curator Applied Arts and Design,
Auckland Museum
Having held roles at Te Papa, MOTAT and
various libraries, Jane now gets to work
closely with the museum’s sizeable and
inspiring decorative arts collection. Jane
is interested in textiles and fashion, with
a particular focus on print and pattern. In
addition to her research in this area, she
enjoys learning through doing, and has tried
her hand at a wide range of crafts: textile
stencilling, linocut printing, dressmaking,
quilting, jewellery making and shibori dyeing,
to name a few.
Some objects join the Museum
collection with rich and interesting
backstories: ideal for interpretation and
exhibition storytelling. Other objects are
collected as an example of ‘type’, such
as a beautiful 1920s beaded dress that
may be evocative of its era, but lacks
the story of the woman who wore it.
When an object is separated from its
information, it can be difficult to retrace
the story. But as cultural institutions
and organisations digitise and share
their resources, it becomes possible to
piece together the history of an object –
without even entering the museum.
JaneGroufsky

In June 2015, Auckland Museum
launched our Collections Online
website, allowing visitors to access
more than one million catalogue
records from our collections. The
following month, the
Applied Arts and
Design department
was contacted
by Linus Fan,
an independent
researcher based in
the United States.
Mr Fan is a
dedicated sleuth
of objects relating
to the formidable
Dowager Empress Cixi, who effectively
ruled China for nearly five decades
of the late Qing Dynasty. He had
discovered an entry in our online
catalogue for “Z133: comb, hair.
Gifted to Lady MacDonald in 1900 at
Peking by the Dowager Empress, Tzu
Hsi” and was intrigued – could this
story be verified? And if so, how did
a comb from one of the most notable
Empresses in Chinese history end up
in a museum in New Zealand?
We know that Lady MacDonald,
wife of British diplomat Sir Claude
MacDonald, met
with the Dowager
Empress in Beijing
with five other
foreign women in
December 1898.
In a full report
of the meeting
in the Sydney
Morning Herald
(8 July 1901),
Lady MacDonald
described the
Dowager Empress as “a young-looking
woman with jet black hair and kindly
dark eyes; in repose her expression is
stern, but when she smiles it lights up
and all traces of severity disappear.”1
Lady MacDonald goes on to detail the
official reception and activities with
the ladies of the palace. She notes
that a gift of “boxes containing combs
“How did a comb
from one of the most
notable Empresses
in Chinese history
end up in a museum
in New Zealand?
”
Hair comb, circa 1898,
China.
Gift of Violet Dickinson, 1943.
Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Z133.

made of ivory and of different sizes and
shapes” were presented to each of the
visitors. Despite the slight discrepancy
in date, the description suggests that
the comb in our collection could have
been given at this very event.
The Museum’s own records regarding
the comb were slim, but we were able
to confirm to Mr Fan that it was gifted
to Auckland Museum by Miss Violet
Dickinson of Burnham Wood, England,
in 1944. Initial research showed that
Miss Dickinson was a close friend of
Virginia Woolf, and a relative of George
Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland – for whom
the city was named.
A further clue came from Fourteen
Years of Diplomatic Life in Japan,
extracts from the diary written by
Baroness Albert d’Anethan, wife of a
Belgian Minister. In the entry dated 23
September 1905, the author describes
a dinner at the British Legion in Tokyo
which included a “Miss Dickinson, a
friend of Lady Robert Cecil’s. She
stands 6 feet 3 inches in her shoes, and
when a little Japanese tailor measured
her for a gown, she quaintly suggested
the use of a ladder.”2 Besides letting us
know her height, this entry reveals that
Mis Dickinson visited Tokyo.
Two of the letters in the Captain Humphrey-Davies correspondence file.
Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira. MUS-95-43 Correspondence H.

Shipping logs from the Japan Weekly
Mail confirm the arrival of a Lady
Dickinson into Tokyo in 19053 –
coinciding with Sir Claude MacDonald’s
post as British Ambassador to Japan.
This suggests that the comb was gifted
to Miss Dickinson by Lady
MacDonald at this time.
Just one question
remained: how did the
comb make its way into
the Auckland Museum
collection? Was Miss
Dickinson’s family
connection to Lord
Auckland the reason she
gifted the comb to Auckland
Museum? Early copies
of the Auckland Institute
and Museum Annual
Report listed significant
acquisitions, and in the
1943-1944 report, scanned
and published on the Museum website,
Mr Fan found specific reference to
Chinese objects brought back from
England by Captain Humphreys-
Davies to Auckland as gifts from Violet
Dickinson.
George Humphreys-Davies, the
Museum’s honorary Asian curator at
the time, donated 354 objects to the
Museum, sourced through his wide
network of collectors and curators.
With this final connection, we were
able to go to our institutional archive
and search through Humphreys-Davies’
correspondence for any reference to
Violet Dickinson.
Here, we found a goldmine. Our
records co-ordinator uncovered
a series of letters between Miss
Dickinson and Captain Humphreys-
Davies that unequivocally corroborated
the story that Mr Fan had pieced
together through his research. In Miss
Dickinson’s own handwritten words was
the story of the comb:
“I’ll send the Chinese little things. In
1905, I went with Lord and Lady Cecil
(of Chelwood) to Japan;
we stayed with Sir Claude
and Lady MacDonald
there. Lady MacDonald
gave me this present
given to her in 1900 after
the siege of Peking by
the old Dowager Empress
Tzu Hsi. The MacDonalds
were at Peking then and
then later went to Tokyo;
they had lovely Chinese
treasures.”4
Miss Dickinson
also confirmed the Lord
Auckland link, including in
her letter a list of family
members.
Although the elements of the comb’s
provenance already existed in the
Museum’s records, it took some
investigation and time to connect the
dots. In Mr Fan’s own words: “Years
of chasing the empress’s relics, such
a rewarding outcome is akin to finding
the needle in a haystack.”5
Through the
use of digitised resources and with the
help of museum staff, our researcher
was able to reunite this object with its
history, and breathe life into a small,
painted comb.
First published on the Auckland Museum blog.
“Years of
chasing the
empress’s
relics, such
a rewarding
outcome
is akin to
finding the
needle in a
haystack
”

Endnotes
1 THE DOWAGER-EMPRESS OF CHINA. (1901,
July 8). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 4. Retrieved
February 10, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-
article14396046
2 Anethan, Albert d, Baroness. (1912). Fourteen
years of diplomatic life in Japan. London: S. Paul &
Co. p. 455
3 Japan Weekly Mail. Volume 44,
1905, p.342. Retrieved February 10,
2016, from https://books.google.co.nz/
books?id=WIMzAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
4 Dickinson, Viola. Letter to George Humphreys-
Davies. 17 September 1943. MS-95-43
Correspondence H
5 Fan, Linus. Email to author. 13 January 2016.

Teina Ruri
Museum Guide, Otago Museum
Ko Mataatua te wa-aka
Ko Putauaki me Maunapohatu te mauna
Ko Tūhoe, Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Awa me Te
Arawa ōku iwi
Ko Rangitaiki te awa
Ko Ngāti Nuku, Ngāti Ahi, Ngāti Tamawera, te
whānau pani te hapū
Ko Ohotu me Uiraroa te marae
Ko Hine Rauhuia te whare whakaruru hau
Ko Tauwhiti te whare kai
Ko Teina Moana-Lee Ruri taku ingoa
No reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tatou
katoa.
Note: This piece uses Tūhoe dialect.
Certain words are spelled differently than in
standardised te reo Māori.
TeinaRuri
A M ā o r i
p e r s p e c t i v e
o n t h e l o c a l i z e d
r e l e v a n c e o f m u s e u m s
a n d t h e i r c o m m u n i t y
r e l a t i o n s h i p s
Introduction
As I write, I express my close aroha
and affiliation to te iwi o Tūhoe, to
whom I whakapapa. This research
is dedicated to our whānau in Te
Urewera, situated in the eastern Bay
of Plenty. May you remain steadfast
to our beliefs of traditionalism and
passive resistance. Te Mana Motuhake
o Tūhoe! As I travel through my journey,
I remember those who have passed on
from our Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Awa and Te
Arawa whakapapa. Ko taku iwituaroa
tēnā.
In this article, I explore the importance
of kaitiakitana, wāhi, mātaurana and
mahi to museums throughout Aotearoa,
from a tikana Māori perspective.
Furthermore, I examine the relevance
of biculturalism at Te Papa Tongarewa
Museum of New Zealand in Wellington
and the Auckland War Memorial
Museum, as examples of museums that
present a rich cultural experience.
It is important to acknowledge that
museums provide communities with a
unique interactive experience where the
public can engage with culture through
exhibitions, events and more. Museums
are uniquely placed to cater to the
needs of the individual, regardless or
race, gender, class, sexuality or ability.
They provide people with a sense of

place and collective heritage and are a
great way of learning about local and
global history. Importantly, they also
offer opportunities to develop societal
understanding of biculturalism within
Aotearoa.
Tikana
Tikana (or tikanga), as described
by Ranginui Walker (2004), are a
customary system of values and
practices that have developed over time
and are deeply embedded in a Māori
social context. The word ‘tikana’ derives
from ‘tika’, which translates to correct,
appropriate, just or accurate: tikana are
therefore the correct
ways to practise Māori
customs.
Leading professor
and academic Sir
Mason Durie suggests
tikana are habit,
lore, methods and
rules (Walker, 2004, p. 67). Though
an essential element of Te Ao Māori,
every hapū, iwi and Māori organisation
approaches tikana differently. Many
iwi have particular worldviews and
“Museums provide
communities with a
unique interactive
experience
”
A pōwhiri at Rongomaraeroa Marae within Te Papa Tongarewa.
Image: 2016, courtesy of Tourism New Zealand.
bodies of knowledge. For example,
the Whanganui iwi are ‘river people’
and the Ngāti Porou iwi are the
‘coasties’. Their tikana is based on
and is particular to their surroundings
and history, and this diversity within
Māoridom needs to be reflected in
museums.
Understanding tikana assists museums
to develop relationships with iwi,
hapū and other communities, and to
care for and manage taona in more
culturally appropriate and collaborative
ways. Many museums have begun to
involve aspects of tikana in their work
processes, which
is more respectful
to our culture. For
example, new staff
or special guests
are often welcomed
with a pōwhiri, wai
is made available for
ceremonial cleansing
purposes, and food is restricted near
taona.
For many decades, Māori and Pākehā,
both within and beyond the museum

context, have faced differences of
opinion and cultural misunderstandings.
Along with developing bicultural
practices and improving the recognition
of tikana, museums have welcomed
Māori into roles as curators, trust
members, museum guides, science
communicators, editors, marketers, and
more. However, many museums within
Aotearoa still have a small percentage
of Māori employees,
especially in
executive positions,
which shows that
there is still a way
to go in the pursuit
of biculturalism.
Kaitiakitana
Professor Māori
Marsden and
Maui Pomare both
describe a kaitiaki as a guardian or
custodian, and kaitiakitana to mean
guardianship, protection or preservation
(Royal, 2012). Kaitiakitana is a way
of managing an environment based
on a traditional Māori worldview.
For example, it encompasses many
concepts and practices of sustainability,
so by implementing kaitiakitana, Māori
are able to protect these environments
for future generations and pay homage
to tūpuna.
Museums practise kaitiakitana in many
different ways, from the care of taona
to the transmission of knowledge. This
also encompasses an awareness of
particular protocols and customs around
museum collections. It is possible for
museums to further their practices
relating to kaitiakitana by involving
kaumātua to provide advice and guide
museum staff and groups as they have
in the past (McCarthy, 2011, p. 2).
It is vital that museums establish
reciprocal relationships with a broad
range of communities in order to meet
the needs of visitors, stakeholders
and staff, as well as the communities
themselves. Involvement with Māori can
come at many levels, including with iwi,
hapū, schools, clubs and more. These
communal groups provide unique ideas
that can help in the practice of cultural
harmony. Locally,
these groups come
together and share
or express opinions
and matters related
to kaitiakitana.
Community
involvement is
necessary in
inclusive procedures
to ensure all
perspectives are
taken into account and cultural factors
are understood and acknowledged.
Māori who have epitomised kaitiakitana
in a museum context include Apirana
Ngata, a prominent politician and
lawyer. He was the first Māori person to
become involved in museum relations
and communities when he joined the
board of the Dominion Museum in
Wellington in 1930. This saw a shift
towards the acceptance of Māori in
such fields, creating a ripple effect
through the future of Māori in museums
(Tapsell, 2014). Many have followed
in his footsteps, including Ngahuia
Te Awekotuku, who became Waikato
Museum’s first Māori curator in 1987,
and Paora Tapsell, curator at the
Rotorua Museum of Art and History in
1990 (Tapsell, 2014). These academics
are kaitiaki who ignite the ahi kā within
their rohe.
“Museums practise
kaitiakitana in many
different ways, from
the care of taona to
the transmission of
knowledge
”

Wāhi
Wāhi is a noun that means place,
location or allocation. It suggests
the customary systems of values and
practices that are embedded into
specific locations. We as museums
must take into account differing ideas of
particular iwi and hapū based on locale.
These differences could involve tension
in inter-tribal communities; however, it
is important that museum employees are
aware of each place’s individual beliefs,
customs and practices so we can honour
and treat them with care.
Mahi
Mahi is the nucleus of most things.
Within museums, mahi is focused,
thorough and continual and must
exemplify the highest standards of
professionalism. Relationships are
formed at a macro and micro level within
the work environment.
Mahi involves groundwork and
understanding the requirements needed
to maintain sound relationships with
visitors and the community. These
may include the acknowledgement to
Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a code of ethics
and iwi representation. It is important
to help clarify mandatory museum
consent systems, including to whānau,
kaumātua or marae communities
who may be asked to permit rights
of particular taona and disclosed
information.
Biculturalism in museums involves
an understanding of differences in
work ethics and cultural beliefs. For
example, in a Māori context this
includes women not working near
certain areas or preparing plant matter
or kai during her menstrual cycle. Many
Māori consider this cycle a tapu time,
with wahine taking into consideration
the suitable times that they are able to
A selection of taona pūoro from the collection of Horomona Horo.
Image: Declan Judd, 2010.

get close to taona or sacred sites like
urupā. Everything must be taken into
account, as a show of respect to tikana
and Māori culture.
Mātaurana
The importance of
mātaurana is embodied
by a Māori whakataukī
which says, “Te manu
kai i te miro, nōna te
nahere. Te manu kai i
te mātaurana, nōna te
ao” or “The bird that
feeds on the miro (a
type of berry), theirs is
the forest. The bird that
feeds from the tree of
knowledge, theirs is the world.” This
acknowledges the idea that, when
used correctly, mātaurana can assist
with wisdom and collective thought,
which provides us with many more
opportunities than if it is not applied.
Working with local iwi or hapū is
reciprocal, and can strengthen
relationships and share knowledge,
forming partnerships that can, in return,
assist in the development of accurate,
innovative and interesting exhibitions
applying mātaurana and tikana to local
stories.
The importance of taona is a central
concept of mātaurana. Many Māori
believe that taona held by museums are
asleep until they have some connection
with iwi, and that these iwi members
can awaken and revitalise taona.
Museums and Mātaurana
Te Papa Tongarewa is an example that
emphasises the richness and vitality of
Māori culture. It is a bicultural museum
where the management structure,
spatial layout, architectural design and
exhibition topics are equally divided
between Māori and Pākehā (Te Papa
National Services Te Paerangi, 2006).
Te Papa provides opportunities for
visitors to gain an understanding and
appreciation of Te Ao Māori as a living
and vibrant culture.
Arapata Hakiwai is
Kaihautū (Māori Co-
Leader) at Te Papa. His
role shares the strategic
leadership of Te Papa
alongside the museum’s
director, and Hakiwai
practises bicultural
leadership and tautoko
whilst developing wider
networks and relationships with iwi
and hapū. As part of his role, he
oversees Te Papa’s Iwi Relationship
Programme, and their Karanga
Aotearoa Repatriation Programme.
The New Zealand Government
established the repatriation programme
in 2003, giving Te Papa the mandate
to develop an official process for the
repatriation of Kōiwi and Koimi Tanata
(Māori and Moriori skeletal remains)
from international institutions to
local iwi. Hakiwai is also responsible
for Rongomaraeroa Marae and the
museum’s tribal group in residence.
Looking North, the Auckland War
Memorial Act 1996 includes a provision
for Taumata-ā-Iwi, a committee that
represents the interests of Māori.
It is founded upon the principle of
mana whenua (customary authority
of ancestral land) with members from
three iwi: Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Pāoa
and Tainui. Taumata-ā-Iwi’s governance
principles are much like those of Te
Tiriti o Waitangi and they epitomise
the concepts of mātaurana and tikana.
The five principles cover the following:
the right to advice, partnership, Māori
“The bird
that feeds
from the tree
of knowledge,
theirs is the
world
”

expectations, active protection and
redress for past misunderstandings.
Existing and proposed museum policies
are reviewed by Taumata-ā-Iwi, who
then make their recommendations to
the Auckland Museum Trust Board
(Auckland War Memorial Museum,
2016).
The Auckland War Memorial Museum
executive team includes the position of
Tumuaki Director, Māori Projects and
Development.
Linnae Pohatu
is the Tumuaki
of the team and
her role includes
enhancing
the museum’s
relations with
localised Māori,
who can assist in broadening the range
of services that the museum offers to
the community.
Other museums throughout Aotearoa
cater to their communities and meet
local needs in many ways. At the Otago
Museum, where I work, the recently
closed Hākui: Women of Kāi Tahu told
the stories of wāhine from local Kāi
Tahu iwi. The Tāngata Whenua gallery
includes a southern section, which
splits the gallery right down the centre
from the north. Here, visitors can see
idealised pounamu ornamentations,
local stories and dioramas displaying
examples of local Kāi Tahu practices.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Wai 262
Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the founding
document of modern Aotearoa. Although
some museums do not publically
display Te Tiriti documentation or
information on its history, it is the
backbone of encouraging the spirit
of partnership and good will. Te Tiriti
governs relations between cultures and
ensures the rights of both Māori and
Pākehā are protected (Orange, 1987,
p. 5). Many years after the signing of
Te Tiriti, the evolution of the Waitangi
Tribunal led to claims from iwi and hapū
throughout Aotearoa, which addressed
Māori concerns about land or property
issues. The biggest claim put to the
tribunal was the Wai 262 Flora Fauna
and Intellectual Property Rights Act.
Extremely
relevant in
a museum
context, the
intellectual
property rights
act ensured the
protection of
taona. Having
an awareness of the Wai 262 is vital to
the care of our taona. It ensures no one
is copying or reproducing artefacts for
profit. The act provided protection for
the historical preservation of objects
and knowledge, and was necessary
in supporting Māori and their cultural
belongings.
Mātaurana is necessary in
understanding the importance of such
legalities, giving those within museums
a better understanding of what may
have happened if this claim had not
been addressed.
Conclusion
To conclude, the main themes
kaitiakitana, wāhi, mātaurana and mahi
are all fundamental in understanding
tikana Māori within museums. They
provide a framework that acknowledges
the practice of biculturalism and
how it makes for a better communal
environment for the people of Aotearoa.
“The act provided
protection for the
historical preservation of
objects and knowledge
”

Furthermore, the bicultural practice
and appreciation at Te Papa Tongarewa
Museum and the Auckland War
Memorial Museum characterise
institutions that present a rich cultural
experience. They are able to uphold
tikana and the outlined thematics to
enhance the services they provide.
By continuing such practices, museums
can provide the public with high quality
museum experiences and engage more
fully with their communities.
Tē tōia, tē haumatia.
Nothing can be achieved without a plan,
workforce or way of doing things.
Bibliography
Auckland War Memorial Museum. (2016). Taumata-ā-
Iwi. Retrieved from http://www.aucklandmuseum.
com/about-us/corporate-information/taumata-a-iwi
McCarthy, C. (2011). Museums and Māori, Heritage
Professionals, Indigenous Collections, Current
Practice (1st ed.). Wellington: Te Papa Press.
Orange, C. (1987). The Treaty of Waitangi (1st
ed.). Wellington: Allen and Unwin NZ Limited in
association with the Port Nicholson Press.
Royal, Te Ahukaramū Charles. (2012). Kaitiakitanga
– guardianship and conservation. Retrieved
from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/kaitiakitanga-
guardianship-and-conservation
Tapsell, P. (2014). Māori and museums - ngā whare
taonga. Retrieved from http://www.teara.govt.nz/
en/maori-and-museums-nga-whare-taonga
Te Papa National Services Te Paerangi. (2006).
Mātauranga Māori and Museum Practice.
Retrieved from http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/
www/tk/en/databases/creative_heritage/docs/
tepapa_matauranga_maori.pdf
Walker, R. (2004). Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou:
Struggle Without End (1st ed.). Auckland: Penguin
New Zealand.

Courtney Johnston
Director, The Dowse Art Museum
Courtney has been director of The Dowse Art
Museum since November 2012. Before this
she was General Manager at Wellington web
agency Boost New Media and Web Manager
at the National Library of New Zealand. She’s
a past National Digital Forum board member,
convenor of the NDF conference, member
of the Creative Commons Aotearoa advisory
group and current Museums Aotearoa board
member. She writes regularly at www.best of-3.
blogspot.co.nz.
CourtneyJohnston
In August 2015, with the assistance of
a Winston Churchill Fellowship, I made
a research trip around art museums
in seven states in America exploring,
amongst other things, trends in digital
development and engagement in art
museums. In November, I was invited
to take part in a panel discussion at
the National and State Libraries of
Australasia event ‘Linked Up, Loud
and Literate: Libraries enabling digital
citizenship’.1
I used this as an opportunity to
investigate a strand of digital practice
that had really struck me during my
C u l t u r a l i n s t i t u t i o n s
a n d t h e s o c i a l c o m p a c t

conversations
with colleagues in
American museums:
the increasing
collection and
analysis of visitor
data gathered
using digital
methods, rather
than surveys or
visitor-trailing. The
key development
in this field is
the introduction
of a new breed
of museum
membership where,
unlike traditional
memberships
(where you pay an
annual fee for free
access to a paid-
entry museum) you
trade your data for
access and benefits.
The leading exponent of this new
membership model is the Dallas
Museum of Art (DMA). Over the past
three years, during the directorship
of the recently departed Maxwell
Anderson, the DMA has removed
entry charges from general admission
shows at the museum, and introduced
a new entry-level ‘Friends’ offer to its
membership programme.2
When you sign up for the programme,
using a kiosk at the Museum, you
provide your contact details and your
postcode information. In return, you
are admitted to a programme where,
through various activities, you can
gain ‘points’ that can be traded in for
benefits.3 For example, if you collect
sufficient points, you can have your
parking charges redeemed. In a city
where the car is
king, free parking as
part of your gallery
visit is a compelling
inducement to
take part in the
programme. More
points get you better
access, and more
special and desirable
rewards.
From a dataset of
more than 100,000
signed-up Friends,
the DMA is able to
collect information
about which galleries
are visited, which
programmes are
attended, and which
rewards are most
desirable. Using the
postcode information
allows them to see
where visitors are coming from and, by
comparing this information to census
data, draw conclusions about which
demographics their visitors represent -
at scale.
The DMA is currently using this
information to understand which
communities they are reaching and
not reaching, under-serving and over-
serving. The more time they invest in
gathering and interrogating this data,
the more of a data-driven organisation
they can become: carrying out
targeted programming, marketing and
community outreach activities, and
measuring whether these activities
have discernible impacts on visitor
behaviour.
On the one hand, I am in favour of,
and admiring of, this approach. It
is all too easy to rely on anecdotal
DMA Friends membership slip.
Photographed by the author.

information, and your own perceptions
of your audience and the success of
your initiatives. However, I also have
reservations about these activities that
boil down to the risk of
them becoming – in a
colloquial but accurate
wording in terms of the
felt affect – creepy.
We have become
accustomed to
trading our data for
convenience and for
access. We hand
over contact details
and dates of birth
for loyalty cards at
companies that then
bombard us with
marketing offers. We buy from sites
like Amazon, which store our browsing
and shopping behaviour and use this to
tailor the information that is presented
to us, and to others. We hand over our
data merrily, and maybe without thought
for how this data is being stored,
analysed, and shared.
If we look at the DMA’s privacy policy,
it states:
“We sometimes provide personal
information to other providers of
goods and services so that they may
assist us in connection with ticket
sales, event promotion, fundraising,
or otherwise in connection with
providing services or merchandise to
you. However, we require that those
providers use personal information only
for that purpose, and we require our
providers to provide assurances that
they will appropriately protect personal
information entrusted to them.”4
A growing number of American
museums are ramping up their
collection of data in order to increase
engagement for the purposes of
visitor acquisition,
retention and
conversion. One
museum I met
with was planning
on implementing
the DMA’s
software with a
new free entry-
level membership
offer, with the
same intent of
understanding
visitor
demographics. But
they also had a
clear plan for using this information
– this personalisation – for targeted
marketing campaigns, and to convert
visitors to shoppers, to donors:
effectively using visitor data to
maximise revenue. At the ‘Museums
and the Web Asia’ conference in
Melbourne in October 2015, Diana
Pan from the Museum of Modern
Art showed statistics derived from
members’ shopping behaviour, and
explained how MoMA had tweaked its
retail offer in response to patterns they
saw.5
As well as giving us information
to improve the relevance of our
programmes, tackle inequality of
access and increase revenue, data can
sometimes tell us things we’d rather
not hear.
Colleen Dilenschneider is a consultant
with an American company that
specialises, among other things, in the
application of data analysis in the non-
profit sector. She writes and presents
“A growing number
of American museums
are ramping up their
collection of data
in order to increase
engagement for the
purposes of visitor
acquisition, retention
and conversion
”

regularly on data as it relates to
cultural and visitor organisations. In a
November 2015 blog
post she crunched
the data on free
admission days: the
monthly free days
many paid-entry
museums in the US
run in the hopes of
reducing the barriers
to access for non-traditional visitors
(read: those who are lower-earning,
more geographically distanced, less
educated and from a different racial
or ethnic background to your average
white middle-class middle-aged
museum member).6
The data as Dilenschneider analysed
it shows that free admission days do
not attract underserved audiences.
Dilenschneider’s research shows that:
• Admission price is not identified as
the chief barrier to access
• Free access days attract higher
earning and higher educated
attendees than paid access days
• Free access days do not tempt non-
visitors, but rather accelerate the
speed at which an existing visitor
revisits.
Cultural organisations generally don’t
know how to, or don’t effectively,
market free access days to underserved
audiences but instead use their email
databases, social media platforms and
regular marketing outlets to tap the
people they are already reaching.
These are unsettling things for the very
well-meaning people who run museums
to hear.
Dilenschneider’s company generates
these insights by
buying data from
many sources:
the data of people
just like us. They
then analyse
this data and
sell that analysis
and consultancy
services back to cultural organisations:
just like ours. I should note that
Dilenschneider is not at all covert about
this, and in fact her company has been
very generous in allowing her to share
this data and information as freely as
she does.7
There’s no escaping the fact though
that companies are being built and
money being made on the bounty of the
ocean of data we are all drip feeding
into.
Concern about the collection, security
and use of data – from the outing
of philanderers on dating sites to a
former CIA director’s statement “we kill
people based on metadata” – are hardly
new.8 But my heightened awareness,
due to what I’d seen and heard in
America, primed me to pay particular
attention to a series of references that
floated across my radar, all sharing a
common theme: the comparison of data
technology to nuclear technology.
In The Guardian in 2008, Cory
Doctorow wrote that “we should treat
personal electronic data with the same
care and respect as weapons-grade
plutonium – it is dangerous, long-
lasting and once it has leaked there’s
no getting it back.”9
Doctorow at that time proposed that
“These are unsettling
things for the very well-
meaning people who run
museums to hear.
”

Palace de la Concord, (1938-1943).
Piet Mondrian, Dallas Museum of Art,
Foundation for the Arts Collection,
gift of the James H and Lillian Clark
Foundation. Work displayed with
text panel for ‘DMA Faves’ activity.
Detail of a ‘DMA Faves’ text panel.
data should be embargoed for 200
years, that anyone who touches or
cares for that data over that period
must be properly trained, and that
businesses and government must be
made to bear the costs associated
with this.
At the start of October, Pinboard
founder Maciej Ceglowski spoke at
O’Reilly Media’s ‘Big Data’ conference.
Aiming to puncture the bubble of data
enthusiasts, he painted a purposefully
grim picture of data that in his words
should be seen “not as a pristine
resource, but as a waste product, a
bunch of radioactive, toxic sludge that
we don’t know how to handle.”10
Ceglowski drew an explicit link between
data technology and
nuclear technology,
as two powerful
innovations whose
‘beneficial uses we
could never quite
untangle from the
harmful ones.’
Like Doctorow,
Ceglowski describes
the similarity between
data and nuclear
waste: both materials
have the potential
to last far longer
than the institutions
we build to manage
them. He pointed
out that “information
about people retains
its power as long
as those people are
alive, and sometimes
as long as their
children are alive.
No one knows what
will become of sites like Twitter in five
years or ten. But the data those sites
own will retain the power to hurt for
decades.”11
He also noted that data technology is
creating a situation where people are
reacting to the manipulations of big data,
purposefully gaming systems, forcing an
ever-evolving arms race between data
collectors and data creators that creates
more distance between us as humans, not
more understanding.
Finally, British artist and technologist James
Bridle recently wrote an essay, based on a
talk he gave at the ‘Through Post-Atomic
Eyes’ event in Toronto, that referenced
the two above pieces.12 Bridle has written
and made work
extensively about mass
surveillance, and in this
piece he drew a parallel
between the Cold War
that nuclear technology
locked the world into
for 45 years and
the potential of big
data today. As he
notes, even though
the information we
collect about human
behaviour grows
and grows and
grows, our sympathy
and empathy and
connection across
politics, races,
religions and nations
do not leap forward
at the same pace
We in cultural
organisations think
of ourselves as the
white hats and the

good guys. Libraries in particular have
a strong ethos of free and protected
access to information. The siren call
of data is strong however, and we will
all soon, if not already, have to ask
ourselves: who benefits from the data
we collect, and how do we keep each
other safe?
A coda
When I gave this talk, I purposefully
took a cautious attitude towards
the activity of data collection by
cultural organisations, and painted
a dark picture of a field that can be
intelligently managed. My concern,
as a museum director but also as a
technologist at heart, lies with the
tendency of people who are not versed
in the conversations around data
management to fall for vendors’ pitches
without applying a sufficiently sceptical
lens to their claims.
This concern was proved valid when
earlier this year I heard a museum
director talking about hardware they
were about to insert into their gallery
doorways, which would collect the IMEI
(unique identifier) of every switched-on
mobile phone that entered the building.
This is vastly appealing to me as a
director, for the ability to cheaply and
accurately measure how many repeat
visitors you have to your museum and
how frequently they visit. It is also
terrifying to me as a technologist and
as a citizen, in terms of the way it
invades an individual’s privacy and
surveils their physical passage through
the world.
At the end of the talk, a member of the
audience asked how we could collect
and manage data responsibly. I offer
up Ceglowski’s advice as a starting
point for you, reproduced here from his
‘Haunted by Data’ talk:
“Don’t collect it!
If you can get away with it, just don’t
collect it! Just like you don’t worry
about getting mugged if you don’t have
any money, your problems with data
disappear if you stop collecting it. ...
If you have to collect it, don’t store it!
... You can get a lot of mileage out
of ephemeral data. There’s an added
benefit that people will be willing to
share things with you they wouldn’t
otherwise share, as long as they can
believe you won’t store it. ...
If you have to store it, don’t keep it!
Certainly don’t keep it forever. Don’t
sell it to Acxiom! Don’t put it in Amazon
glacier and forget it.
I believe there should be a law that
limits behavioral data collection to
90 days, not because I want to ruin
Christmas for your children, but
because I think it will give us all
better data while clawing back some
semblance of privacy. ”13
Endnotes
1 Linked Up, Loud and Literate: Enabling Digital
Citizenship http://www.nsla.org.au/events/
linked-loud-and-literate-libraries-enabling-digital-
citizenship-wellington-nz
2 The Dallas Museum of Art Friends programme
https://www.dma.org/visit/dma-friends
(More information about my research into American
museum membership programmes is available
here http://best-of-3.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/wcmt-
acquittal-draft-membership.html, including links to
many more articles and sources.)

ChloeSearle
3 Points can be gained in a multitude of ways: by
bringing people to the museum and recruiting them
into the programme, collecting codes posted at the
entries to different galleries, taking part in public
programme events, doing scavenger hunts, and so
on.
4 The Dallas Museum of Art Friends privacy
statement
https://www.dma.org/privacy
5 Diana Pan and Manish Engineer, ‘The 360-Degree
View: Why An Integrated CRM Platform is Important
in Growing a Museum’s Membership Program.’
Museums and the Web Asia, Melbourne, October
2015 http://mwa2015.museumsandtheweb.com/
proposal/the-360-degree-view-why-an-integrated-
crm-platform-is-important-in-growing-a-museums-
membership-program/
6 Colleen Dilenschneider, ‘Free admission days do
not actually attract underserved visitors.’ Know Your
Own Bone, 4 November 2015 http://colleendilen.
com/2015/11/04/free-admission-days-do-not-
actually-attract-underserved-visitors-to-cultural-
organizations-data/
7 See the information page on Dilenschneider’s
website http://colleendilen.com/welcome/ and her
frequent public presentations
8 David Cole, ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata.’
New York Review of Books, 10 May 2014
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-
people-based-metadata/
9 Cory Doctorow, ‘Personal data is as hot as nuclear
waste.’ The Guardian, 15 January 2008 https://
www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jan/15/data.
security
10 Maciej Ceglowski, ‘Haunted by Data.’ Talk given
on 1 October 2015 http://idlewords.com/talks/
haunted_by_data.htm
11 Ibid.
12 James Bridle, ‘Big Data, No Thanks.’ BookTwo.
org, 2 November 2015 http://booktwo.org/notebook/
big-data-no-thanks/
13 Ceglowski, ‘Haunted by Data.’

Chloe Searle
Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, North
Otago Museum
Chloe Searle has a BA in Anthropology and
English from University of Canterbury and a
Masters of Museum and Heritage Studies from
Victoria University. For the last five years she
has worked as the Curator of Exhibitions and
Collections at the North Otago Museum in
Oamaru. She was also acting Director for part of
that time. She has a real interest in all aspects
of museum operations, which makes work at
small museum ideal.
ChloeSearle
Potential
Potential. That was the word my friend
Jamie used to describe the North Otago
Museum when I asked him to go on a
day trip to Oamaru to check out the
museum before I was interviewed for
the role of curator in 2010. I got the
job. Since then it has been the site
of much of my museum learning as an
emerging professional. I had previously
spent six months as a registrar at MTG
(then the Hawkes Bay Museum and Art
Gallery) and before that did contract
work in Wellington while completing
my master’s degree. Five and a half
years in, including two and a half as
acting director, most of the North Otago
Museum’s potential is yet to be realised.
This potential is perhaps better
recognised by people from outside the
district who see: the significance of
Oamaru’s Victorian architecture; the
town’s influence on writers, including
Janet Frame; the “Willetts Collection”,
an impressive assemblage of Māori
taonga from the Waitaki river mouth area
and more besides. The current museum
does not do any of these stories justice.
When I arrived a redevelopment was
planned, but it did not progress to the
building stage. However, the need to
address limitations with current buildings
and the desire to offer a better visitor
experience are two of the drivers behind
our current cultural facility development
project. The new facility is due to open
in 2019. This plan involves redeveloping
the current Forrester Gallery and an
adjoining building being constructed.
Together the redeveloped buildings
will house the combined North Otago
Museum, Forrester Gallery and Waitaki

archive are managed together with the
museum and archive located in one
building and the art gallery in another.
Previously, management of the gallery
had been separate, and at one time the
archive was managed by the library. As
we consider the form
our convergence will
take it is clear that
our local community
is one of the things
we have in common.
However, we often
serve different
groups within it.
Knowledge gained
from this visitor-
centric approach, combined with my
master’s research on collecting at
Te Papa, has led me to critique the
logic that informs a lot of collecting,
and subsequent exhibiting - that you
should collect things “of” a place.
Certainly there is merit to this, in that it
The current Forrester Gallery building.
“As we consider the
form our convergence
will take it is clear that
our local community
is one of the things we
have in common
”
District Archive. Staff, past and present,
have worked hard towards bringing the
North Otago Museum up to professional
standards, but our current buildings
are a barrier to further progress.
Unfortunately, because the project
involves a new building, it is all too
easy for discussion to become about
the building instead of focusing on why
we are developing and who we are
developing for.
From my point of view it is about
developing a facility that will assist
us to reach our potential. And for me
this means thinking about our visitors
and also about those who currently
do not visit. The year I spent working
on marketing and visitor research at
Te Papa has left me with an ongoing
appreciation for learning about your
visitors and then using that information
to serve them better. We are fortunate
at the museum, gallery and archive
that all staff work both front and back
of house. This helps us understand our
visitors.
An exciting aspect
of the development
project is the work
that is being done
on stakeholder
engagement. In
December 2015 three
public meetings were
held to discuss ideas
for the development.
Some great ideas
have been raised,
and I think those who participated
have also gained an insight into the
complexities of the development
project. Further public discussions are
planned as the project progresses.
Currently the museum, gallery and

means provenance becomes important
rather than just collecting any old stuff
offered, but what is a Waitaki object?
Our history takes place within wider
national and international trends and
each region ultimately has untidy edges
when the movement of people and
things is considered. I think a focus,
instead, of collecting ‘for’ a particular
place can encompass both local
material and objects from its untidy
edges while acknowledging that local
audiences do not always want to see
only local content.
I was reminded of this during a recent
discussion with one woman in Oamaru,
not ‘born and bred’, as she put it. She
said she felt socially excluded in the
community overall as people endlessly
referenced family histories, and if you
did not have a place in that world then
there seemed to be no place for you.
I do not want our new cultural facility
to be a place where newcomers feel
excluded - in a small town the process
of becoming a local can take decades.
Another example of this is in the
Waitaki’s growing Tongan population.
Their history is not currently reflected
in our museum’s collection, but would
including items from the Tongan
community be enough to serve this
audience? As noted at the 2014 ICOM
conference in Auckland the easiest way
to include Pacific communities is to ask
them what they want! We are doing this
as part of the stakeholder engagement.
Workshop participants discuss ideas for the new facility

There is however, a tension that
comes with focusing mainly on the
local community when planning the
development project. Currently the
majority of our museum visitors are
tourists both from within New Zealand
and internationally. This is likely
to continue after the new facility
opens so it is important that we also
consider these visitors. As we get
further into planning exhibitions I
expect this tension will become more
apparent as we attempt to balance
the needs of our visitors with those of
our local community.
The development
will shape the
operations of the
museum, gallery
and archive for
decades to come,
and what the
community expects of us will shift
over that time. We need a building
that will enable us rather than hinder
us. In contrast to the current buildings
it needs to be flexible, accessible,
safe for people and collections,
and designed to facilitate work on
exhibitions and collections. It is
also important that, as much as
possible, we retain what visitors like
about our current offerings, such as
intimate exhibition spaces and the
close relationship between front and
back of house that makes staff and
collections accessible.
My time at the museum has been
filled with ups and downs associated
with the development project:
excitement about the prospect of new
exhibitions, nervousness about how
much work lies ahead of our small
team, a feeling of responsibility to
get it right and frustration at having to
live with worn-out displays while our
energy goes into the development.
For many emerging professionals I
think these will be the realities of our
working lives as our institutions carry
out developments.
I hope that, come 2019, potential
is no longer the word being used to
describe our museum. I hope that
all our work and planning results in
a facility that provokes a range of
different responses. I hope for the
realisation of our potential.
“The development will
shape the operations of the
museum, gallery and archive
for decades to come
”

Elspeth Hocking
Collection Manager, Auckland Museum
Elspeth is a Collection Manager at Auckland
Museum. Previously she was Curator Social
History at Puke Ariki, and has worked in visitor
market research for Morris Hargreaves McIntyre.
She has a Master of Museum and Heritage
Studies from Victoria University of Wellington.
Recently, on a rainy summer’s day,
I visited Auckland Art Gallery with the
intention of enjoying two exhibitions:
Necessary Distraction: A Painting
Show, and The Story of Rama: Indian
Miniatures from the National Museum,
New Delhi. I love Auckland Art Gallery,
and visit regularly to enjoy its vast range
of exhibitions in a range of mediums.
I’m a confident museum visitor, a past
curator and frequent museum goer and
I’m perfectly happy to make my way
through an exhibition and engage in my
own way. However, I am also very aware
that part of my comfort in a museum
is due to a style of interpretation that
tends to focus on providing information
about an object or idea. This approach
suits me — I want to find out what
an object is and how it relates to an
exhibition’s narrative. I am, of course,
greatly simplifying what museum
interpretation can be, but in my own
personal experience this is a regularly
employed model. I seek a museum’s
guidance on the meaning of objects, as
a site of research and for its specialist
knowledge on topics. I feel significantly
less confident when visiting art galleries,
particularly contemporary galleries.
My ethnicity and physical capability
have usually contributed to a feeling
of inclusion in galleries, even though
I have never formally or informally
studied art. I have preferred, instead,
to develop my understanding based on
what I find out on gallery visits. I’m very
much part of the demographic that is
most represented in art gallery visitors
in New Zealand – Pākehā, female,
E x c l u s i o n
i n t h e a r t g a l l e r y
ElspethHocking

middle-class and educated. However,
my visit to this contemporary gallery
space brought to light ways in which
I do feel excluded. It certainly made
me reflect on the (lack of) relevance of
one of these exhibitions, particularly its
interpretation, for other demographic
groups.
I started my visit with
Necessary Distraction.
It became clear very
quickly that this
was interpretation
written for a specific
audience. That
audience seemed to
be other curators.
I developed this
impression from the
first few sentences of
the introductory panel.
Even as someone
with a postgraduate
degree, my initial
reaction to most of the panels was
bewilderment. Many of the single
words used were unfamiliar, and their
composition on the panels didn’t convey
any meaning about the art that I, a non-
specialist, could comprehend.
On reflection, this was pure
international art speak, a specialist
language outlined by Alix Rule
and David Levine. The Guardian’s
professional arts and culture network
neatly summed it up in their article
about writing an artist’s statement,
“This is a dialect of the privileged; the
elite university educated. If you can’t
write it effectively, you’re not part of
the art world. If you’re already inside
but don’t understand it, you’re not
allowed to admit it, or ask for further
explanation. This kind of rhetoric relies
on everyone participating without
question.”1 Further, as artist Alistair
Gentry described in his article about
the role of art texts, “certain art texts…
may be made up of technically correct
English words and sentences, but
ultimately can’t be processed by the
reader into anything resembling a
rational argument. You
may immediately recall
particular writers about
art who seem to be going
for the high score in a
game of Scrabble instead
of communicating ideas…
Sometimes it’s clearly
deliberate and they
don’t care if 99% of their
readers are turned off,
because their intended
audience is purely and
exclusively other people
like themselves.”2 This
process continued
throughout Necessary
Distraction, leaving me
to engage with the art on a purely
aesthetic level, picking and choosing
my ‘favourites’.
While this in itself is a well-publicised
method of interpretation, and does
have certain qualities in helping
visitors look at art more deeply, I find
it an exclusionary tactic. How will
those audiences, who haven’t had the
opportunity to formally or informally
study contemporary art, decode what
the artworks are trying to say? Art
and the process of the artist can
speak more clearly with a little help,
in English, that can be understood
by visitors who aren’t fluent in
international art speak.
I don’t mean that galleries should
treat its visitors as if they are idiots.
Instead, I appreciate the approach of
“How will those
audiences, who
haven’t had
the opportunity
to formally or
informally study
contemporary
art, decode what
the artworks are
trying to say?
”

Alistair Gentry, who argued, ‘I strongly
believe that we should aspire to raising
everybody’s level of knowledge. We
shouldn’t assume that everybody’s an
idiot and speak to them accordingly,
because this drags us all down to the
most tiresomely literal and unreflective
ways of engaging with art.’3 What
visitors want to know requires
significant research, and interpretation
can never meet
every single need
of every individual
visitor. What I felt
was missing from
the interpretation
of Necessary
Distraction was any
comprehensible
insight into the
process of the artist.
I use the word
comprehensible very
specifically here –
many of the panels
in the exhibition
discussed what I
can only assume
the artworks were
communicating, but
this was done in a
way that I literally
could not understand.
Only one panel informed me about the
artists and their practice. Emma Fitts’
and Kirstin Carlin’s complementary oil
and textile works were neatly explained,
and the relationship between the media
made sense. Unsurprisingly, these
works were some of my favourites -
I felt equipped to engage with their
art and to understand these artists’
perspectives better than any of the
others’.
In contrast, the interpretation of
The Story of Rama helped me to
comprehend part of India’s visual
culture, and develop some insight
into painting and storytelling in India
between the 17th and 19th centuries.
The exhibition was laid out in a way
that followed the narrative of the
Ramayana (the journey of Rama), and
where possible the artists, time periods
and media were noted on labels. Each
section of the visual narrative was
neatly encapsulated in
short labels outlining
the story, giving the
option of gazing on the
beautiful artworks on
their own, or having
the written text to
clarify what was being
seen. I felt more
confident traversing
this exhibition, able
to follow the narrative
and awed by the skill
of the artists and the
beauty of the images.
The clear text and lack
of international art
speak made this space
far more relevant to
my desire to expand
my knowledge,
and helped me to
appreciate visual forms
of communication that aren’t my usual
approach. By providing interpretation
that does not require a particular skill
set to decode, I was left feeling inspired
and educated, rather than confused
and frustrated, as I felt after leaving
Necessary Distraction.
Part of the curatorial brief for
Necessary Distraction was to examine
the relevance of painting, a static form
in a constantly changing world. Rather
than understanding more about how
painting can reflect the world, how it
“If we approach
interpretation as a
means of raising the
level of knowledge
for as many as
possible, rather
than catering for a
select few, perhaps
more visitors to
galleries might feel
art exhibitions are
accessible to them
personally
”

remains relevant and what individual
works are communicating, I left that
exhibition uncertain of what relevance
contemporary art writing has for a
general audience. In contrast, I felt
informed and excited by my experience
in The Story of Rama, and was
pleased to have been introduced to a
visual history that I had never before
encountered.
Interpretation in the arts can be
a difficult, frustrating and lengthy
process. If we approach interpretation
as a means of raising the level of
knowledge for as many as possible,
rather than catering for a select few,
perhaps more visitors to galleries might
feel art exhibitions are accessible to
them personally. As Conal McCarthy
and David Mason noted in their
article ‘The Feeling of Exclusion’,
galleries and museums "maintain
the illusion of democratic access,
while in fact catering mainly to the
interests of particular social groups and
unintentionally excluding others.’4 One
way to unintentionally exclude cohorts
of visitors is to provide impenetrable
interpretation of what can seem to be
very complicated contemporary art,
in a language specifically designed
for those ‘in the know’. In contrast,
providing visitors with the context
to understand a visual tradition, as
demonstrated in The Story of Rama,
can facilitate enjoyment and comfort
in a gallery space. This will encourage
visitors to return to the gallery, to start
feeling a sense of personal connection
with the art on display, and to the
gallery itself, as a space for personal
learning or engagement.
Now that’s relevant.
Endnotes
1 Blight, Daniel. ‘Writing an artist statement? First
ask yourself these four questions’. The Guardian.
15 April 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/culture-
professionals-network/culture-professionals-
blog/2013/apr/15/writing-artist-statement-tips-
language
2 Gentry, Alistair. ‘Artist’s perspective’. Nd.
Interpretation Matters. http://interpretationmatters.
com/?page_id=14
2 ibid.
3 McCarthy, Conal and David M. Mason. ‘“The
Feeling of Exclusion’: Young peoples’ perceptions of
art galleries”. Museum Management and Curatorship
21:1 2006, pp.20 – 31. http://researcharchive.vuw.
ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/733/article.
pdf?sequence=1

Aimee Burbery
Exhibitions Assistant Curator, Puke Ariki
Aimee Burbery is the Exhibitions Assistant
Curator at Puke Ariki, New Plymouth. She
completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours
in History and Art History at the University of
Otago, with a focus on public art. She also
interned and worked at the Otago Museum as
a Collections Assistant. In 2013 she completed
a Master of Art Curatorship at the University of
Melbourne, and worked as the Curatorial Intern
at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne for
their Melbourne Festival exhibition The Somali
Peace Band. In 2014 she worked at the Museum
of Transport and Technology in Auckland, as a
Collections Assistant.
Recently I have been curating an
exhibition called BUGS: Our Backyard
Heroes. This exhibition is about
‘terrestrial invertebrates’: bugs, insects
and all things creepy crawly, focusing
on how cool these critters are and why
the visitor should care about them. In
curating the show, I have delved into
a world of terms and concepts such
as endemic, genus and biodiversity
- to name just a few. This has been
challenging as I do not come from a
science background: I studied history
and art history, and up until this point
in my career have not had much
experience working with the sciences.
Curating outside your comfort zone
AimeeBurbery

Curating an exhibition in this field
has expanded my knowledge about
the natural world as well as my sense
of place. While the exhibition has a
national and international focus, in
some areas it also concentrates on my
immediate surroundings in Taranaki.
I have learnt things I never imagined
I would: like the positive effect the
rather unglamorous dung beetles have
for farmers in Taranaki. I’ve also been
revolted by some of what I’ve learned
and experienced – made positively
squeamish at times, such as when a
giant centipede reared its head and
hissed at me while trying to launch
itself out of the terrarium! (We are
planning to have a live giant centipede
in the exhibition as an example of a
native predator, but it will definitely not
be able to launch itself at visitors.)
So how did I come to work on an
exhibition so far removed from my
existing knowledge? The impetus for
BUGS came from Puke Ariki’s recent
completion of the ‘Natural Wonders’
cataloguing project, focusing on the
Natural Sciences collection. Now that
we know what the Natural Sciences
collection contains, we have the
Framed exotic bugs from the Puke Ariki Collection.
The giant centipede
Cormocephalus rubriceps is
found across the North Island
in New Zealand. It can grow
up to 25 centimetres in length
and delivers a poisonous bite!
Bug fact:

opportunity to display a large portion
of it in an exhibition. Objectives for the
exhibition focus on creating a platform
through a range of experiences that
will engage visitors in conversations
about the importance of bugs. These
conversations should inspire visitors
to take action within their own
communities on a small or large scale.
Essentially, we want people to really
acknowledge the bugs in their backyard
and within the wider region and country,
and come to understand the important
roles they play in our ecosystems.
After developing the objectives, we
worked on ideas and concepts for
the exhibition content. As a regional
museum, Puke Ariki does not have a
plethora of staff working in the field
of science, so for this exhibition we
scientists, amateur and professional
entomologists, forensic scientists and
bee enthusiasts, to name but a few. I
have had many positive interactions
with experts who are willing to share
their extensive knowledge with an
‘outsider’, and have developed strong
networks within Puke Ariki’s local and
national community.
So how do I go about communicating
this newfound scientific knowledge
to the visitors in the exhibition? I am
essentially acting as a translator from
scientific jargon to everyday language,
communicating the concepts in a clear
and cohesive way. My process for
the translation begins with research.
From this starting point, I rework
the information into text that I can
understand and that communicates
what I see as the main points of
interest. My colleagues edit the drafts
many times and experts will fact-check
the final copy for errors.
Text is only one aspect of
communication though: another
important goal for BUGS is to provide
the community with a hands-on
experience. I want visitors to learn
exactly why bugs are so important
and why we should care about them
while still enjoying a fun and engaging
exhibition. It is hard enough to get
visitors to read exhibition labels,
so plastering the walls with long-
winded text panels is not going to
employed a scientific researcher
to provide the knowledge that we
were lacking. We also relied on the
research of the talented in-house staff
at the Taranaki Research Centre/Te
Pua Wānanga o Taranaki, which has
directly informed the final exhibition
content. For the rest, I went out into
the community and engaged with
the wider public and experts. These
people have included local citizen
Both the Auckland and
Wellington tree wētā are
commonly found in Taranaki,
but they never meet in
the wild as each prefers a
different environment to the
other — despite living on the
same mountain!
“I am essentially acting
as a translator from
scientific jargon to
everyday language
”
Bug fact:

encourage deeper engagement.
Instead, I am aiming to make this
exhibition educational by stealth, using
interactives. Most of these are quite
physical rather than screen-based,
requiring the visitor to complete an
action. Some are as simple as opening
a cupboard or pulling out a drawer
to discover what is inside. While
the visitors are playing with these
interactives (and hopefully having fun),
my aim is that they will be learning and
retaining the new information.
One of the hardest parts of developing
interactives that enable meaningful
engagement is determining who
your target audience is. Nina Simon
discusses this issue in her blog Museum
2.0, noting: “how can we get adults to
Eleanor Brown, Untitled (1903), collection of Puke Ariki, New Plymouth (A66.620).

participate? Many exhibit developers
create thoughtful interactives intended
for all ages and then discover that old
familiar pattern – kids engaging while
parents stand back and watch.”1 For the
BUGS exhibition, the target audience is
intergenerational. This is something I
am very conscious of, and I am working
towards a mix of interactives aimed at
both children and adults. Many of these
have multiple levels of engagement,
offering different experiences for people
from different age groups.
Learning from past experiences for
future exhibitions is essential for
growth and development to ensure that
exhibitions meet
the needs of the
target audience.
In 2015, Puke
Ariki staged
an exhibition
called Bringing it
Home: Taranaki
and World War
One. During the
exhibition, we
commissioned
visitor research
through Morris Hargreaves McIntyre
to find out what it was that our visitors
were engaging with the most. The
section of Bringing It Home that
received the highest proportion of
visitor engagement (88%) was the
profile of Elliot Millar King, a local pilot.
In this section visitors could climb into a
replica of a World War One plane, with
an object case built into the wing, and
put on a pilot’s helmet. Part of the visitor
feedback about the plane said “...maybe
the plane could have been a little bit
more interactive. I was kind of expecting
something like audio...”
From this we discovered that it is not
enough to provide a physical experience
where visitors enter into something, you
also have to provide an engagement
opportunity once they are inside. In
BUGS, we are creating a large-scale
replica shell of a Powelliphanta snail:
the giants of the snail world. From what
we learnt from the plane interactive,
visitors will be able to go inside the
shell, but there will also be participatory
experiences inside that keep them
engaged and deepen their learning
about this particular bug.
Another important goal of the exhibition
relates to the concept of the ‘citizen
scientist’. Citizen Scientists are
members of the
public, usually
from non-science
backgrounds, who
volunteer their
time to further
scientific research,
or advocate creating
change to support a
particular species.
In the exhibition a
number of citizen
scientists will be
highlighted, as they are also backyard
heroes. The heart of their work is
changing people’s attitudes towards
bugs, helping them realise that bugs are
a vital part of the world we live in.
The bombardier beetle
is able to mix burning
chemicals inside its
abdomen and shoot the
concoction out of its bottom
when it feels threatened!
“ It is not enough
to provide a physical
experience where visitors
enter into something, you
also have to provide an
engagement opportunity
once they are inside
”
Bug fact:

Through the BUGS exhibition, I am
hoping we will inspire visitors to take
part in a community research project
or to make a positive change in their
own backyards: exemplifying the model
of citizen scientists. This could be as
simple as planting flowers that provide
pollen sources for honeybees, or
building a ‘wētā motel,’ providing the
local wētā with another place to live.
Part of inspiring
people to become
citizen scientists
also includes
changing
attitudes towards
bugs. In the
‘Action Station’
at the end of
the exhibition,
visitors will not only be able to collect
some instructions on how to build their
wētā motel, but also contribute to an
opinion-based measure of how they feel
about bugs, after hopefully learning all
of the amazing things they do. This will
encourage visitors to really think about
their attitudes towards bugs, while
providing Puke Ariki with an interesting
measure to determine if we have been
able to convince people that bugs are a
vital part of our ecosystems.
Throughout this process, I have
become aware that my lack of scientific
knowledge means that I have a different
approach, one that is perhaps not as
deeply embedded in the detail as an
entomologist’s would be. However, I
also believe that my passion for giving
visitors the best possible exhibition
experience — while helping them to
understand why we should care about
bugs — is an advantage. Currently
the exhibition is progressing well
and I am tying together all of the
scientific concepts that will end up on
the exhibition floor in a way that is
accessible to visitors. I am also further
developing content, organising loans,
thinking about display techniques and
writing the text.
If you are able to work on something
so far out of your comfort zone or your
existing knowledge that it makes you
feel a bit sick, then don’t hold back. I
have gained more
knowledge about
bugs and scientific
practices than I
ever imagined. I
have a feeling that
this will be one of
the most rewarding
experiences of my
career to date.
BUGS: Our Backyard Heroes is on at
Puke Ariki, New Plymouth from 12th
November 2016 to 14th May 2017.
Endnotes
1 Nina Simon. “Designing Interactives for Adults:
Put Down the Dayglow.” Museum 2.0. 18 January
2012. <http://museumtwo.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/
designing-interactives-for-adults-put.html>
“ Part of inspiring
people to become citizen
scientists also includes
changing attitudes
towards bugs.
”

Moya Sherriff
Collections Technician, Air Force Museum
Moya’s interest in heritage sprung from
childhood visits to her local Museum. During the
university holidays (in between milking cows)
she started volunteering at South Canterbury
Museum, where she gained a variety of new
experiences. Following a position at Ashburton
Museum and completing a postgraduate diploma
in Museum Studies through Massey University,
Moya embarked on the ultimate new graduate
experience as Intern, and later Administrator, of
the Canterbury Cultural Collections Recovery
Centre (CCCRC) based at the Air Force
Museum of New Zealand in Christchurch. In
2016 she officially joined the Air Force Museum
team as Collections Technician.
After the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes
our city was in turmoil. In Christchurch lives
were lost, homes were destroyed, the central
business district was damaged beyond
recognition and our world as we knew it had
changed forever. For Canterbury’s movable
culture and heritage dotted across the city,
safe and secure storage was a critical issue.
The stability of the Air Force Museum of New
Zealand’s land in the suburb of Wigram,
located away from the major epicentre
brought our fellow cultural and heritage
colleagues knocking. In those early stages,
the Air Force Museum fulfilled their request
for space by making room within their own
collection stores. When this ran out, shipping
containers were placed on the tarmac to
accommodate those in need.
The Canterbury Cultural
Collections Recovery Centre
Reflections of an Intern
Ray Wootton (Friends of the Nurses Memorial Chapel) and Moya Sherriff (CCCRC Administrator) preparing a
carpet runner for long term storage, until its original home within the Nurses’ Memorial Chapel is restored.

Meanwhile, after 10
years of planning
and despite the
extraordinary post-
quake situation, the
Air Force Museum
Trust Board decided
to continue with their
plan to build a new exhibition hall and large
object conservation workshops.
In January 2013, the building was complete,
but instead of occupying the space straight
away, the Air Force Museum offered part of
the complex to those organisations already
on site and elsewhere who were affected by
the earthquakes. For three years (2013 to
2015) the Canterbury Cultural Collections
Recovery Centre (CCCRC) provided a space
for institutions to regroup and recover from
this disaster.
The CCCRC advisory board realised that the
centre would need to provide some type of
daily help and support. In July 2013 National
Services Te Paerangi partnered with the
Friends of Te
Papa and OMV
New Zealand
to provide that
support, through
their internship
scheme, for a
recent Museum
Studies graduate to work within the CCCRC.
As the successful applicant, my main tasks
initially were to assist with cataloguing,
documentation and preventive conservation
together with cleaning and boxing of
collections from smaller museums and
heritage organisations that moved into the
space. However, what I ended up doing
was far more diverse than the original job
description.
Once on the ground, I quickly discovered
that there was a wide range of skills,
knowledge and practices between the 38
groups within the CCCRC. Some were well
established organisations with collection
management and documentation systems
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand’s new conservation and restoration workshops during the CCCRC
phase. Post-earthquake the CCCRC provided storage for 38 organisations from 2013 to 2015
“There was a wide range
of skills, knowledge and
practices between the 38
groups within the CCCRC
”

already in place so the ability to assist
with their cataloguing and preventative
conservation was straightforward. However,
there were others who had no established
procedures. This was something I had not
encountered before. So I started reviewing
those collection management textbooks
from university, asking my fellow museum
colleagues and discussing ideas with
individual CCCRC groups. Together we
came up with retrospective documentation
and cataloguing procedures which covered
everything from filling out the object receipt
form to packing
artefacts. But it didn’t
quite stop there – at one
point I did find myself
having a go at writing
and reviewing collection
management policies
– not something your
average junior museum role would involve.
One area I didn’t expect to spend so much
time on was talking through museum
principles and ethics with the volunteer-
run groups. The key topics that repeatedly
came up were: the importance of creating
and maintaining donor records, the ethics
and processes of deaccessioning and
the difference between conservation
and restoration. My tack was generally
to research the topic, talk to my senior
colleagues and find online resources
through sites such as National Services
Te Paerangi, Collections Trust UK and
the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology
Service. Armed with this information I felt
comfortable enough to chat about various
issues with the groups, offering the results of
my research or suggesting they talk to other
more experienced museum professionals.
Sometimes these conversations were rather
challenging and at times I really had to stick
to my guns. There were occasions when I
was completely brutal, and the words “No
you cannot throw that collection item in the
bin” did come out of my mouth. However,
there were times when I knew that it just
wasn’t worth putting up a fight. Maintaining
a good working relationship was way more
important and, at the end of the day, it is
their collection. They are the group of people
who have been entrusted to curate it. At
times, I certainly felt as if I’d been thrown in
the deep end but it was also slightly comical.
There I was, wearing the label ‘intern’,
encouraging others to adhere to these
fundamental principles.
One factor that made
an important difference
to the implementation
of these new practices
was leadership. The
CCCRC provided groups
with space, some
materials, equipment
and opportunities to up-skill, but sole
responsibility for collection management
and human resources remained firmly with
each individual group. Groups with strong
leadership seemed to be the ones that
would embrace (if need be) new skills or
management ideas and implement them
successfully. However, some of the groups
struggled and looked to me for leadership.
On reflection, this was a really interesting
issue, as the mandate of the CCCRC was
to provide a support network, not control
the destiny of a group or do work for
them. On the other hand, I could see that
if I didn’t step in and do something, these
groups would fall completely behind. Their
collection would leave the CCCRC exactly
as it had arrived. So, with support from Air
Force Museum and external colleagues, I
worked on collections alongside the group,
sometimes encouraging individuals to do
specific tasks and promoting professional
procedures until the collection was at least
packed.
“No you cannot
throw that collection
item in the bin
”

My original task related to CCCRC education
was to assist in training workshops. This
morphed into me (or Air Force Museum
colleagues) identifying knowledge or skill
gaps within the groups. We then canvassed
individuals to find out likely attendance
levels if we hosted a workshop on that
topic. I found that bringing in an outside
expert helped create connections between
groups and other museum professionals,
while presenting and reinforcing museum
principles and ethics from another source.
Another advantage was that I got to take
part in these workshops and learn from the
experts as well.
Overall, the CCCRC was an amazing
experience. Every day was different, full of
opportunities and challenges that I would
never have come across within a ‘normal’
junior museum role. I learned so much just
by being in a place where I could research,
think about and observe those ideologies
and processes that our museum colleagues
in higher positions deal with every day. I love
that for the first year of the CCCRC, I was
the ‘intern’ only in name, not in occupation.
After July 2014, due to the great work of
our team and thanks to the Canterbury
community and the Air Force Museum Trust
Boards, we were able to find the funds
to extend my contract with the new title
‘administrator’ until the end of 2015
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand’s new conservation and restoration workshops during the CCCRC
phase. Post-earthquake the CCCRC provided storage for 38 organisations from 2013 to 2015

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