organizationsMuseum of New Zealand Te Papa TongarewaTe Papa Tongarewa

Te Papa came out of a merger — the National Museum of New Zealand and the National Art Gallery, whose own line runs back to the Colonial Museum of 1865. The design process was led by Cliff Whiting with Cheryll Sotheran and Ken Gorbey and followed bicultural principles; Pete Bossley of Jasmax was the architect. The cultural collections hold Māori taonga and Pacific material alongside photography.

Since 2003 the museum has run a programme requesting the return of Māori remains held in institutions around the world. The clearest case in this atlas's range is the Musée du quai Branly: initially reluctant, it was able to move after a change in French law in 2010, and the mokomokai — tattooed preserved heads — were formally returned to New Zealand on 23 January 2012. They are held at Te Papa and are not on display.

The museum also draws the line inside its own building, and the argument about that is public. In 2010 it advised pregnant and menstruating women to avoid a behind-the-scenes tour of some collections; a spokeswoman said the policy was in place because of Māori beliefs surrounding the taonga collection included in the tour, "for their own safety". The advice generated outrage and claims that the museum was overbearing. This atlas reports both the reason given and the objection, and adjudicates neither.

Entry is free for New Zealanders and NZ$35 for international visitors as of September 2024. Collections Online publishes images under two rights statements, named on the museum's own page: some images are openly available with no restrictions on reuse, and others carry a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives licence. For taonga the museum asks something further — that images of taonga be used only for research, study, personal and educational purposes, because the material holds significant cultural importance to iwi. Inference — that request is not a licence term, and this atlas treats it as binding anyway.