^ Colour

From the monochrome to the many coloured, this exhibition spans two collections and two venues and puts colour on display through a diverse array of artworks and objects from your local museum and gallery collections.

Colours describe how something looks, but they also have cultural meanings. In putting this exhibition together, well known freelance curator Damian Skinner and Sarjeant Gallery Curator/Public Programmes Manager Greg Donson say “they have tried to think of colour broadly, as appearance, and as abstract associations. They say every now and then you will find an object in the exhibition that is a different colour to the rest of the objects in that section. This isn’t a mistake, but a way of pointing out the different dimensions that colours have in human societies.
The exhibition features eleven colours. At the Museum you will find black, red, yellow, blue, green and white, while at the Sarjeant Gallery you’ll see grey, pink, purple, brown and orange.
By mixing up artworks and objects – from the smooth surface of a marble sculpture, to the scaly or iridescent shell of a bug – this exhibition looks at how colour shapes our response to the environment, to each other, and to the things that surround us in our lives.

May 22 - November 13 2010

^ Land - Mana Whenua Mana Tangata

is an exhibition that describes the development of the wider Whanganui region, community and city during the 19th century through experiences of tangata whenua and European settlers, with particular reference to land, spirituality, conflict and alliance. Land – mana whenua, mana tangata illustrates some of the physical, spiritual, economic and social consequences of European contact and settlement on Māori in Whanganui in the 19th century – Christianity, Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi, 1848 Whanganui land sale, and the New Zealand wars of the 1840s and 1860s. The exhibition also describes settler experiences and the later 19th century boom of city expansion, river tourism and rural development.

^ Whanganui

“He pūkenga wai, he nohoanga tāngata, he nohoanga tāngata, he putanga kōrero.” Where there is a body of water, people settle, and where people settle, legends unfold.

Ever wondered how long people have been living here or where they came from?  What’s so special about Whanganui anyway?  A new exhibition at the Museum introduces you to a few of the things that make our place a great place to live or visit.  Meet some outstanding people from here, discover some icons from the Museum collection and find out about some extraordinary events that helped shape the land and the way we live.

^ Also On View

Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāparangi, The Māori Court
Features the war canoe Te Mata o Hoturoa and an internationally renowned collection of taonga Māori.

Ngā Manu: Birds of New Zealand
Features many endangered and extinct New Zealand birds such as the kiwi, moa and huia.

The Street - Wanganui 1900-1920
Re-creates the impression of early 20th century Wanganui businesses from this prosperous time.

Te Pataka Whakaahua - The Lindauer Gallery
Portraits of prominent Māori personalities from the 19th century by renowned artist Gottfried Lindauer.

The Bug Room
Butterflies and creepy crawlies from around Whanganui and beyond.

School Days
Experience a classroom as it might have looked in the early part of the 20th century.

Gotta Go
A light-hearted look at transport and communication.