When Heritage Meets Handouts: Who’s Really Curating the Past?
July 21, 2025
By AHNZ
Consider the latest posts from 2 of our New Zealand museums, Thames (est. 1974) and Papakura (est. 1972.)
One has created an interactive display with some laminated paper stuck to a brick and I like that. Number 8 wire. She’ll be right mate.
The other one put in for taxpayer dollars from Auckland Council and topped that up with thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars from a Stout Trust grant. Next they outsourced their interactive display to ‘Art of Fact’ (Newmarket, Auckland) for content, software, hardware, and probably a man to come and bracket it to the wall. Months of work. After all that they share it online by taking a photo of the screen with their phone showing the reflection of someone’s arms and a pronounced Moire Effect distortion pattern!
“Hold fast to the treasures of our ancestors.” – museum motto, Papakura Museum blog
“Tap into history with our interactive display bringing Ring’s Redoubt to life at Papakura Museum!…Supported by Papakura Local Board and the Stout Trust.” – Papakura Museum, Facebook (2025)
“A large format digital interactive, exploring the unique collection of 6,000 objects associated with Ring’s Redoubt, a fort used during the New Zealand Wars. Client: Papakura Museum” – Art of Fact (2025)
“The highest grant value was $80,000; the lowest grant value was $2,470. The average grant value was $21,215” – FAQ, Stout Trust. Perpetual Guardian (2025)
Well I have no comment. What do you think?
Should museum curators have to curate their museums or should their speciality be to fill out application forms so outsiders can do that? A growing trend.
2 thoughts on "When Heritage Meets Handouts: Who’s Really Curating the Past?"
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Just guessing that without grants the locals pay for the museum upkeep. So getting a grant must have strings attached, “he who pays the piper calls the tune”Why else would council be offering free money and that grabs me hard, I flinch every time I read of “free” this and that as some of that “free” money comes from my exorbitant rates.
Exactly. I’m still fairly sure that Invercargill toppled its museum and bowled over its god of wisdom simply to get at more $$$.
Ref. https://ahnz.anarkiwi.co.nz/1876-minerva-rises/