Auckland Museum

Auckland’s Museum, superbly sited in the city’s Domain, was built in the 1920s as a memorial to the city’s war dead. Its rather severe classical style give it a commanding presence. It houses an institution which dates back to 1852.

It is a major museum displaying Pacific Island and Maori culture and art, New Zealand's natural history and birdlife and the story of New Zealanders at war. Among its many displays of great historical interest are a fine Maori meeting house, Hotunui. Auckland sits on some 50 volcanos and visitors can experience a multimedia show in which a new one arrives on the scene.

Particularly in the school holidays there is a range of activities to keep children and families busy.

December 2006 saw the opening of a spectacular Grand Atrium topped by a copper dome in the building's southern courtyard. The architect was Noel Lane. As well as extra storage. Education and exhibition spaces the project has included an auditorium and an events centre. The entire complex is heritage listed.

In 2017 Museum formed the backdrop for the projection of aspectacular time lapse view of an iceberg by Joseph Michael "...Visitors hear the creak and crack as sections of ice carve away - all set to a dramatic sound score. It is a powerful experience.”

Gavin McLean describes the museum in the following terms:

A Parthenon on a hill of bitter memories.
Between the wars, Governors-General and other dignitaries unveiled hundreds of memorials to the dead of what everyone hoped had been the ‘war to end all wars’. It could be a touchy subject. Although people wanted to honour the fallen, they often disagreed about how and where to do it. Political fashions changed, too. Most World War II memorials are ‘utilitarian’, libraries, halls and community centres, but World War I sites are predominantly ‘inspirational’, obelisks, cenotaphs and statues. Auckland’s war memorial typified the complexities. The Auckland Institute had been planning a new museum on the Auckland Domain, for which it had got £25,000 from the government. But when Wellington’s Dominion newspaper complained, Auckland mayor JH Gunson tried to deflect criticism by making the museum a war memorial. He silenced the southerners but offended those veterans who felt that only a straight memorial would honour their comrades. From his position on the citizens’ committee, museum curator TE Cheeseman counterattacked quietly and persuaded his colleagues to stick with the museum. In October 1922 local firm Grierson, Draffin and Aimer won the design contest with a Greek Revival design that was almost de rigueur for memorials. Yet despite this ‘almost pedantic Classicism’, Peter Shaw has called the monument, erected with Parthenon-like presence atop Te Wherowhero’s Pukekawa (‘hill of sorrows’), ‘a fervently nationalistic building’. In front, the “diggers” got their Court of Honour and stone cenotaph, a replica of Luytens’s Whitehall one, sketched on the cheap by Draffin from newsreel footage. Governor-General Sir Charles Fergusson opened the cenotaph on 29 November 1929 in a speech larded with classical references. Next day he returned to open the building. During the 1930s Governors-General Bledisloe and Galway presided over enormous Anzac Day dawn parades at the Court of Honour. The parades continue to this day while tourist buses have the hill the rest of the year. The Museum of New Zealand has replaced the Auckland Museum as the most-visited museum in the country but during the 1990s ‘Auckland’s Parthenon’ underwent a major redevelopment. In 2002 it was poised to begin a second, in which the interior courtyard between the main building rear extension, completed in 1960, will be filled in to provide additional gallery spaces.

© 2002 Original text – Gavin McLean.

Further reading: Grant Neill, ‘Auckland’s War Memorial Museum’, Historic Places in New Zealand, 39, 1992, pp. 16–19; Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean, The Sorrow and the Pride, GP Books, Wellington, 1990.

AUCKLAND MUSEUM TICKET WITH CULTURAL PERFORMANCE