New Voices, New Conversations

Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum, Berlin

Te Maori for me was a culmination and a beginning. For some years as Director of Waikato Museum of Art and History I had been both responding, and making approaches, to Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikahu. As a staff group it was a time of feeling our way. Museological standards and professional socialisation, all firmly rooted in European and North American models, told us firmly of our responsibilities to the collections, but there were also strong cultural voices within New Zealand and more radical set of voices in the international profession that talked of the democratisation of museums and opening our authoritarian structures to those who had cultural and moral ownership of those collections.

Te Ata embraced us and we established a most productive relationship with Turangawaewae. The culmination was that our vesting of all Maori collections in Te Arikinui was confirmed as the right thing to do. The beginning was in Te Maori opening New Zealand museums to the international world as had not been achieved before. In New York I was part of the negotiating team and in New Zealand helped where I could with the organisations of the museological side of things. We all knew of the new museology – Te Maori hastened new practice in our country and allowed me to interact with the outside world not just at the level of interested visitor but as a practitioner in that global world of which New Zealand is a part.

Ken Gorbey