Our heritage my vision

from Heritage New Zealand Raumati Summer 2022

Books

INTERVIEW: JACQUI GIBSON • IMAGE: BRAD BONIFACE

BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS

Inviting communities to fill the knowledge gaps that exist in our museums, says Dr Bronwyn Labrum, will help institutions better collect for the future

hīnaki: eel traps

kete:

woven flax baskets You can learn so much about culture and society when you look at the everyday materials that make up our lives. This is the idea behind my 2015 book Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s. I grew up in the ’60s. We had a Crown Lynn swan vase at home; it was a wedding present for my parents, I think. We had New Zealand-manufactured wool blankets on our beds. Incredible when you think about it now. It was a time of growing consumer demand and domestic manufacturing in New Zealand.

In my book, I try to give people a window into the objects and material trends of the period, while also challenging assumptions about that time. Yes, they were stable, prosperous and safe post-war years. But they weren’t as conventional as we now assume. There were plenty of things we might be surprised by: people smuggled illegal booze into coffee shops to spike their cups of coffee – how about that?

I’m sure new insights will come from the Whanganui Regional Museum’s latest exhibition, He Awa Ora, Living River. Curated by museum Pou Rauhī (Curator Māori) Dr Rāwiri Tinirau, it tells the story of the seven Whanganui iwi who live here, touching on their arrival, their special connection to the river, and the things they made. We’re taking the exhibition upriver to marae to give others an opportunity to share their stories of the artefacts and perhaps add to the exhibition with new ones. I’d love to see it continue to travel throughout the region and return again both enriched and changed.

One of the greatest challenges we face as museum professionals is how to collect for the future. What stays? What goes? Regional museums can be full of objects without provenance. That’s definitely the case for us.

The answer, I think, is to work more closely with our communities to either return taonga or keep them but fill in our knowledge gaps. We’re doing some of this work with He Awa Ora under Rāwiri’s leadership. The exhibition features objects like flags, photographs, kete, hīnaki and waka. We’ve only been able to curate this exhibition by breaking down the walls of the museum and inviting iwi in to help us tell their stories. It’s a wonderful way of working.

I say to visitors: “Don’t worry about not previously knowing this history. Don’t worry about asking questions. We’ve created a supportive environment here thanks to Rāwiri’s work and our iwi partnerships. Come, see this exhibition. You’ll learn a lot. It may even result in a few surprises.”

Dr Bronwyn Labrum is a New Zealand cultural historian, author and director of Whanganui Regional Museum. Born and raised in Whanganui, she has a PhD in history from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She was curator of history and textiles and head of the New Zealand and Pacific Cultures team at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. She taught history at the University of Waikato and was an associate professor at Massey University School of Design.