Te Papa’s Toi Art galleries to reopen

Saturday, 8 March 2025

Te Papa will reopen its Toi Art galleries in June, following a year-long period that saw part of it closed.

The upper floor of the multi-levelled Toi Art has been shut since May 2024. Contractors have been working since then to replace that floor’s sprinkler system, and some slight tweaks have been made to its internal architecture ‒ repainting; low stud galleries have had ceilings relined; and lighting tracks have been redesigned in high stud galleries.

While many of the changes are cosmetic and subtle they will make a big impact on how the galleries will feel when they reopen, said Rebecca Rice, the museum’s acting head of art.

Accompanying the full reopening of Toi Art is a new suite of exhibitions that will be open to the public through 2027.

Toi Art opened in 2018 with a mission to showcase more works from the national art collection that Te Papa safeguards, alongside new art especially created for its spaces. Toi Art’s immersive entrance threshold gallery is larger than any other space at the museum.

From June 14 two monumental sculptural works will be unveiled there: Black Phoenix by Ralph Hotere and Ngā Morehu by Shona Rapira Davies.

Then later that month, on June 28, when Toi Art’s other galleries reopen, 173 works will be on show across two floors, including a large number that have never been displayed at Te Papa before.

Featured artists include Leslie Adkin, Maureen Lander, Yona Lee, Teuane Tibbo, Erica van Zon, Areez Katki, Douglas MacDiarmid, Lisa Reihana, Anne Noble and Lubaina Himid, the British artist who will represent the United Kingdom at next year’s Venice Biennale.

Himid’s work will be showcased alongside that of NZ artist Michael Parekōwhai, in an exchange of how the artists use language to think through issues of representation.

There will even be a video game created by NZ artist Kahurangiariki Smith on show.

And an art studio that’s due to open will offer a range of activities for children and families.

Rice said museum staff took the opportunity to curate a fresh look at the national collection. “We really hope that our visitors find new things to love about the collection. That's our real ambition … We hope that people will be really inspired, and their curiosity will be ignited,” she said in an interview.

Lander’s String Games installation that was made for the opening of Te Papa will be shown alongside her more recent practice.

But as well as having a strong showing of senior Māori artists and ensuring Pacific, Asian NZ and women artists are well represented, Rice said curatorial teams were also determined to display some of the museum’s newer, more exciting acquisitions by contemporary artists ‒ for example, Lee’s Kit-set In-Transit.

Rice said the artworks that’ll be exhibited represent a broad range of Te Papa’s held art across its strong historical, and Māori and Pacific collections.

And they capitalise on the museum staff’s own expertise. For example, Adkin’s black and white photography is featured, off the back of photography curator Athol McCredie’s Ockham-nominated book, Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer, being published in 2024.

Te Papa would commission a new work for Toi Art’s threshold gallery at some point over the next two years.

Level four of Toi Art continues to host the paid entry, blockbuster Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery exhibit, to April 27.