New Zealand Fashion Museum's At the Beach will open at the Maritime Museum over Labour Weekend. Photo / Supplied
New Zealand may have a relatively short history, but we're proud of our heritage, if our number of museums is anything to go by. Auckland's "big three" museums - Auckland Museum, the New Zealand Maritime Museum and the Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat) - are well-known and patronised, but there are many smaller, specialised museums that are also worth a visit.
One of Auckland's oldest suburbs, picturesque Devonport boasts not one but two museums. The Devonport Museum, tucked away in the pretty Cambria Reserve, tells the story of the development of the suburb, from its days of Maori settlement through the building of its ranks of Victorian and Edwardian villas, in folk museum-style, displaying everyday objects and memorabilia.
President Alastair Fletcher says the museum is run by an "absolutely committed group of volunteers, preserving, collecting and curating and displaying as much of Devonport's history as we can save". It has a large collection that is constantly expanding as locals donate new items or finds, such as the pharmaceutical ledgers of chemist Jack Rees-George, recently discovered in a coal cellar.
As well as its headquarters in a relocated former Presbyterian church, the museum also has a satellite display space upstairs at 3 Victoria Rd in the heart of Devonport village. It is developing a walk and cycle trail from Cambria Reserve around a circuit of interesting and important local houses, leading to its near neighbour, the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum.
Since moving to its current site in 2010, the Navy Museum has seen a massive increase in visitor numbers, to around 100,000 per annum - helped in part by its well-situated cafe.
Collection manager Claire Freeman says its holdings range from technical items such as ships' communication systems to personal items telling the stories of naval personnel, from the time of the New Zealand Wars, through the establishment of New Zealand's own navy in 1941, to nuclear testing and peacekeeping in the Pacific.
"We want to tell bigger war stories through personal stories," Freeman says.
In March the museum opened its World War I commemorative pavilion, featuring a sculpture by local artist Helen Pollock and, from October a new exhibition of small naval vessels will be on display in an adjacent historic boatshed.
Papakura is another historic part of Auckland with its own story to tell. Once a rural settlement on the Great South Rd leading to the Waikato, the town has retained its identity and heritage, and its modern museum shares a community space with the suburb's Sir Edmund Hillary library.
Curator Dr Michelle Smith says the area has a rich, interesting and diverse history, from Maori settlement to the New Zealand Wars, then to the establishment of the Papakura Camp army base in 1939.
"The area has a very strong military history and we are very keen to make that a unique point of difference," Smith says.
Current exhibits include a focus on the Walsh brothers' early flight exploits - the brothers learned to fly near Papakura before opening their famous school at Mission Bay during World War I - and the war itself, through an exhibit called As We Saw It, featuring letters and diaries from the battlefields.
Food, wine and beaches usually spring to mind when thinking of Waiheke - but the island is also home to two museums. The Waiheke Museum and Historical Village, between Ostend and Onetangi, comprises a collection of historic buildings from around the island and a central building.
Waiheke Island Historical Society president Anne Anderson says displays in the museum tell the story of the island's settlement first by Maori, then Europeans - including an ambitious plan to resettle 20,000 Belgians there in the 1850s - while the historic cottages on the site contain themed exhibitions on children's activities, travel and domestic life.
"We want to remind people of the very real hardships that the early settlers endured in making the island what it is today," says Anderson. "If you don't know your past, you just keep on making the same mistakes in the future."
Waiheke's other historical gem is Whittaker's Music Museum in Oneroa. Formerly the private collection of music enthusiasts Lloyd and Joan Whittaker, the museum holds more than 100 instruments from around the world, many of which can be played. The Whittakers, now in their 80s, put on a concert every Saturday afternoon, using instruments from organs to concertinas, pianos and harpsichords, as well as hosting professional musicians at a monthly Sunday evening concert. Joan Whittaker says the couple decided to open their unique, hands-on museum after visiting other static displays overseas.
"We saw some wonderful things but nothing that could be played," she says. "The first thing you want to know about an instrument is what it sounds like."
You could be forgiven for not knowing where in Auckland the New Zealand Fashion Museum is - but that's because it's "everywhere and nowhere". As the world's first - and currently only - online fashion museum, it exhibits at "pop-up" sites around the city, with its next installation at the Maritime Museum from Labour Weekend. The museum doesn't even have a physical collection, says senior curator Doris de Pont, but photographs garments and scans images for its online collection, and borrows garments from other institutions and private donors for exhibitions.
"Our primary focus is to encourage conversations and stories about fashion and how what we wear relates to who we are as a culture and as a society," de Pont says. "It is looking at the world through the lens of fashion history."
The At the Beach exhibition at the Maritime Museum will look at New Zealanders' relationships with beach attire over the past century, from Edwardian "combination" all-in-ones to jandals and bikinis.
"We're the only museum you can come to in your pyjamas," says de Pont.
"We don't know what you're wearing when you visit us."
One of Auckland's newest museums is also one of its smallest, but its collection tells an important story. Te Toi Uku Clay Works collects and displays artefacts relating to the Crown Lynn pottery in West Auckland, producers of now iconic New Zealand ceramics, as well as machinery and tools used in manufacturing bricks and clay pipes in the area. Collection manager Sandra Ward says the museum includes Crown Lynn enthusiast Richard Quinn's collection. Quinn spent years digging in the abandoned kilns and works dumps after the factory was shut down in 1989. The small museum and archive, in Ambrico Place in New Lynn, adjacent to the historic Gardner downdraft kiln, is currently open Monday-Thursday from 10am-2pm, but much of its collection is viewable online at portageceramicstrust.org.nz.
For more on local museums, seenzmuseums.co.nz. There are plenty more to explore in the wider Auckland area, from Wellsford, Warkworth, Puhoi, Helensville and Huia, to Tuakau and Waiuku in the south.
• Devonport Museum, 33a Vauxhall Rd, Devonport; open Tuesday-Thursday 10am-12pm, weekends 2pm-4pm, admission free.
• Torpedo Bay Navy Museum, 64 King Edward Parade, Devonport; open daily, 10am-5pm; cafe 8am-5pm, admission free.
• Papakura Museum, 209 Great South Rd, Papakura (parking at 28 East St), open Monday-Friday 10am-4.30pm, Saturdays 10am-1pm, admission free.
• Waiheke Museum and Historic Village, 165 Onetangi Straight, Waiheke; open Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays noon-4pm, entry by donation.
• Whittaker's Music Museum, Artworks Centre, 2 Korora St, Oneroa, Waiheke; open daily 1pm-4pm, live shows 1.30pm Saturdays, musicalmuseum.org, upcoming concerts Sundays at 5pm. Tomorrow, concert pianist Ludwig Treviranus; August 30, Adrianna Lis and Marian Sobula; September 27, Matteo Napoli and Lilia Carpinelli.
• New Zealand Fashion Museum, At the Beach exhibition, New Zealand Maritime Museum, from Labour Weekend.
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