Antipodean aesthetics, public policy and the museum

The Museum of New Zealand-Te papa Tongarewa has proved a complex cultural site that has generated much public debate and a growing academic literature. In this essay I depart from critical approaches that resolve the analysis of this museum by pointing out its programmatic inconsistencies, internal contradictions, representational inadequacies or its institutional paradoxes. While these formulations do get at matters important to the operations of Te Papa, what is striking in these analyses is that the museum somehow always disappoints the critic by not living up to its stated aims or some ideal of the museum form. Rather than establishing Te Papa as an object for reform as these critics have done, I read it as an archive for reflection on the cultural predicament of an antipodean modernity. To this end this essay proceeds by initially establishing the wider movements in which the institution is located. Then it maps how these movements have shaped the museum’s formulations and its reception by focusing on the period leading up to its opening. Finally, it considers a particular antipodean style of representation associated with these movements. In this context, I conclude, Te Papa might best be understood as a monument to ‘antipodean camp’.