Description of the attraction
The first collections of the War Memorial Museum began to form on the day of its foundation and are still being replenished. At the very beginning of its existence, the museum was intended to preserve and demonstrate the characteristics of the local flora and fauna, art objects and relics of the local population, as well as the culture of the settlers who arrived on the land of New Zealand. During the second half of the 19th century, there was a tangible increase in the museum's exhibits. An impressive Maori archaeological and ethnographic collection has been assembled. Among them are three fully assembled Maori dwellings from the 1830s, as well as a military canoe from the same time.
The museum has collected collections from all over Polynesia and the Pacific region, European and Asian countries. Here are objects of applied art, marine and terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates, more than 1200 photographs, paintings, musical instruments and significant scientific work.
The History of Humanity collection takes care of nearly 200,000 artifacts representing 150 years of New Zealand history. The Natural Science collection contains nearly 1.5 million artifacts from the fields of botany, entomology, and zoology of the inhabitants of New Zealand and the Pacific. The Painting Collection is a collection of photographs, drawings, paintings, slides and negatives with information of global importance.
Anyone can visit the Museum Library, spend time in the reading room, familiarize themselves with the contents of catalogs, use the information center.
