Tairāwhiti Museum’s fine arts collection reflects our region with a significant focus on local artists and subjects. It includes:
- Paintings, prints, drawings
- sculptures, constructions
- Decorative art – ceramics, jewellery, textiles
- Photography
- Media art
Search the Fine Arts – Toi Collection Online
Explore the collection
Explore the fine arts collection on our online database. We are continually updating and improving the online collection and regularly add new objects and documents.
Donating to the collection
The continued growth of the fine arts collection is often reliant on the generosity of sponsors and donors. Please contact us if you have a work you would like to donate to the collection.
See our Recent Acquisitions page for information about new additions to the collection.
Exhibitions
The museum displays works from the fine arts collection in semi-permanent and short term exhibitions.
Appealing objects – decorative arts at Tairāwhiti Museum
New to the Jack C Richards Decorative Arts Gallery: Chinese-style glass vessels by Alexander Lamont Workshops (Thailand); Japanese-influenced ceramics by New Zealand potter Aaron Scythe; decorative paintings by British/New Zealand artist Melanie Mills and three, early twentieth-century Japanese wedding robes.
Company of Potters
Curated by Damian Skinner, developed and toured by Objectspace. Between 1973 and 1984, the three kilns at Ian and Sheryl Smail’s ‘Nodsdale’ property on Auckland’s north shore were used to fire pots by a number of leading New Zealand ceramists. This exhibition explores the creative and social relations that linked these kilns, the pots fired... Read more »
Jan Linklater
My Language of Pattern and Colour
Even as a small child, patterns fascinated me and lodged in my memory. The theory of colour came later when I started to paint seriously but it is only since I emigrated to NZ that the striking landscape and light and a change to acrylic have vigorously combined pattern and colour. Landscape was my starting... Read more »
Rosemary Parcell
Rosemary Parcell was born in Tarras, Central Otago. In 1972 she graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury and began teaching Art and Art History in Dunedin and continued with teaching positions in Melbourne, Gisborne and Auckland. In 2005 she became a full-time painter. A devotee of horse riding and in particular the discipline... Read more »
Hīkoi
Walking with the Ancestors
E tau nei ki runga i a tātou katoa te wairua o ngā mātua tūpuna. Nā rātou i whakatakoto te ara hei hīkoinga mā tātou ngā uri. I whakatōkia ō tātou ngākau ki ngā tikanga hei aratakina i a tātou. Kia ngākaunui ki te hāpai i ā tātou mahi katoa, i roto i te pono,... Read more »
Hei ō Mō Apanui | Iwi Sustenance
Erana Koopu
Local artist Erena Koopu is committed to sustaining Māori culture through art by guiding and helping people to explore and discover their own creative core. Koopu was one of the first students to graduate with a degree from EIT Tairāwhiti’s Toihoukura – School of Māori Visual Arts. Since that achievement, she has come full circle... Read more »
The 80s Show
The 80s Show, with paintings from the Fletcher Trust Collection, has been curated by Tauranga Art Gallery to give those born after 1990 an opportunity to contextualise the period, while reacquainting earlier generations with a time that has become synonymous with pop culture classics and tumultuous events. “The 1980s represented a global boom in conspicuous... Read more »
Find out more about some of the artists represented in the museum collection
We welcome ideas for new projects and exhibitions so if you have something in mind, please get in touch – we would love to hear from you!
