Otago Museum is located near the city centre of Dunedin, New Zealand, adjacent to the University of Otago campus. The museum has one of the largest collections in New Zealand, and is one of the city's leading attractions. Natural science specimens and humanities artefacts from the Otago region and around the world form the basis for long-term gallery displays. An interactive science centre within the museum includes a large, immersive tropical rainforest butterfly house.
In 2022 the museum was gifted the Māori name , meaning 'to discover, investigate and explore', and the official name was changed to Otago Museum.
History
Origins
The name "Otago Museum" was first used by James Hector to describe his geological collections on display at the 1865 New Zealand Exhibition, held in Dunedin. Some of these collections were the nucleus of the Otago Museum, which first opened to the public on 12 September 1868. The museum was originally located in the Dunedin Exchange building on Princes Street. As the collection began to grow, it soon became clear that a larger, purpose-built site was required; the foundation was laid at the current Great King Street site in December 1874. In August 1877, the new building was opened and remains a part of the museum today. The original entrance to the museum, with its Oamaru stone Doric-style pillars, is still visible on Great King Street, though the main entrance is now from the Museum Reserve.
Management of the museum passed to the University of Otago in 1877. This arrangement lasted until 1955 when a new governance structure was established by the passing of the Otago Museum Trust Board Act.
Architecture and Development
With well over 100 years’ history on the current site, the museum building is classified by the Historic Places Trust as a Category 1 historic place.
The first substantial addition to the original Museum building on the Great King Street site was the Hocken Wing, which opened in 1910, housing Dr Thomas Hocken's collection of manuscripts. This collection now forms the basis of the Hocken Collections. Another new wing, named for benefactor Willi Fels was opened in 1930 and today houses the People of the World and Tangata Whenua galleries. A further expansion of the museum occurred in 1963 when the Centennial Wing was opened to provide additional display space. With all of these separate developments, the museum had grown to several times its original floor area, resulting in a complex layout of multiple internally connected wings.
A multi-stage redevelopment project in the 1990s and 2000s largely resolved this, with the addition of architect Ted McCoy's spectacular integrating central Atrium. The collection storage area was also redeveloped with specialised shelving and environmentally controlled storerooms. The redevelopment project reached a milestone in 2002 when the Southern Land, Southern People gallery was opened by Sir Edmund Hillary, along with the governor general (then Dame Silvia Cartwright) and prime minister (then Helen Clark).
The museum's interactive science centre, Discovery World, opened In 1991. During the redevelopment it was moved from its original ground floor location to the first floor. The Tropical Forest, an immersive butterfly rainforest environment featuring the flora and fauna of the tropics, opened as a major addition to the science centre in 2007. Discovery World Tropical Forest has become an important visitor attraction in its own right. A planetarium was a further addition to the science centre in 2015. During 2017 the science centre was further redeveloped, and opened in December of that year as the 'Tūhura Otago Community Trust Science Centre'.
2013 saw the opening of a redeveloped historic bluestone building on the Museum Reserve, which serves as an exhibition space and additional Museum venue. The building, now named the H. D. Skinner Annex after museum director Harry Skinner, was formerly a post office.
Benefactors
Largely due to generous benefactors and judicious acquisition strategies, the Otago Museum has one of the most significant museum collections in New Zealand.
Many of the museum's key benefactors were part of the same eminent Dunedin family. Among them, German-born businessman Willi Fels had an especially long and impactful relationship with the museum. Fels contributed many items personally, as well as establishing a purchasing fund, facilitating acquisitions made by others, and encouraging others to pass on valuable items to the museum. He also coordinated the fundraising efforts for the construction of the wing ultimately named in his honour.