TheCook Islands National Museum is part of the Sir Geoffrey Henry National Culture Centre inAvarua onRarotonga, in theCook Islands. Its collection includes contemporary and historic artefacts, as well as replicas of objects in foreign institutions. Next to it is a similar building that houses theNational Library of the Cook Islands.
A purpose-built museum building was opened on 14 October 1992, in order to protect and encourage understanding of the cultural heritage of the Cook Islands.[1][2] The museum had previously been housed in a section of theNational Library.[3] The museum has a 200 m2 display space, as well as an office and store.[4]
In 2019 the museum hosted an exhibition by Chinese micro-calligrapherWang Zhiwen.[5] Other exhibitions have included: on vaka voyaging history;[6][7] on the contributions of Cook Islanders in the First World War;[8] costumes from the 2018Miss Cook Islands pageant;[9] photographs byFe'ena Syme-Buchanan that highlightpopulation decline onMangaia;[10] ontivaivai – a form of quilting specific to the Cook Islands;[11] wooden sculpture from Pacific countries;[12] as well as many others.
The museum collection contains objects relating to the Cook Islands and other Pacific nations.[13] In 1999 the collection comprised approximately 300 objects, mostly dating to after 1900.[4] It includes archaeological material, including 800 year old fish hooks excavated fromMoturakau,Aitutaki.[14][15] Similar objects, which remain the property of the museum, were excavated in 2003 from the motuTe Kainga ofRakahanga.[16] Other objects in the museum's collection include ceremonial adzes,[17] and a seven-foot long ceremonial spear.[18] The collection also includes replica objects from a variety of islands.[2] In 2020 the museum investigated whether it would be able to acquire a newly discovered sketch of Mangaia, painted by Captain Cook's surgeon.[19]
The Cook Islands National Museum has actively requested that 'smaller provincial collections in the UK consider repatriating Cook Island material'.[20] In 1999 two necklaces were returned to the Cook Islands, following a request toAngus Council by the museum.[21] At the time, the council's decision was based on the view that the necklaces "had been donated at a time when the museum collected anything and everything from every corner of the globe, and neither has been on lengthy display in recent years". Writer and curator Neil G. W. Curtis described this example of repatriation as Scottish "post-colonial empathy".[21][22]
Adzes in particular were a popular item for early explorers, and later seamen and tourists, to collect, so appear in many collections around the world.[20] In 2017 several stone adzes were returned to the Cook Islands from a private collection.[23] They had been received as a gift by the former superintendent ofAitutaki Airfield. The family returned to New Zealand, but felt that the objects should return to the Cook Islands.[24]
Many museums collections around the world hold objects from the Cook Islands, including tapa cloth held byKew Gardens,[25][26] adzes and tattooing instruments at theWellcome Collection,[20] and many objects, including a cloak, atTe Papa.[27]
^Hutton, Grace, Safua Akeli, and Sean Mallon. "Rediscovering the collection: Cook Islands material culture in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa."Tuhinga: Records of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 21 (2010): 99–123.
