Auckland Museum At Home Online Content Hub Relaunched

While the doors of Auckland War Memorial Museum are closed, visitors can still experience some of their favourite parts of Tāmaki Paenga Hira online.

Launched in the initial 2020 COVID-19 Level Four lockdown, Auckland Museum at Home is an online hub filled with stories, activities, videos and jigsaw puzzles for the whole family to enjoy. It’s been updated with fresh content for the current lockdown, with the most popular to date being the Museum’s jigsaw puzzles, virtual tours and activities for kids.

Auckland Museum Chief Executive David Gaimster says the Museum is an anchor point for Aucklanders and it is important it continues to share the stories of its collections and people with the community.

“While our galleries, exhibitions and public programmes aren’t able to operate, we want to maintain our connection with the city and the communities we serve.”

“On our website and social channels, you can expect to see an exciting array of regularly updated content designed to educate, stimulate and entertain all of our audiences. From school children and teachers, to those wanting to deep-dive into stories and articles, to exploring our New Zealand war history, while at home there’s something for everyone.”

Auckland Museum at Home has engaging and entertaining things to see, do, watch and discover for all ages and New Zealanders are invited to visit online:

Watch how volcanoes are made, make native birds come alive in a jigsaw puzzle, deep dive into one of our blogs or discover some fun and educational activities to entertain the kids.

From collection objects and stories, to behind the scenes with Museum personnel, to quirky facts, the Museum team has collated a broad range of stories that reflect the past, current and future work of Auckland Museum.

Throughout Auckland Museum at Home stories are separated into different segments so visitors can find the stories they want, whether they want to learn something new, entertain the kids or are just simply looking for something to do.

To entertain tamariki there are fun and educational activities, new jigsaw puzzles, experiments, videos and they can experience parts of the Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Ocean Predators exhibition from home. Children can try a te reo Māori memory game, take part in a backyard scientist activity, learn how to trap light moths and even colour in Sea Monsters at home.

Our new exhibition Love & Loss was developed largely during last year's COVID-19 lockdowns, so it is fitting we're able to share this exhibition online during the current lockdown. Explore each object in the exhibition virtually through a web-based app, watch four deeply moving short films that feature first person narratives from the public submissions, take a virtual walk through the exhibition and share your own letter, if you wish.

In a series of curated video playlists find out about the cool jobs and amazing activities Auckland Museum staff get up to every day, see the award winning transformation of Te Ao Mārama the South Atrium, hear from Dr Espen Knutsen Senior Curator of Palaeontology at Queensland Museum Network about the origins of Sea Monsters, and more.

Explore our latest blogs and short reads, covering everything from fast facts to deep dives, that shine a spotlight on some of the Museum's research, collection objects, and many other topics in between from nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll, to creativity in momentous times, to the Sir Edmund Hillary photo archive and more. Celebrating communities through our collections, Pacific Language Weeks highlight Pacific collections and communities to maintain and promote heritage language.

Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira has a dual role – as a guardian for objects great and small, and as a memorial to those who served in armed conflict. New Zealand at War brings those two roles together, using objects in the Museum's collection to tell just a few of the tales of heroism from those who served and those who supported them.

Explore Collections Online for interesting images, insights and uses of our collection and take virtual tours through the galleries and exhibitions of Auckland Museum, past and present, for visitors who are missing seeing inside the galleries.

Even though our doors are closed to visitors, our work carries on.

The Auckland Museum at Home page will continually be updated with new videos, articles and activities.

Visitors are invited to keep coming back to see what’s new and follow Auckland Museum on social channels for updates.

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