Exhibitions

TOHE | PROTEST

Our exhibition about the 1981 Springbok Tour and the preservation of PATU!, the definitive protest documentary.

Free Radical: Len Lye at 120

Explore the dazzling world of groundbreaking filmmaker Len Lye. This exhibition is created in collaboration with the Len Lye Foundation.

Playback: Scroll Through Our Favourite Music Videos

Music videos and films have long been an important part of audiovisual culture. For this exhibition we’ve selected some favourite music videos from our collection to help tell the fascinating story of the evolution of the music video in Aotearoa.

Ngā wai e rua: Stories of Us

During 2019 New Zealand commemorated the 250th anniversary of the first onshore encounters between Māori and non-Māori, and the feats of Pacific navigators and explorers who reached and settled in Aotearoa New Zealand many years earlier.

Standing on the Shoulders...

From Te Puea Hērangi to Lorde, from weavers to war heroes, this exhibition celebrates a diverse range of women, as well as showcasing the breadth of material in our collections of archived radio, television and film.

Impressions of Katherine Mansfield

Take a tour through items drawn from our audiovisual collections that shine a light on the wonderful legacy of Katherine Mansfield. The three themes of our exhibition cover her work, family and friends and her legacy.

Maioha – Te Reo o te Māreikura

Maioha is a collection of radio interviews with Māori women, originally broadcast in 1993. It was a project instigated by the Waiatarau Branch of Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko i te Ora, The Māori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL), to mark the International Year for the World's Indigenous Peoples and the centenary of Women’s Suffrage.

Whakatū Wahine: Voices of Women Voters of 1893

In late 1893 New Zealand women, both Māori and Pākehā, were able to vote in an election for the first time. This exhibition highlights those voices of first voters - and tries to fill in some details about their lives and their possible motivation for signing and voting.

Te Reo Pāpāho

Te Reo Pāpāho is the story of te reo on air. Hear the broadcasters who championed te reo Māori on radio from the early days through to the 1940s when the first regular fully te reo radio programmes began, and on to the Māori cultural renaissance of the 1970s. 

Te Hokinga Mai o Te Rua Tekau mā Waru

This exhibition highlights the speeches, supporting waiata and haka delivered to soldiers of the celebrated 28th Māori Battalion as they arrived in Wellington in January 1946. This is the second of four exhibitions from Ngā Taonga Kōrero, the archive of RNZ’s Māori radio programmes and a rare opportunity to connect with important voices from our past.

The Camera in the Crowd

The companion exhibition to Dr Chris Pugsley's Book The Camera in the Crowd: Filming New Zealand in Peace and War, 1895-1920.

This short exhibition brings to life some of the key films from the book.

“This is the book that I’ve hoped someone would write.”
Sir Peter Jackson

Te Pūtaketanga o Ngā Taonga Kōrero

Ko te pāhotanga mātāmua i tō mātou pātaka Ngā Taonga Kōrero (te pātaka Māori a RNZ), koia tēnā, ko te hui i tū ai i Ngāruawāhia…

The earliest broadcast recording archived in our Ngā Taonga Kōrero collection (the archive of RNZ’s Māori radio programmes) is from the hui held at Ngāruawāhia in March 1938…

Sellebration

Advertising is part of our collective culture as New Zealanders. Each generation has ads that linger in the subconscious – which ad is it for you? Browse this selection of Kiwi cinema, TV and radio ads from the 1920s - 2000s – alongside behind the scenes photographs of their making – to jog your memory.

Anzac: Sights and Sounds of World War I

Experience the sights and sounds of the Anzac corps and the World War I era. Produced in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Anzac: Sights and Sounds of World War I showcases a curated selection of expertly restored and digitised archival films, songs, recorded interviews, documents and photos.

Rust + Restoration – He Waikura He Whakauka

The journey to restore and preserve Thomas Henry Whetton’s work was showcased in Rust + Restoration | He Waikura He Whakauka, an exhibition that ran at Te Puna Foundation Gallery at the National Library Building in 2019–2020.