What's the point in Museums? | RNZ
What’s the point in museums?
Museums are often thought of as large buildings in central city locations. In New Zealand, however, the reality is quite different. The majority of our museums are either micro (volunteer-led) or small (1–5 FTE staff), and we have an extraordinary number of them across the country.
This reflects something important: museums are not just buildings. In New Zealand, most of our museums are communities coming together to share and celebrate their arts, culture, and heritage. It is people contributing significant time, money, and commitment to preserving and projecting their own stories. A museum is a purpose, not a building — and that purpose must respond to its place and community.
While our national dialogue often centres on large, centralised museums, it is in the smaller museums embedded in their communities that the true richness of our museum landscape is revealed. All museums have the opportunity to deepen their relevance by ensuring stories are told with communities rather than about them. By creating spaces where people share their own histories and perspectives, museums foster inclusion, connection, and pride.
It is also important to resist reducing museums to a measure of visitor numbers through the front door of the building. So many of our institutions exist because communities themselves created and sustain them. That work is demanding, and it shows remarkable determination: the drive of people across the country to connect, to remember, and to shape identity through story.
The uniqueness of our museum landscape deserves to be recognised, celebrated and shared. It is a landscape built not only on collections, but on incredible commitment and perseverance. It thrives not because of imposing buildings, but because communities — large and small, rural and urban — insist on the importance of telling their own stories in their own ways. That is the point in museums.
