# Cook Islands National Museum

The Cook Islands National Museum is a museum in Avarua on Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands. Its collection includes contemporary and historic artefacts, as well as replicas of objects in foreign institutions.

## Background

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. The museum had previously been housed in a section of the National Library. The museum has a 200 m$^2$ display space, as well as an office and store.

## Exhibitions

In 2019 the museum hosted an exhibition by Chinese micro-calligrapher Wang Zhiwen. Other exhibitions have included: on vaka voyaging history; on the contributions of Cook Islanders in the First World War; costumes from the 2018 Miss Cook Islands pageant; photographs by Fe'ena Syme-Buchanan that highlight population decline on Mangaia; on tivaivai – a form of quilting specific to the Cook Islands; wooden sculpture from Pacific countries; as well as many others.

## Collection

The museum collection contains objects relating to the Cook Islands and other Pacific nations. In 1999 the collection comprised approximately 300 objects, mostly dating to after 1900. It includes archaeological material, including 800 year old fish hooks excavated from Moturakau, Aitutaki. Similar objects, which remain the property of the museum, were excavated in 2003 from the motu Te Kainga of Rakahanga. Other objects in the museum's collection include ceremonial adzes, and a seven-foot long ceremonial spear. The collection also includes replica objects from a variety of islands. In 2020 the museum investigated whether it would be able to acquire a newly discovered sketch of Mangaia, painted by Captain Cook's surgeon.

## Repatriation

The Cook Islands National Museum has actively requested that 'smaller provincial collections in the UK consider repatriating Cook Island material'. In 1999 two necklaces were returned to the Cook Islands, following a request to Angus Council by the museum. 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".

### Adzes

Adzes in particular were a popular item for early explorers, as well as later seamen and tourists to collect, so appear in many collections around the world. In 2017 several stone adzes were returned to the Cook Islands from a private collection. They had been received as a gift by the former superintendent of Aitutaki Airfield. The family returned to New Zealand, but felt that the objects should return to the Cook Islands.

### Overseas collections

Many museums around the world have collections which hold objects from the Cook Islands, including: tapa cloth held by Kew Gardens; adzes and tattooing instruments at the Wellcome Collection; many objects, including a cloak at Te Papa; amongst others.

### Gallery of objects held in overseas collections

* Clothes worn when attending church in National Museum of Ethnography, Osaka
* Cook Islands objects in Otago Museum
* Ceremonial adze in Bishop Museum
* Ceremonial adze in Honolulu Museum of Art
* Holotype of Campylomma cookensis (mullein bug) in Auckland War Memorial Museum

## Notable people

* Jean Mason – curator
* Arerangi Tongia – former director
* Makiuti Tongia – former director