Charlotte Davy

Head of Art

Charlotte’s expertise is in creative direction and facilitation, arts strategy, and exhibition programming and development. Through facilitating international exhibitions she has also developed expertise in museum ethics and law, particularly relating to the ownership, loan, and display of art. Charlotte has broader interests in museum architecture and spatial design.

Lizzie Bisley

Curator Modern Art

Lizzie specialises in modern art and design, particularly from the years between 1920 and 1950. She has worked extensively on European and American modernism, and is currently researching contemporary New Zealand art of the interwar period.

Athol McCredie

Curator Photography

Athol’s expertise is in New Zealand photography, particularly 1940 to the present. Current research includes the history of the museum’s photography collection, the photographs of Māori and their treatment by the museum, and the personal documentary photography of the 1960s and 1970s.

Lissa Mitchell

Curator Historical Documentary Photography

Lissa is an art historian whose main research is photography of the colonial period and how it relates to the present day. Specific research areas include the depiction of children in historical photography, crime in colonial photography, early women photographers and photographic histories in the country’s southern region.

Lissa on Twitter: @rainyslip

Justine Olsen

Curator Decorative Art & Design

Justine Olsen’s expertise lies in decorative arts and design, with particular reference to New Zealand, both historical and contemporary. Current research includes New Zealand’s contribution to modernism and to the arts and crafts movement.

Rebecca Rice

Curator Historical New Zealand Art

Rebecca is an art historian who specialises in in the field of colonial New Zealand art, with a particular interest in the histories of collecting, exhibition, and display. Her current research focuses on the visual culture of the New Zealand Wars, and the impact of impressionism on New Zealand artists at home and abroad.

Megan Tamati-Quennell

Curator Modern & Contemporary Māori & Indigenous Art

Megan has specialist interests in the work of the post war (1945) first generation Māori artists, Mana wahine; Māori women artists of the 1970s and 1980s, the ‘Māori Internationals’; the artists who developed with the advent of biculturalism, a postmodern construct peculiar to New Zealand and global Indigenous art with particular focus on modern and contemporary Indigenous art in Australia, Canada and the United States.

Iwi affiliation: Te Ātiawa, Ngāi Tahu

Nina Tonga 

Curator Contemporary Art

Nina is an art historian who specialises in Pacific art. Her current research focuses on contemporary Pacific art in New Zealand and in the Pacific, with a particular interest in internet art from 2000 to the present. 

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