Art team
Find out about the people that make up our Art team and their roles at Te Papa.
Rebecca Rice
Acting Head of Art, 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.
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 historical photography relating to Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific region. Specific research areas include early colour and fine art photography, crime in colonial photography, women photographers and photographic histories in the country’s southern region.
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.
Hanahiva Rose
Curator Contemporary Art
Hanahiva Rose has curated a number of exhibitions at Te Papa, including Kate Newby: SHE’S TALKING TO THE WALL, Memory spaces, Hye Rim Lee: Āke Tonu Atu | Eternity, and Mikala Dwyer: The silverings, as well as for other galleries around Aotearoa. Hanahiva is interested in expressions of time, memory, imagination, and whakapapa in contemporary art. She is a widely published author and a doctoral candidate in Art History at Victoria University.
Megan Tamati-Quennell
Te Ātiawa, Ngāi Tahu
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.
Enquiries
Email enquiries for Te Papa experts go to the Enquiry Centre initially. To help channel your enquiry, you can specify the person you think may be able to help you.