Museum promises winter to warm hearts young and old

Laura Vodanovich

As we move into the winter months, the team here at the MTG are still busy working on the collections, preparing exhibitions, planning education programmes and so on.

Our latest exhibition, The House of Webb: a family's journey to Ormondville, has received great feedback.

The design team tried some new elements in the exhibition to help bring the story to life and these have certainly make a difference to the vibrancy of the display.

Dinky Toys in the Octagon has just been dismantled and a new display focused on navigation is being installed.

There isn't much time left to view He Manu Tioriori: Songbirds, the award-winning exhibition coming to a close on July 22.

Looking at 100 years of Ngāti Kahungunu's love affair with music, this popular exhibition has appealed to both young and old and I highly recommend taking this last opportunity to experience it for yourself.

Following He Manu Tioriori will be a new exhibition by local-born artist George Nuku, opening on August 24. Of Omahu Marae, George is now based in France and has had many exhibitions around the globe.

This installation, titled George Nuku: Bottled Ocean 2118, looks at a futuristic underwater world.

Working with recycled materials – in this case translucent plastics such as water and fizzy drink bottles – these will be transformed into artworks with the help of school groups.

George is working with both MTG Hawke's Bay and Hastings City Art Gallery, where he will be showing a smaller installation, Bottled River, as part of their EAST exhibition.

We'll have a collecting station at MTG for any used (and cleaned) translucent bottles that the public would like to bring in for our exhibition.

We're also on the build-up to the 2018 New Zealand International Film Festival – and will hopefully know the selection of films for Napier in the next week or two.

Starting on August 30 this year, and running to September 16, the festival is sure to offer something for everyone.

And let's not forget it's school holidays. These holidays our programmes are Matariki themed, with kite designing, poi making, a Matariki colouring wall, the ever popular museum search, as well as the usual activities relating directly to exhibitions.

Our drop-in-zone will be back for the holidays and we hope families will include the museum as one of their must-do activities for this school break.

At the same time we're planning for our new digital education programme which starts in term three.

This Digital Equity For All programme, delivered in partnership with Te Papa, aims at increasing access to digital technology among students in lower decile schools.

We're excited that it's almost time to kick off the programme and hope it'll make a difference for students in the region.

So there's more than enough to keep staff busy over the winter months and plenty for our visitors to enjoy.

• Marine Parade 1928 to 1938, local historian Michael Fowler, Saturday, July 14, Century Theatre, starts 3.30pm. Free entry

• NZ Mountain Film Festival, amazing films celebrating Kiwis getting out there and doing it, Saturday, July 21, starts 7.30pm. Tickets available from MTG.

• Laura Vodanovich is the director of the Museum Theatre Gallery (MTG) Hawke's Bay.