Fitting the colonial museum dashboard? Civic action, curatorial agency and identity building at the Auckland Museum (1852–1929)

ABSTRACT John MacKenzie in his Museums and Empire (2010) sets out an evolutionary framework of museum development in the British settler colonies. The formation years of the Auckland Museum in New Zealand both align and misalign with this progressive imperial model. In contrast to the establishment of the first Australian museums, which were essentially state sponsored enterprises, the Auckland Museum experience of the second half of the nineteenth century is one of curatorial agency, civic action and identity building in New Zealand's second capital city. In addition, the tentative reciprocal relationships with Māori in the rapid growth of the indigenous cultural collections are a defining feature of this phase of intensive acquisition and expansion. Imperial aspirations only came with WW1 when the future Auckland Museum was re-imagined as being ‘essential to complete the equipment of men and women who are to lead the work of progressive civilisation' and a new museum architecture of Empire was conceived. Whilst referencing the prevailing museological framework for the study of early museums in British settler colonies, this article concentrates less on the theory of Empire and more on local biography, collecting impulses and archival histories of the Auckland Museum during its formative years, now one of New Zealand’s most extensive cultural assets.