Curating empire : international exhibitions and the museum-building work of Haast, Hector and Hutton : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Museum Studies at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis investigates how international exhibitions contributed to the establishment of three nineteenth-century museums in Aotearoa New Zealand: Canterbury Museum, the Colonial Museum (now the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) and Otago Museum. Focusing on the exhibition and museum-building work of their founding curators – Sir Julius von Haast, Sir James Hector and Captain Frederick Wollaston Hutton – it argues that exhibitions were key drivers of museum formation. Through comparative analysis of their exhibition practices and collecting strategies, this study demonstrates how Haast leveraged exhibitions to elevate Canterbury Museum’s scientific prestige and build its collections, Hector employed them as instruments of state science and national development at the Colonial Museum, and Hutton pursued a more selective, pedagogical approach at Otago Museum.

Situating these museums within global exhibition networks, this thesis reveals curators as active agents within imperial systems of knowledge who used exhibitions to acquire collections, secure scientific connections and educate the public. By tracing the movement of objects from exhibitions into museum collections, it demonstrates that education, classification and display operated as interconnected practices across both museums and international exhibitions.

Foregrounding curatorial agency, this thesis reframes the history of New Zealand’s early museums around the interdependent relationship between exhibitions and museums, demonstrating that ephemeral exhibitions produced enduring institutional legacies. It provides the first sustained comparative account of Haast, Hector and Hutton as exhibitionary actors and establishes international exhibitions as central to understanding the formation of Aotearoa New Zealand’s museums.