The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's national museum and is located in Wellington. Usually known as Te Papa, it opened in 1998 after the merging of the National Museum of New Zealand and the National Art Gallery. An average of more than 1.5 million people visit every year, making it the 26th-most-visited art gallery in the world. Te Papa operates under a bicultural philosophy, and emphasises the living stories behind its cultural treasures.
Shona Rapira Davies is a sculptor and painter of Ngātiwai ki Aotea tribal descent. Currently residing in Wellington New Zealand.
Luit Bieringa (1942–2022) was a New Zealand art historian, art gallery director and documentary film maker. Bieringa was born in Groningen in the Netherlands and emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1956.
Fatu Akelei Feu'u is a noted Samoan painter from the village of Poutasi in the district of Falealili in Samoa. He has established a reputation as the elder statesman of Pacific art in New Zealand.
Clifford Hamilton Whiting was a New Zealand artist, teacher and advocate for Māori heritage.
Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa or Māori Weavers New Zealand is the New Zealand national Māori weavers’ collective, which aims to foster and preserve Māori traditional textiles. It has played an important role in facilitating the gathering of weavers of Māori and Pasifika descent to meet, teach and learn from one another.
Diggeress Rangituatahi Te Kanawa was a New Zealand Māori tohunga raranga of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Kinohaku descent. At the time of her death she was regarded as New Zealand's most renowned weaver.
William Franklin Culbert was a New Zealand artist, notable for his use of light in painting, photography, sculpture and installation work, as well as his use of found and recycled materials.
Ian Christopher Scott was a New Zealand painter. His work was significant for pursuing an international scope and vision within a local context previously dominated by regionalist and national concerns. Over the course of his career he consistently sought to push his work towards new possibilities for painting, in the process moving between abstraction and representation, and using controversial themes and approaches, while maintaining a highly personal and recognisable style. His work spans a wide range of concerns including the New Zealand landscape, popular imagery, appropriation and art historical references. Scott's paintings are distinctive for their intensity of colour and light. His approach to painting is aligned with the modernist tradition, responding to the formal standards set by the American painters Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski.
Joe Sheehan is a stone artist and jeweller who works primarily in pounamu.
Brett Graham is a New Zealand sculptor who creates large scale artworks and installations that explore indigenous histories, politics and philosophies.
Sara Hughes is a Canadian-born New Zealand artist.
Elizabeth Thomson is a New Zealand artist.
Mary-Louise Browne is a New Zealand artist, best known for her public word ladders, and other works using text. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Denise Kum is a New Zealand artist. Her works are held in the collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the University of Auckland art collection.
Denis O'Connor is a New Zealand-based ceramicist, sculptor, and writer who has exhibited both in New Zealand and internationally.
Alan Robert Pearson was a neo-expressionist painter who lived in New Zealand and, in his later life, Australia.
Robert Hans George Jahnke is a New Zealand artist and educator, well-known for his graphic and sculptural artwork. He is a professor at Massey University, founding Toioho ki Āpiti in 1991, the Māori visual arts degree programme in New Zealand.
Buck Loy Nin (1942–1996) was a New Zealand artist influential in the development of contemporary Māori art in New Zealand. His landscape paintings have been included in survey exhibitions of contemporary Māori art including Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Maori Art that toured the United States in 1992 and Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art curated by Nigel Borrell and opened in 2020. Selwyn Muru called him 'Buck Nin the Mythmaker'.
