This beautiful two-volume set brings together Audrey Eagle’s botanical artworks from her best-selling 1975 and 1983 publications. It includes over 170 new paintings, bringing the total number of plants to more than 800  all in colour and life-size. Flowers, fruits, and other features are shown in superb detail. Comprehensive notes, written in consultation with expert botanists, accompany the illustrations. They provide up-to-date information on each plant’s habitat, distribution, identification, nomenclature, and more. This set represents Audrey Eagle’s life’s work. It is an outstanding contribution to botany in New Zealand  and an essential addition to any library.

Eagle's Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand

Arts & Photography

Eagle, Dr. Audrey

History & Criticism

Te Papa Press

Taiäwhio: Conversations with Contemporary Mäori artists, now in its third reprint, has proven invaluable to art lovers, students, teachers and those with a passion for New Zealand art. This new volume profiles a fresh range of contemporary Mäori artists. Each profile contains pages of information and quotes from the artists so readers can learn, in the artists’ own words, about their influences and inspirations, work methods and practice, while numerous full-colour photographs accompany each chapter, depicting the artists at work and showing the range of their work and the environment in which they create it. Short biographies are given for each artist profiled and a general introduction by Huhana Smith provides context for the interviews and background information about contemporary Mäori art. These artists work across a wide range of media and forms of expression including weaving, painting, claywork, sculpture, carving, tä moko, Kaihanga Uku, multimedia, jewellery and dance, making this book an excellent introduction to the dynamic world of contemporary visual culture in Aotearoa New Zealand today.

Taiawhio II: Contemporary Maori Artists

In New Zealand’s lush rainforests, isolated from the outside world for 80 million years, many extraordinary birds evolved. They included the giant moa, the beautiful huia, and the largest eagle the earth has ever seen. Within a few hundred years, human settlement extinguished 58 species over a quarter of the species. For the first time ever, this book brings all these lost birds to life. In rich colour, celebrated painter Paul Martinson depicts each bird in its original habitat. Te Papa palaeontologist Alan Tennyson provides detailed information on the birds as well as a compelling overview of their tragic extinction. This book is essential reading for experts, students, and anyone interested in the unique natural history of this island nation.

Extinct Birds of New Zealand

History

Alan Tennyson

Australia & Oceania

In this breakthrough art book, ten artists of Pacific Island descent talk candidly about their lives and work, and about finding themselves as artists. They also speak about coming to terms with their rich, complex cultural heritage. Speaking in Colour features the artists Fatu Feu‘u, Pauline Hoeft-Cocker, John Ione, Lily Laita, Iosefa Leo, Lyle Penisula, John Pule, Filipe Tohi, Michel Tuffery, and Jim Vivieaere.

Speaking in Colour: Conversations with Artists of Pacific Island Heritage

Fast Light Boats: A Century of Kiwi Innovation

Anderson, Grahame

Since the 1950s, a new wave of immigrants from all over the Pacific has come to New Zealand’s shores, bringing their cultures, customs and values with them. Some of these have been maintained or transformed to suit the conditions and circumstances of a new country and community, while others have been discarded. Today many Pacific people maintain strong social, spiritual and family ties to their homeland and seek to establish and understand their new connections to this land – New Zealand. The ways in which these connections are expressed are very diverse, and nowhere can this diversity can be seen more clearly than in the arts. Pacific Art Niu Sila highlights some of the ways that Pacific peoples have contributed to New Zealand arts from the 1950s to the present day. The contributing authors engage their areas of interest in different ways; some are from academic and teaching backgrounds, others are curators, artists or practitioners; some are a combination of these. They offer varying scales of distance and participation in their documentation and commentary. This book provides a snapshot of contemporary practice across the arts, highlighting what is and has been important and relevant in different genres. It covers a range of artforms including tivaevae, tatau, tapa, weaving, film and photography, painting and sculpture, architecture, theatre, literature, costume, jewelry, music and dance. Pacific Art Niu Sila shows how these art forms have maintained long-established ideas and have incorporated and been transformed by new ones. It is essential reading for all those interested in the contemporary arts of both New Zealand and the Pacific.

Pacific Art Niu Sila

The first photographic identification guide to New Zealand’s unique marine algae, this book by a preeminent seaweed expert describes green, brown, and red algae and the approximately 150 genera and 200–300 key species under those three main groups. Each species entry includes information on nomenclature, type locality, morphology, habitat, distribution, and notes on identification and key characteristics. The guide contains approximately 500 photographs, with each entry illustrated by either underwater or coastal photographs and supplemented by herbarium scans, microscopic photographs, or reproductions of celebrated botanical artist Nancy Adams’ paintings. Informative introductory chapters and breakout boxes introduce New Zealand’s seaweeds, giving an overview of the country’s aquatic flora and its unique features, information about the coastal environment, macroalgal ecology, and invasive species, plus material on the uses of macroalgae—particularly in New Zealand by Maori—and the widespread commercial applications of these diverse plants.

New Zealand Seaweeds: An Identification Guide

Nelson, Wendy

Drawing on exclusive access to the cultural treasures of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), this accessible, colorful book tells of the complexity, richness, splendor, and mystery of the Aztec civilization. The book reflects the latest archaeological knowledge about the Mexican people and provides exclusive interviews with a range of international experts on Mexican life and culture. Included in the book are more than 200 color reproductions of treasures from the national museums of Mexico, archival documents, iconic codices featuring pictograms of Aztec writing, and rare archaeological images from the temples—particularly the Templo Mayor where human sacrifices were made less than 500 years ago. The story of the Aztecs is fascinating, dramatic, and ultimately tragic—from its mythic origins, rituals, and ways of life to its tragic conquest—and this visually stunning resource reflects the profound heritage of Aztec culture and its continuing importance at the heart of Mexican life today.

Aztecs: Conquest and Glory

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Winner of: New Zealand Post 2014 Book of the Year, Best Non-Fiction Book From Montana award-winning author Jill Trevelyan comes the first biography of Peter McLeavey, the charismatic, pioneering art dealer who since the 1950s has shaped—even transformed—New Zealand art. McLeavey’s personal story is remarkable but in it, his contemporaries will recognise common themes: the religious upbringing; the struggle to be bohemian in a repressive, midcentury small town; the quiet agonies of marriage and children, the need to make a mark. Through exclusive access to McLeavey’s extensive and hitherto untapped archive of letters, diaries, exhibition files and more, this book offers insights into the artists McLeavey has represented across half a century. Here, in their own words—lively, salty, and often heartbreaking—are Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Len Lye, Milan Mrkusich, Michael Smither, Gordon Walters, Michael Illingworth, Don Driver, Robin White, John Reynolds, Yvonne Todd, and many, many more. Far more than a simple biography, this is the big story of contemporary New Zealand art itself, in a period of massive change and growth, and Trevelyan offers an utterly fresh and compelling historical account of the birth of the modern art market and the status of art today. A must-read for anyone interested in New Zealand’s art, culture or recent history.

Peter McLeavey: The life and times of a New Zealand art dealer

Trevelyan, Jill

Humor & Entertainment

The Great War seeped and stormed into every aspect of New Zealanders’ lives, from the front line to the family home. The things that survived—a crumpled theatre ticket, an engraved cigarette case, a knitting pattern—bring this distant event back into our hands. Historians Kate Hunter and Kirstie Ross have scoured museums and archives across the country to uncover these personal possessions and the stories they tell. All-new photographs and original research illuminate the things that were worn, lugged, kissed, and held by soldiers and those at home, placing these objects at the center of this important new social history. Holding on to Home provides a fresh perspective on the First World War and gives valuable insights into the lives of New Zealanders during wartime, more than 100 years later.

Holding on to Home: New Zealand Stories and Objects of the First World War

Hunter, Kate

Ross, Kirstie

Historical Study & Educational Resources

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