LIVING IN THE PAST
DR KATIE COOPER (28), FROM GORE, IS A HISTORY CURATOR AT TE PAPA MUSEUM IN WELLINGTON
Katie’s collecting history
I’ve always been into history. My mum was my history teacher at high school and absolutely loved the subject. My dad was a teacher too, and he loved museums and history books – so it’s always been part of our family life.
I don’t remember a time when I didn't enjoy history, it’s just the subject I’ve always been the most drawn to. So when I didn’t have a specific career in mind after high school, I figured the best way to get a job that I loved would be to study the thing that I loved the most.
After my studies, I wanted to dig deeper, so I did my PhD in culinary histor, which took about three years. Just as
I was finishing, I had one of those beautiful moments in life where the stars align and this job came up after the man who had been doing it for 40 years decided to retire. It was a wonderful fluke of timing.
I remember the first time I was in a storeroom at Te Papa I felt quite overwhelmed because it’s an intimidating space to be in. There are so many objects and they’re so beautifully stored that you feel almost overcome by the history that surrounds you.
Every time I come across something new in the collection, I want to know more and who it belonged to. It’s such a fun job.
A big part of my job at the moment is the exhibition to commemorate Suffrage 125. I’m curating that with a colleague and we’re in the thick of it.
It’s a mixture of items that are in the collection already and we’ve been collecting new items this year to mark the Suffrage 125 anniversary. We’ve tried to work with and target groups that address contemporary concerns for women, because we want the exhibition to show that although we’ve made some really significant advances since women won the right to vote, we still have some pressing issues we need to keep thinking about and addressing, so we’re very fortunate to be working with Women’s Refuge as part of this exhibition.
Another big part of my job is acquiring all the items for the collections, and depending on the object, working with families or individuals or organisations to build the story of the object and give it as many different layers of meaning as possible.
Every item we get may have been obtained differently. When it comes to historical items, a lot of them are offered to the museum, whether it’s from an estate or a family heirloom. We get offers nearly every day. We also get to look at auctions or work with antiques dealers if we find a treasure that needs to be purchased.
Throughout my research for my PhD, I looked through a lot of women’s magazines from the early 20th century and onwards, which is how I came to learn about iconic people in New Zealand’s culinary history such as [ New Zealand Woman’s Weekly’s] Tui Flower and even Hudson and Halls.
We managed to get Tui Flower’s rolling pin for our collection, which I absolutely love because that was her tool of her trade, and it’s also beautiful! It is so fun to be able to bring items of value like this one to Te Papa because acquiring the rolling pin and an electric oven from the 1920s just brings everything to life.
If it enhances my research,
I can only imagine what it does for our visitors being able to see and feel the actual objects from the time that they are learning about.
Our collection is wonderfully old, but so big, which means there’s still a lot of surprises to be found. I often find things in the storeroom that haven’t been photographed or on show yet – and I had never even noticed them!
That is the beauty of the job – in comparison to my time in academic history, with this you get to be in the storeroom and be hands on and you get to give tours and work with families and organisations collecting items.
I like to think I’m a collector of objects and stories, and being able to tell those stories is a really amazing thing.”